One could contend that perhaps the greater social problem solved by Zoom and the Internet was "How do we allow people to have more lucrative jobs without them paying xx% of their salary to live within a commutable area of an in-demand city"?

Well, possibly :) That will drive salaries down a bit, by the same forces that drove them up, but certainly enables massive quality of life increases.

The Internet and Zoom are good things in general. But there was never any valid need for lockdowns at all, and it should be clear to everyone now that lockdowns caused more problems than they solved. So, I don't understand your point.

https://www.cureus.com/articles/107920-increased-incidence-o...

The real social problem we ought to be solving is stripping bureaucrats and politicians of their ability to impose lockdowns on us at all. And there is no technical solution for that.

> But there was never any valid need for lockdowns at all, and it should be clear to everyone now that lockdowns caused more problems than they solved. So, I don't understand your point.

That's not logical. There's no valid need for traffic, but I appreciate Google Maps traffic reports.