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We’re beginning to accept that the global pandemic of 2020 will change so many aspects of life, much of it for the worse. Mauro Guillen, a management professor at Wharton, has put together a presentation on the many ways the adoption of technology will accelerate because of the crisis, some of it for the better.
In Spain, where Guillen is from, an emergency respirator assembled from 3D-printed parts has just been developed. Cell phones, social media, and the plain old World Wide Web are being used in creative ways to analyze infectious-disease trends. Machine learning, properly directed, should be able to predict future pandemics—now that health policy experts are paying proper attention. Telemedicine finally is getting its due, and then some.
Guillen has collated multiple examples of the good that even suspect technology can do. Drones can shift from being merely annoying presences over our cities to tools for compliance monitoring and large-area disinfecting. Robots can go where humans shouldn’t, including in some instances to care for infected patients.
“The key concept here is network effects,” says Guillen. “As more people use these technologies, more people will find them increasingly useful. They will help us track and stop the pandemic, reimagine organizations and society, and ultimately change the way to live, play, and work.”
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Even an administration that deeply trusted and respected the federal bureaucracy would have a tough time standing up a $350 billion small-business-loan program in a week. So it seems sensible to give the Small Business Administration and participating banks time to get their acts together. Silicon Valley Bank, for sample, is beginning its Paycheck Protection Program today.
That said, the vast majority of anecdotes I’ve read and those you’ve sent me suggest, so far, that it’s a hot mess. (Thank you, Reddit, for helping me choose my words appropriately.) Please share your tech-industry experiences of applying for a loan, and I’ll follow up soon.
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Quick takes: The San Francisco Chronicle wrote about some doctors who have taken to social media to explain the view from a city that appears to be successfully flattening the curve. Their musings are informative and reassuring … Quibi, which Sheila Marikar colorfully profiled 14 long months ago, launches today … New York Times columnist Ross Douthat published a smart speculative piece about the period after the pandemic peaks and before it’s over … His colleague, Timothy Egan masterfully captures our moment with an apt description of how his fellow residents of Seattle view Donald Trump, a wry observation about the poor staying power of the title of his Dust Bowl masterpiece, “The Worst Hard Time” (which I read recently), and this gem about the many small changes in our daily lives: “You keep telling yourself that every tickle of the throat is not … it.”
Adam Lashinsky
This edition of Data Sheet was curated by Aaron Pressman.
NEWSWORTHY
Insanely great. Tech companies are finding innovative ways to contribute in the time of coronavirus. Apple CEO Tim Cook on Sunday night showed off a new face shield for healthcare workers designed and made by his company. Apple will ship 1 million of the new shields per week to hospitals around the world.
Insanely insane. From the department of total craziness, some people in the U.K. have been setting fire to 5G wireless towers in multiple cities because...coronavirus. Apparently, a bizarre conspiracy theory has been spreading that the virus outbreak in Wuhan was caused by 5G. The British government met with social networks including WhatsApp and Twitter to shut down the spread of the 5G conspiracy.
There's no way to win. Some school districts are moving away from video conferencing platform Zoom due to security and privacy concerns. New York City's schools (the largest district in the country) and Clark County in Nevada are among the districts dropping Zoom, the Washington Post reports.
People don't come to see the tigers. Following the plummeting price of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies last year, M&A activity for the sector, which includes the many blockchain startups, has also fallen off. The number of deals declined 40% to 114 and the value of deals fell 76% to $451 million, according to PwC.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Microsoft Office had already ruled the productivity software market for almost two decades when Google's G Suite debuted. Since then, it's been a pitched battle, with Office retaining a substantial lead among paying users but G Suite reaching many more free users. Javier Soltero has seen both sides. After five years at Microsoft in charge of Outlook, he's now at Google running G Suite. He talked to Protocol's David Pierce about where the popular web-based software is heading next.
Google is working on improving its native apps, redesigning Google Groups, integrating more services into Gmail and lots more. Soltero also said he's committed to integrating more with other productivity tools. That's mostly so enterprise customers can use G Suite alongside their many other tools, but also to keep Google on its toes. "Without that sense of choice, and making sure you've built the right product and have the evidence to prove it," he said, "there's a real risk that you could become Lotus Notes, right?" And as tools change, as tech changes, as the very idea of where and how people work changes, Google's always going to be scrambling to keep up.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
New IBM CEO Arvind Krishna: ‘We will hit a new normal sometime this year’ By Alan Murray
Teaching a machine to see: Italian doctors turn to Chinese A.I. to diagnose COVID-19 By Eric J. Lyman
3 tips from Adobe on moving employee training online in response to the coronavirus By Anne Fisher
From more jobs to Prime perks, Amazon’s list of coronavirus efforts is long—and growing By Robert Hackett
World War II offers lessons—and warnings—for the coronavirus fight By Jeremy Kahn
How—and why—to send gifts during the coronavirus pandemic despite shuttered stores and Amazon limitations By Jenna Schnuer
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BEFORE YOU GO
The coronavirus outbreak has certainly impacted how journalists are doing their jobs (no more in-person interviews) and what we write about (see above). But I hadn't considered how it would affect car reviewers until I read Dan Neil's review of the new Ferrari F8 Tributo in the Wall Street Journal this weekend. I won't spoil it, but zoom, zoom, zoom!
Aaron Pressman