The Digital Transformation during Covid-19: Temporal and Spatial Impacts on Old and New Socio-Demographic Inequalities

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the digital transformation of working life received an unexpected boost. People were forced to set up workspaces in their homes, to provide play and learning spaces for their children, and to restrict their lives to private rooms. Virilio's vision of a ‘polar inertia’ (2000) became real. The reduction of physical mobility was offset by an increase of virtual mobility and communication. While several consequences, e.g., on traffic and housing, have been discussed, the dissolution of the unity of sensory perceptions of the same place and the multiplication of perception by being tied to the screen space and at being present at other places virtually has so far received little attention. To find out how people in different life phases and family constellations dealt with these spatio-temporal changes in their everyday lives, we applied a heuristic approach and conducted a semi-structured online survey. We asked how people perceive the reduction of corporeal mobility and breaks, how they evaluate virtual and face-to-face meetings, as well as travel times. We discovered ‘old’ inequalities between men and women with regard to how they percevice space-time as well as ‘new’ inequalities between age groups especially due to the loss of common spaces and times in corporeal communications during breaks. In addition, some paradoxical statements point to divided attitude towards the new forms of communication in everyday working life. This shows that the advantages and disadvantages of digitalization need to be carefully weighed against each other.