I've found myself becoming progressively more introverted in the recent 3-5 years. Partly it has been forced upon me by circumstances but not meeting a whole lot folks face to face seems to bother me less and less as the years go by. If this thing continues much longer, it will wreck the economy in a lot of places and it's going to have serious ramifications everywhere. But the social side of how the epidemic has been responded to is something that I cannot say I'm bothered by too much.
I know this situation can really shit on the economy, that is why I called it utopia, the good parts of it are fantastic. I hope in the long run we come back towards village life and aren’t so damn global. I don’t think the nature and our mental health can survive globalisation anymore. It’s unnatural.
You have a point. Also, the heavy use of telecommunication recently introduced at a large scale makes a lot of sense environmentally. If this means that more people will eschew living in the largest cities, I will stand to benefit from that because my wife and I own a house in a city that hasn't been growing too much in the recent decades. If the increase of distant working causes people to want space around them again, there will be growth and higher property values where I live.
I think manufacturing will become more local but not necessarily in any kind of primitive way. More sophisticated 3D-printing among other advances in automation will bring manufacturing closer to the consumer.