The Future of Work

Matt Dye

Zoom!
Thoughts take on human form
Hands move through space
Ideas jolt through wires

Zoom, Zoom, Zoom
Hollywood Squares
Unsure of where to look
Eyes feel the strain

Zoom, Zoom …
Restrictions lifted
Colleagues embrace
And now?

The Science

The poem is a reflection on lab life during COVID-19. The first verse expresses the excitement (Zoom!) of continuing scientific work through videoconferencing – our lab uses American Sign Language, so the visual movement of the hands is an expression of communication. The second verse considers the exhaustion and strain of online visual communication (Zoom Zoom, Zoom) … so many bodies on the screen, each one a potential channel. Finally, the third verse turns to what comes next (Zoom, Zoom …). We know it won’t be a return to what happened in the past, but no one knows what the “future of work” will look like.

The Poet

Matt Dye was born in the UK before emigrating to the United States in 2002. He lives in Rochester NY with his wife, Colleen, their children, Ethan and Madeleine, and the family dog, an Irish doodle named Beckett. An avid Manchester City supporter and keen home brewer, Matt is an Associate Professor at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf in Rochester NY, where he runs a research centre looking at ways in which deaf people find solutions for living in a hearing world. This is the first time he has written a poem and shared it with someone else.

Next poem: The Physics of Dance by Mo O’Hara