The Challenges of Remote Living

From The New Yorker’s archive: a selection of pieces on the effects of our increasingly atomized existence. View in browser | Update your preferences Remote Living Last year, Alec MacGillis published a comprehensive report on how remote learning continues to provide inadequate resources and schooling for America’s children. The piece chronicles the early, uncertain months of the pandemic, when school districts around the country seemed to be caught unprepared by the crisis. For many students, especially those who are disadvantaged, MacGillis writes, “society’s attention to them has always been spotty, but they had at least been visible—one saw them on the way to school, in their blue and burgundy uniforms, or in the park and the playground afterward.” Now they were, he notes, in essence, invisible. MacGillis traces the history of universal education and chronicles how the gulf between public and private schools has only widened as the pandemic has persisted. We still can’t know, he observes, the long-term repercussions these kinds of changes will have on our kids or on our own lives. This week, we’re bringing you a selection of pieces on remote living and how it continues to affect us. In “The Rise of the Covid Midlife Crisis,” Lizzie Widdicombe examines how the pandemic has disproportionately impacted women in the workplace. (“COVID-19 hit women especially hard. Their participation in the workforce has dropped to its lowest level since 1988.”) In “Why Remote Work Is So Hard and How It Can Be Fixed,” Cal Newport explores the challenges facing remote workplaces as we enter a new phase of the pandemic. In “Has the Pandemic Changed the Office Forever?,” John Seabrook considers how companies are rethinking the fundamentals of on-site working environments. Finally, in “The New Theatrics of Remote Therapy,” Adam Gopnik writes about how the rituals of therapy change when one can no longer sit on the couch. “What do you say when the reality that your patients encounter, medically and economically and existentially,” he observes, “can seem as grim as what their anxieties may have wrought in imagination? Words must be found.” —David Remnick From The New Yorker’s Archive Annals of Education The Students Left Behind by Remote Learning The desire to protect children may put their long-term well-being at stake. By Alec MacGillis | October 5, 2020 Dept. of Returns The Rise of the COVID Midlife Crisis Why are so many women leaving corporate America? By Lizzie Widdicombe | August 14, 2021 Coronavirus Chronicles The New Theatrics of Remote Therapy How does treatment change when your patients are on a screen? By Adam Gopnik | June 1, 2020 Newsletters Sign Up for The New Yorker’s Crossword-Puzzle Newsletter Never miss another New Yorker crossword again. Office Space Why Remote Work Is So Hard—and How It Can Be Fixed The challenges aren’t just technological. They’re managerial. By Cal Newport | May 26, 2020 Annals of Architecture Has the Pandemic Transformed the Office Forever? Companies are figuring out how to balance what appears to be a lasting shift toward remote work with the value of the physical workplace. By John Seabrook | February 1, 2021 You’re receiving this e-mail because you signed up for the New Yorker Classics newsletter. Was this e-mail forwarded to you? Sign up. Unsubscribe | Manage your e-mail preferences | Send newsletter feedback | View our Privacy Policy Copyright © Condé Nast 2021. One World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. All rights reserved.