Reporter DANIELLE NOHRA talks to a futurist who says the normal we get back, isn’t going to be the normal we had when it comes to work, play and education.   

AUSTRALIANS have lived through more change in a month, than most have experienced in their lives. And, says leading futurist Mark Pesce, it’ll be a bumpy transition if people think things will go back to normal. 

Sydney-based Mark can usually map out years, even decades, in advance, but last month he couldn’t predict past 30 hours, that’s how rapidly things were changing. 

“The normal we get back, isn’t going to be the normal we had,” he says. 

“The way we work, learn and play will be different.”

Mark says the way that people travel will be different for some time. 

“I’m part of a class of Australians who thought nothing of flying down to Melbourne or Canberra for a day,” says Mark, an author and inventor, who until recently made a living from public speaking across the country. 

“[But] we’ll never look at travel the same way. That ease that’s associated with moving around the country to do things, there’s going to be more consideration when doing so.

“We won’t be able to travel around as much, it’ll be very expensive and hard to do. 

“There will probably be a boom in domestic travel, once we can travel again [but] that might even mean lots of road trips.”

As for workplaces, Mark says people in businesses might only travel for the more serious meetings.

A “futurist” looks at patterns to effectively think about the future and its opportunities and disruptions. 

“It’s about being able to tell people stories of what’s going on now and from that, tell them about what’s going to happen,” says Mark.

There are still a lot of unknowns because the nation hasn’t experienced this before, but Mark says what’s happening with workplaces and schools right now will leave a legacy.

Businesses won’t be able to use the excuse that employees are unproductive when working from home any more and they’ll be able to understand that there are benefits to it as well. 

Attitudes will change, too, says Mark, and people will become more conservative. 

“People will be left with this weird sense of uncertainty because we were all cruising along fine and then [a pandemic hits] and it will leave a mark,” he says. 

“People will be a little more conservative on how they spend, which is not a good thing for the economy. A bad thing going forward is the residual anxiety that we feel but it depends on how much a person has been affected by this.” 

Mark says people are also becoming more self-reliant by doing lots of do-it-yourself projects, which can be a good and bad thing. 

Becoming more self-reliant, he says, is a good thing, but it’s also a bad quality because Australia is built on a goods and services economy.

And, what about gatherings? Mark says there’s a lot of questions around how they’ll look, and he believes they will be a lot more spaced out. 

“If we manage to eradicate the virus in Australia, I still don’t think we’ll have large groups of people gathering,” he says. 

“Right now, that’s not a good idea, but the question is: ‘When will we be comfortable about it?’ Some of that [depends on] your environment.” 

Mark has friends in America who, even if they were told they could go out to dinner, wouldn’t, whereas Mark says he might be more obliged to because of the way the virus has been handled here.

“One question is: ‘When will the pub open?’” he says. 

“That’s harder to do than a restaurant. It’s going to be around control. “People will get used to having fairly controlled and spaced-out experiences.” 

Another attitude that will change, is appreciation for human contact, says Mark. 

“We have a generation of people who were raised in front of screens,” he says.

“Now we all treasure human contact in a way we did not a month ago. 

“We appreciate the joy of being able to go out to dinner with friends or hug someone, and that whole generation, everyone under 20, would have taken that for granted.”

Mark believes this pandemic will also have a lasting change to tertiary education.

“UTS went from basically no online courses to all online courses in 10 days,” he says.

“All the unis are doing this. They’ve developed this stable infrastructure to educate people from home. 

“There’s a real moment here to actually put all that to work and to help train people so they’re ready for the economy that we’ll see on the other side, which will be a different economy.”

Tertiary education in the forms of short courses and micro-credentialing will be especially useful for people in the middle of their careers, who are left without work because of the pandemic.