Digital Living

Five Bold Predictions for How the Coronavirus Will Shape our Digital Future

If the predictions from science fiction literature were accurate, we’d be living in a very different society than we do today. Autonomous, flying cars would shepherd deliveries between locations while the members of our society would be interacting with holograms and living in virtual reality worlds.

Unfortunately, for those who closely follow consumer technology, its pace seems to be more glacial than transformative.  While streaming media has grown exponentially, physical media still exists.  While online banking is normal, physical branches have a strong foothold in both urban and suburban settings.  While home automation technology has slowly invaded the home, stitching it together in a usable way is still a challenge.

Though no one should wish upon the world of technology a global pandemic like the coronavirus, its rise may actually give birth to a new world of innovation that shifts the technology world out of its methodical crawl and into an outright sprint.

While we wait to see what innovations arise from the constraints the virus has placed on our society, there are a few areas of our lives that we may see tangible change sooner rather than later.  Below are five such areas that are worth watching…

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Digital Living

Five Ways Amazon is Primed for the Coronavirus Fight

The coronavirus has battered and beleaguered numerous industries over the last month, leaving few survivors in its wake. Despite the carnage, one organization is uniquely poised to stand up and fight back.  Even those that loath big business must respect the reality that it takes a titan to fight a threat as prevalent as COVID-19.  That titan is Amazon.

Amidst growing unemployment claims, Amazon is one of the few organizations able to expand its workforce and increase pay.  CEO Jeff Bezos even released an employee letter highlighting the critical role Amazon is playing (and will play) in shaping the national response to the pandemic.

Amazon’s position to support the battle didn’t come about by chance. Instead, it was the result of years of infrastructure and service rollouts that catered to the convenience needs of its customers – a convenience that has now become a necessity.

So here is a look at five reasons why Amazon is primed to deliver critical supplies (and record profits) in uncertain times…

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Digital Living Frugality

Four Fun Focus Areas For Frugal Digitalism

Many millennials and digital natives have migrated their lifestyle online and in doing so have paid the price of convenience. Such convenience has come in the form of a monthly subscription fee to get access to craveable content. While a single subscription fee may have only a minor impact on one’s budget, when coupled with subscription fees across different digital services, the budget impact becomes more severe. This is further exacerbated by the rising subscription costs being charged by service providers and media conglomerates who have realized content is king and have gone on a spending spree in an effort to acquire digital content.

Thankfully, a convenient digital lifestyle doesn’t need to come with a high price tag. In many areas of your digital life, there’s no need to trade cash for convenience as you progressively shift your lifestyle online. In this article you’ll find ways to practice sustainable frugality in various areas of your digital life. This means getting what you need without borrowing login credentials from friends, illegally downloading the content you love, or managing multiple e-mail accounts in order to rotate through free trials offered by many digital services.

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Digital Living Home Buying

Finding the Right Home for Your Digital Lifestyle

Nearly 10 years ago I purchased a home that had been built in the 1960s. While it was equipped with few technology frills, over the years I managed to build out an impressive digital footprint within its walls. That work, however, came at a cost that could have been avoided (or at least minimized) had I planned out my technology needs up front and found a home more conducive to those needs.

Therefore, as I planned a move to a new city, I spent time assessing the digital attributes I valued in a home and set forth finding a new place that provided a foundation on which to build a meaningful, though more thoughtful and simple, digital footprint. In this article, I lay out six things to consider when searching for a digital-friendly home.

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