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For me, this kind of thing is still very surreal. I'm old enough that I grew up in a "not connected" world. We used pay phones and land lines. It was considered rude to do anything significant over the phone.

I'm still having trouble with people being laid off over a video call. A capital trial with the death sentence being a possibility happening on a video chat just seems like I've jumped into some dystopian sci-fi.

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If we're being honest, you have. The future is here, just not evenly distributed.

Dystopia isn't guaranteed; don't go gentle into that good night.

Highly recommend reading "On Tyranny", it's a great small, pertinent book for $10 at most book stores.

Edit: to be clear China's social credit system is extremely dystopian to me and is already taking shape, but I trust most/all democratic societies (including US) to fend it off.

Pretty sure Governors delayed or not delayed executions over the phone at the eleventh hour pretty regularly if Hollywood has taught me anything.

But for some reason I also see this as different.

That's a good call-out. People did use phones for significant things when there wasn't a reasonable alternative.

But you wouldn't break up a relationship over the phone, for example.

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