The Return of Big Brother

There's An App for That

The past week of coronavirus news has more than once left me staring, mouth-open at the television or re-reading something in news multiple times just to make sure I read it correctly. It's not the mounting casualty numbers. It's not Trump's daily efforts to one-up the previous day's buffoonery.

A Message from The Ministry of Truth:
Stay Home and Get the App

Instead it's the speed with which technology is being heralded as the solution to all of our SARS-CoV-2 problems. It seems there will an app for this too!!! There's just one catch... that app may soon be sharing information directly with authorities.

We've known for a long time that our phones have been "spying" on us. Indeed, our phones are doing things most of us would rather not know about. As we live more and more of our personal and professional lives through our smart phones, we've become complacent about the data we willingly share. Sure, there are these ubiquitous "terms of use" certificates we instinctively click without reading. If we actually read them, the proper reaction ought to be to throw the phone in the river. But, since a lot of the data being mined about our habits is designed to sell us more stuff we don't need, we just roll with it.

David, Goliath and SARS-CoV-2

The fight to limit the spread of SARS-CoV-2 around the globe has been an evolving struggle, too frequently pitting governments against each other as they fight to secure resources or impose measures to limit the spread.

Not Quite as it Appears

This is not so say there's no coordination or information sharing going; indeed, the WHO is collecting and disseminating lots of data, central bankers have been communicating with each other about interventions in their respective domestic economies, and ideas for fiscal stimulus are being mimicked by numerous national legislatures. Yet, disappointingly, there have also been too many instances of  "every-man-for-himself" in the response to what is an inherently transnational phenomenon.

More broadly, the instances of "coordination" or "every-man-for-himself" are revealing of aspects of the asymmetrical distribution of power in the international system and, for the purposes of this post, Canada-U.S. relations in particular.

SARS-CoV-2 Isolation Diaries

Like just about everyone else on the planet, I've been at home with my thoughts a lot lately. I've had a lot of them. The problem is that so has everyone else. Indeed, there's been an outbreak of written opinion nearly as large as the outbreak of the coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, itself. And, also similar to the SARS-CoV-2, I don't care for a lot of it. 

Dusting Off the Old Plans?

This blog post is going to be mostly a litany of complaints, things that have more than once caused me to get my dander up as I've watched them unfold. I'll refrain from straying into domains properly dominated by my natural science colleagues. However, my most basic observation of what's transpired reaffirms the need for the natural and social sciences to at least get together for coffee now and then.

The litany that follows here eventually leads me to a more serious set of points I think I have something to say about as we contemplate life during and after this pandemic.