默默新聞08

2020年4月2日星期四

April 2, 2020

When Silly Start-Ups Falter, We All Lose

Maria Chimishkyan

By Shira Ovide

It feels like the world is burning, doesn’t it? It’s hard to care about the struggles of silly scooter start-ups.

Some young tech companies are being crushed as customers shelter at home during the coronavirus pandemic, and they’re laying off workers at lightning speed, as my colleague Erin Griffith writes.

This can be devastating to people who work at start-ups, although the layoffs are a small number compared with the speed and scale of America’s job losses. For the rest of us, these start-ups matter in ways that we can’t always see.

Many of us have come to rely on what these companies provide. There is an economy of homeowners and others who rely on income from Airbnb.

And even if you never take an Uber ride, have groceries delivered by Instacart or eat burritos brought by DoorDash, the start-ups’ existence has made transportation authorities, supermarkets and restaurants bend to our needs.

We also risk losing a can-do spirit. I tend to roll my eyes at the rah-rah of start-ups that say they’re trying to change the world. These are for-profit companies, not cancer-curing charities. But in my cold heart, I know that behind every start-up is (usually) a noble idea: What if there’s a better way?

Navigating around cities, buying a home, finding reputable child care, running payroll for your business and feeding your family could be better, more efficient, more joyful. Along with the good ideas, there were reckless, exploitative and trivial ones — how many leggings companies do we need? But for the last decade there has been encouragement and cash for people who said they could find a better way.

When start-up boom times turn to doomsday, as Erin chronicled, both clunkers and promising ideas may not have a shot. (Although this could be a breakthrough moment for remote work, school and fitness technologies.)

I get it. We have more pressing things to worry about right now than frivolous start-ups. But when they falter, we all lose something. You and I have been reprogrammed to think, “Why does it have to be this way?” That nagging question will outlast some of the young companies that inspired it.

If you were laid off from a tech start-up and want to share your experience, contact us at ontech@nytimes.com. A reporter may get in touch with you.

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Software is not magic

There is an understandable desire right now for technological fixes for a global health crisis. We want tech to track people who might be exposed to the coronavirus, help hospitals manage a crush of patients and tell us if our symptoms are serious.

These are good ideas — with potentially serious trade-offs. But what if they don’t even work?

This 2014 research paper, recommended by my colleague Jennifer Valentino-DeVries, is a reminder of the limits of fighting a virus with technology. Google Flu Trends, which collected billions of illness-related web search terms to spot outbreaks early and consistently, sometimes wildly got the numbers wrong.

The authors’ conclusions were that data gleaned from technology can supplement but not replace traditional flu-tracking methods like reports from doctors on influenza-like symptoms they were seeing. (There’s a new, follow-up research paper here.)

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Data we generate online and from our phones can be useful — including now for economists using Google searches to forecast the number of unemployed Americans. Even this data has limits. Tech isn’t a silver bullet. In a health crisis, a website will not create ventilators out of thin air or replace effective leadership.

They have thoughts

Greg Bensinger, a member of The Times editorial board, said our reliance right now on big companies like Amazon and Walmart should not override questions about whether they mistreat workers or unfairly muscle out rivals.

Forced by the pandemic to drop in-person performances for online ones, classical music has become more accessible and charming, writes The Times’s Joshua Barone. (But Peter Gelb, the general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, says webcasts are a pale imitation of live performances.)

Frank Bruni, the Times Opinion columnist, is in Gelb’s camp about the limits of online activities, including the use of emoticons and emojis. “There’s not a one of them, no matter how colorful, that has the melting warmth of a flesh-and-blood smile that’s happening right in front of me.”

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Before we go …

A pandemic is the perfect time! To become bakers, or fitness buffs! Everyone online seems to be using enforced at-home time to become more productive. But truly, it’s fine if we just muddle through instead of trying to optimize our lives, says our internet culture writer Taylor Lorenz. I tried and failed to read a single page of a book last night. I’m not sorry.
OK, but maybe we can be a teeny bit productive? Here’s a helpful, manageable task: Digitize your important paper documents and mementos, like birth certificates and family photos. My colleague J.D. Biersdorfer walks you through how to do this.
The video-meeting app Zoom has become a fixture of quarantine life, which makes it a target for horrible people to break into calls and harass others. One fix the company can make is to change settings, as it has done for schools, to not let people share what’s on their screen without the host’s permission, and to require the host to approve any attendees. Consumer Reports also has a good guide to the information Zoom collects on people using its app. The company said it turned off a data-gathering feature after my Times colleagues asked about it.

Hugs to this

May I present: the celebrity chef Ina Garten and a martini glass the size of a toddler. She posted this video Wednesday, before 10 a.m. (Thanks to the Briefings writer Melina Delkic for showing me this gem.)

Take care of yourselves and those around you. And please let us know what we could do to serve you better. We’re at ontech@nytimes.com.

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2020年4月1日星期三

On Tech: Did the internet become nice?

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April 1, 2020

By Shira Ovide

Hello and welcome! The pandemic has turned everything we know upside down, and we are relying on technology more than ever to work, go to school, stay informed, entertain ourselves and stay connected to people we love.

I’m Shira Ovide (pronounced OH-vee-day), and as promised I’ll be your guide each weekday to how technology is transforming our lives and world — for better or worse. I’ve been writing about technology for the better part of a decade. I’m also a native Ohioan, a very bad cyclist and an enthusiastic tweeter.

There will be pieces about how technology is helping us stay close and protected — or not — during the pandemic. There will be insights into how big technology companies are dealing with our changing online lives. There will be tales of people doing the best they can with virtual life. I promise you will find joy and oddities here, too.

Many of you will note some familiar faces, like Charlie Warzel and Brian X. Chen; they and other stellar Times journalists will provide context for our strange times. Tell your friends (and your enemies) to sign up here. And we’ll have fabulous illustrations thanks to our visual editor, Jaspal Riyait.

You’re probably unsettled about the health and resilience of your friends, families, neighbors, country and world. Me too. Let’s feel our way through this together.

If you have feedback, please send it our way at ontech@nytimes.com. If you’d like to unsubscribe, you can do so at the bottom of the email.

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The internet is nice now?

Alvaro Dominguez

As we’re retreating from the real world to stay safe, we’re finding creative and kind ways to pull together online — from virtual birthday parties and story time, to organizing food bank fund-raisers and grocery trips for neighbors.

A kind internet just feels weird.

My colleague Kevin Roose typically writes about the terrible things on the internet — dangerous conspiracies, misleading provocations and organized violence. I needed to know why he thinks a pandemic is bringing out the best in our online lives, and how to keep it that way.

So the internet is good now? Did you forget about everything you’ve ever written?

Kevin: It’s not so much that “the internet” is “good” now — these tools haven’t changed, after all — but I do think we’ve seen people using the internet in a more pro-social way, which is great. I hope it lasts!

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Maybe people are more kind in a crisis. Then we’ll go back to being horrible to each other afterward?

Kevin: That may be inevitable. But I hope we remember this feeling, and the ways we’re generating it.

And I hope the tech companies that are intervening to improve the quality of the information on their websites and apps will … keep doing that! It’s nice to live in a more pleasant virtual neighborhood.

What can all of us do to keep this neighborhood pleasant?

Kevin: I’ve been thinking about this a lot. I think the answer is we need to contribute more, and lurk less. In normal times, we — and I include myself — are much more passive about using the internet. There’s some research that shows we’re happier when we use social media actively rather than passively scrolling.

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The more good people use social media, the less the bad people are able to commandeer the megaphone. Now it’s not only the cranks and opportunists who are getting amplified — it’s also doctors, nurses, epidemiologists and people organizing face mask drives.

But doctors won’t keep posting forever. And does the world really need Instagram photos of my boring oatmeal breakfast?

Kevin: Yes, be boring! We’re all getting barraged with horrible news all day. We should all be legally required to post photos of our boring breakfasts. It’s what people used to knock Instagram for — “oh, it’s just people posting their avocado toast.” But honestly, that sounds amazing right now — imagine, an all-avocado-toast social network!

What do we owe one another?

There are many people who need to work outside the home right now: doctors and nurses, postal carriers, online shopping warehouse workers, taxi drivers, autoworkers, supermarket employees. They might need the work — and we need the essential services they’re providing. But their jobs put them in harm’s way from being around other people, and potentially transmit illness to their families and others in their communities.

Some of them, including people who work for Amazon and the grocery delivery service Instacart, have been holding walkouts or other actions to demand higher pay, more safety measures including sanitation supplies, better communication with their bosses and more options to take off work if they’re sick.

These are not new issues in the United States, as the former New York Times reporter Steven Greenhouse writes for our Opinion section, but they are more stark in a global crisis. What do companies, governments and all of us owe these workers? This is a question I’m wrestling with, and will be returning to often.

Before we go …

The first rule of pandemic life: THERE ARE NO RULES. “I have thrown off the shackles of screen-time guilt,” the Times reporter Nellie Bowles writes — hilariously. “My television is on. My computer is open. My phone is unlocked, glittering. I want to be covered in screens.”
“I met a ghost on my island who gave me a bidet.” Animal Crossing: New Horizons is the cheerful virtual world game we need right now. And the Verge has a sweet story about college students holding virtual graduations for “Quaranteen University” and recreating campus life in the Minecraft video game.
The pandemic is inflicting pain on many technology start-ups and their employees at a speed that defies comparisons, my colleague Erin Griffith writes. I’ll have more about this in tomorrow’s newsletter.

Hugs to this

Rico the Brazilian porcupine. He loves apricots. He used to be bad at climbing, but now he’s not. This is a hopeful message! (The Cincinnati Zoo, which is doing daily virtual home safaris, was a frequent field trip spot for me as a kid.)

Please drop me a line about what is keeping you entertained, productive or calm(-ish) right now. Is there a great TikTok account or online concert others should know about? Share your finds at ontech@nytimes.com. We may feature some in upcoming newsletters.

Please let us know what you think of this newsletter at ontech@nytimes.com.

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