The coronavirus epidemic starkly shows the
gap between tech’s elite and its underclass,
said Julia Carrie Wong in TheGuardian
.com. When Google cybersecurity worker
Josh Borden arrived at his office last week,
“the parking lot was deserted, there was
no breakfast being served in the cafeteria,
and the nap rooms were tagged with signs
announcing their closure ‘as a precaution
given the Covid-19 situation.’” So what was
Borden doing there? Despite working side
by side with colleagues employed directly
by Google, Borden is a contractor, one of
a vast force of people who “work for, but are not technically
employed by, the $830 billion company.” While Google’s own
employees can easily work from home, Google doesn’t let its
contractors access its systems from outside the office. Borden
says the contractors have been “forgotten and abandoned.”
Amazon did announce it would provide sick leave for contract
employees. “But why did it take a global pandemic” for Ama-
zon to provide this basic benefit?The tech industry has come to rely on workers who “shoulder
most of the risks and costs” while companies “retain most of
the control and most of the rewards,” said Emily Guen dels-
berger in The Wash ing ton Post. Tech companies promised that
we would be able to trade the “job security and safety net of
being an employee for the bigger risks and bigger rewards of self-employment.” The reality is the gig workers
with precarious livelihoods have little choice
but to ignore health recommendations.
And the companies turn a blind eye. “It’s
not Uber’s problem if drivers get exposed
to the coronavirus by passengers.” Small
businesses that have been built on the tech
giants’ platforms are also at risk, said Erin
Grif fith in The New York Times. Hosts on
sites such as Airbnb and Booking.com “are
now feeling the brunt of the coronavirus
fallout.” For some, bookings have dropped
to zero. While the collapse in travel has hit
every part of the business, the people who’ve put rental listings
on these platforms “typically have fewer resources to withstand a
prolonged slump” than do big hotel companies. “I’ve got to keep
paying my mortgage somehow,” says one Airbnb host.“Pressure is mounting” on gig economy firms to do more to
protect their workers, said Kia Kokalitcheva in Axios.com. Last
week, Uber “announced it will compensate drivers for up to 14
days if they’re diagnosed with Covid-19 or put under quaran-
tine.” But both workers and companies are reluctant to give up
business that has skyrocketed “as the virus spreads.” Instacart
said that demands last week for its delivery service rose 10-fold.
One other sticking point: Tech companies are wary of providing
the kind of benefits that “could make it harder to deny that their
workers are employees.”Gig economy: An epidemic hits tech’s underclass
Maskot,^ screen
shotSchools turn to digital plans
Remote learning is testing families’ ability to
get their homes tech-ready, said Julie Jargon
in The Wall Street Journal. As schools close
around the country, the “unprecedented
remote-learning situation” is exposing a “tech
gap between affluent and lower-income fami-
lies” or those in rural areas where high-speed
internet isn’t available. Approximately 17 per-
cent of U.S. students don’t have a computer
at home; many others have to share access
with siblings or parents. “Districts scrambling
to come up with contingency plans are turn-
ing for tech support to Minnesota,” where
many schools created remote-learning plans
“after heavier-than-usual snowstorms.” The
Sauk Rapids–Rice Public Schools district, for
instance, uses “a web-based platform called
Schoology that allows teachers to perform
video lessons, assign and assess work, and
chat with students over any kind of device.”Not the same as a real town hall
Joe Biden’s virtual town hall last week was a
“complete technical nightmare,” said Makena
Kelly in TheVerge.com. Instead of a campaign
rally, Biden’s team tried to host a public Zoom
call “for supporters to join and ask questions.”
But it was “plagued with technical problemsfrom the beginning.” When I first logged in, “I
was greeted with one Illinois senator adjusting
the angle of her webcam and another showing
off an adorable (but screaming) baby in an
oddly intimate video call before the former vice
president even appeared on screen.” When he
finally did, “his staff had to restart his entire
speech because there was no audio.” After
more audio trouble, Biden finally got to an-
swer questions. But at one point “his staff had
to cut off the camera feed entirely” because he
kept walking out of the frame.Bill Gates’ empty chair
Bill Gates is stepping down from Microsoft’s
board, said Jay Greene in The Washington
Post, severing his last official tie with the
jugger naut he co-founded in 1975. Gates, the
world’s second-richest person, said he will still
remain a “technology adviser” to Microsoft
CEO Satya Nadella but wrote in a LinkedIn
post that he wants to “spend more time on his
philanthropic work.” Gates gave up his CEO
post in 2000 and stepped down as chairman
in 2014. He will also “step away from his one
other board position, at Berkshire Hathaway,
the company run by his longtime friend War-
ren Buffett.” Microsoft plans to keep Gates’
board seat unfilled.Bytes: What’s new in tech
An “interactive web-based dash-
board” shows you where the
corona virus is moving around the
world in real time, said Natasha
Frost in Qz.com. Created by Johns
Hopkins University’s Center for
Systems Science and Engineering,
the dashboard has been an invalu-
able aid for tracking the pandemic
since late January, showing “the
location and number of confirmed
cases as they are reported, along
with casualties and recoveries.”
The map, which can be found at
coronavirus.jhu.edu, is “intuitive to
use and beautifully designed,” and
all the data that is collected and dis-
played is made freely available to
researchers. “With panic setting in
all over the world, there’s a strange
sort of relief to be found in seeing
the data right there, in black and
white (and red and green).”Innovation of the week
18 NEWS Technology
Which deliveries are too risky?