In a headline that maximizes SEO in today’s political climate, a question lingers about the extent to which we will go to protect ourselves from a virus. And although it’s not a digital virus, the digital community has been called to weigh in on the possibilities.
Read more about this here. The idea being bandied about in the U.S. has already come to fruition in some form or fashion in a number of countries, and that is the use of tracking and surveillance technologies—think face recognition and geolocation tracking—to follow individuals with Covid-19, essentially resulting in a digital quarantine. Like much of technology these days, such a strategy seems to originate in the mind or words of a science fiction writer. But the struggle is real. Very real. And the argument has more than two sides, which always makes for good fodder on the Interweb chat rooms.

Shelter In Place, With HAL 9000

We’ve long passed 2001, but the space odyssey continues, only now it’s a required space of six feet between persons engaged in social distancing. Between cable news echo chambers and social media hysteria, we seem more susceptible to misinformation than to the virus itself. And technologies developed to track those with the virus seem like a positive way to keep people safe, except for those being tracked, of course. At the same time, do we really trust that technology in the hands of different agendas over time, tracking and surveilling in the name of peace or patriotism or even commerce?

ICS wants you to stay safe and protect those around you, because that’s what we do every day.