If you follow that thinking through though, it would mean that almost any "real world" interaction would further inequality, and that any kind of significant ex

If you follow that thinking through though, it would mean that almost any "real world" interaction would further inequality, and that any kind of significant exchange of knowledge should be restricted to online spaces - so effectively going back to pandemic living, at least as far as meetups and conferences are concerned. You could certainly do that but it's not a world that I'd personally would want to live in. Maybe an alternative would be "distributed" events like e.g. Global Game Jam: Have not one venue but multiple, in different countries or "visa spaces", then link them all up online. Also more focus on "hybrid" conferences: Make online attendance less second-class by e.g. allowing remote speakers with an in-venue audience, and local speakers with a partially remote audience; also let the remote audience ask questions and participate in discussions via zoom etc.