Putting Jitsi aside for the moment, Zoom and other video call systems saved lives during the pandemic. It enabled fewer in person gatherings, staved off depression/suicide by maintaining social connections, and enabled remote work.
Less momentously but significant to me, my kids have learned an insane breadth of technologies by watching science and maker Youtube channels, presented in a very accessible way to kids. At 7yo, I didn't know what a lathe or welder was, let alone excitedly insist that my parents get one.
3D printing wasn't mentioned but hot damn, it's satisfying to fix the unfixable by printing a new part. It wasn't too long ago that "broken plastic doohickey" meant throwing the whole thing in the trash.
And another one for kids: cheap and individual computing devices. No more time sharing of a modem on the single computer in the house! In fact, touch interfaces and responsive graphics has kids learning skills before they can even read. Watching elementary kids work on and submit homework on a Chromebook is kind of interesting, compared to my education.
(admittedly, the level of detail and quality of it could be higher, still working on that)
Either way, if nothing else, i wanted to drop by and express my agreement with your point about technologies to chat with others, both in video form and otherwise. Personally, i think that both the self-hosted options and the ones available in the cloud (such as Discord) can have a large positive impact on us, especially during the current times.
For example, they allow me to embrace a more asynchronous way of work - at my current company, we've essentially replaced the daily stand ups with the Standup & Prosper app (https://standup.teaminator.io/) and have discussions more freely in the chat channels otherwise, while still having weekly video meetings, which works for us.
At the same time, everything from Discord to even WhatsApp lets me keep in touch with my friends and acquaintances, even though we live pretty far away - actually, i've moved to the countryside almost a year ago and somehow it still hasn't felt lonely to me thanks to these technologies (while also having lots of other things to do).
I'm not sure precisely why that is, but those platforms somehow feel more enjoyable to me than something like Facebook or Instagram, they allow for a bit smaller and more personal/private conversations, that leave me feeling more socially satisfied than just "shouting into the void".
Less momentously but significant to me, my kids have learned an insane breadth of technologies by watching science and maker Youtube channels, presented in a very accessible way to kids. At 7yo, I didn't know what a lathe or welder was, let alone excitedly insist that my parents get one.
3D printing wasn't mentioned but hot damn, it's satisfying to fix the unfixable by printing a new part. It wasn't too long ago that "broken plastic doohickey" meant throwing the whole thing in the trash.
And another one for kids: cheap and individual computing devices. No more time sharing of a modem on the single computer in the house! In fact, touch interfaces and responsive graphics has kids learning skills before they can even read. Watching elementary kids work on and submit homework on a Chromebook is kind of interesting, compared to my education.