Going Viral: A Coronavirus Diary

Coronavirus brings globalisation into focus by forcing attention onto the different layers of interconnectedness in our twenty-first century world. As the virus spreads around the planet in waves, the pandemic impinges on different social and economic sectors each according to its own rhythm, throwing them out of joint one by one. The synchronisation which normally keeps the whole system running harmoniously breaks down. It is precisely at the moment the system breaks down that we realise how interconnected it is. What is normally hidden because, as we used to say, it functions like clockwork, is exposed. We discover that while our clocks are nowadays calibrated atomically, public time is not at all uniform but constituted by the superposition of many different tempos.

Remember six degrees of separation? The theory that everyone in the world is connected to everyone else by a maximum of six steps. Also known as the six handshakes rule. This is the world of coronavirus: the rhythm of human contact, which is now forbidden us in the attempt to stop the virus in its tracks. It was still early in March when a healthy young friend who was due to come round emails to say he wouldn't come. He is self-quarantining because a friend of his who stayed overnight had begun to show symptoms. As someone in the elderly-at-risk-with-underlying-medical-condition category, I appreciate his consideration.

We are living in an accelerated world of multiple forms and layers of connectedness, which feed off each other and borrow each other's imaginaries. Metaphors are imported across different domains. Some people think of human brains as being like computers, though this is a reductivist fantasy which ignores biology, consciousness, and imagination. Contrariwise, computers become infected with viruses too, and we speak of things ‘going viral’ on social media. But the level of digit