We are up to our armpits with the COVID-19 concerns. While the technology market could be crushed by it, there are numerous things tech players could do to alleviate the damage.
I’ll cover the top three from my own perspective. I’m not going to talk about things that every company can do, and several already are doing, like telling people to work from home and stand six feet apart. I’ll focus on aggressive steps the industry could take to lessen the first manageable pandemic in the world’s history.
1. A Global Video Conferencing Standard
Companies are asking people to go home and work from home. When they work from home, they’ll need to do video conferences to do meetings. Even though the quality of video conferencing has improved a lot over the years, but what hasn’t improved that much is interoperability.
If someone calls you using Facetime, you have to have an Apple device. Zoom needs a Zoom client, WebEx requires a WebEx client, Teams and Skype seem unable to interconnect even though they both come from Microsoft.
If we are going to enable employees to work from home fully, we need to make sure that this video conferencing stuff will interoperate as much as we did with smartphones, networked devices, WiFi, and SD cards. We can do this, and if we want people to be productive, we should do this.
2. AR Glasses with Heat Sensors
Companies like FLIR have high-quality infrared cameras that can give pretty accurate alerts on temperature, and they are even used in smaller form in laptops and desktops that have Windows Hello enabled.
We’ve been trying to get augmented reality glasses off the ground for some time, and newer designs have built-in cameras to better place virtual images. If we replaced those generic cameras with ones that could measure heat, we could tell which people close to us were having a fever and avoid them.
If we were to avoid sick people, the likelihood of getting the virus would have dropped a lot. If we encounter a person like that basketball player who thought it was funny to go around touching everything he could, and was then diagnosed with COVID-19, we may be able to alleviate the problem.
First responders should have access to glasses like this, as should Secret Service personnel, anyone in law enforcement, and anyone in healthcare. If only just one person per business were to own those AR glasses, we could identify threats and scale that ability up so that we don’t have to close businesses but only if there is a better way to detect those who are sick.
3. A War on Fake News
There is a bunch of misinformation happening online about the virus. Everything from gargling with bleach to using illegal drugs have been suggested to alleviate or fight off the virus. They’re all bogus, and some of the recommendations like using drugs or gargling with bleach will not only not protect you but also could make you seriously ill, pose a high risk to your health.
This false information is creating a real danger for those desperate for a way to decrease the risk. Social media companies are becoming a huge risk all by themselves. A lot of this incorrect information is coming from countries or people that wish us, the humanity harm but have no control over the number of people who are likely to follow this incorrect advice. The harm could even grow well beyond what those countries intend and even be viewed as an act of war.
In my opinion, the industry not only needs to delete this misleading information but also take aggressive steps to bring the people spreading it to justice.
We have artificial intelligence tools to identify and eliminate these wrong recommendations at scale, and doing so potentially could prevent people hurting themselves, thinking that they are safe by following the fake information and save lives.
Let’s Wrap This Up: The Net Positive Effect
If the information we are getting on the virus is accurate, so you know just what your risk is and what works in terms of decreasing that risk, it will offset the fear of the unknown. If we could see those who have a fever, we could reduce the risk not only of getting COVID-19 but also of getting the flu and other illnesses that present with temperature, making us all healthier over time.
Finally, if we could get video conferencing to work like phones now do, then maybe we wouldn’t have to attend meetings physically, fly to another place to attend meetings, and we could potentially avoid many of the places we are likely to get sick.
Something else to think about, as China recovers while other countries get sicker, markets could move to where a country can execute. Meaning there could be big changes in the tech industry if the fight against COVID-19 isn’t ended soon, the countries that were successful in the fight against the virus early could get a boost as companies in other countries would have to move there to get profitable.
So, implementing ways to relieve this virus not only would make us more productive but could make us safer and healthier.
