8 ★ FT Weekend 4 April/5 April 2020
Technically, the internet
is doing just fine — theproblems are political
According to Madhumita Murgia and
Anna Gross, “there is global agreement
that online communication is broken”
(“The battle to control the internet”,
March 28). Given that in the last weeks
millions of people have not only
switched to working from home, but
also do their workouts, birthday parties
and corporate training online, that is a
bold assertion.
Leaving aside some under-
investment in fibre and data centres,
the technical infrastructure of the
internet is doing just fine. The
problems, including the under-
investment, are political.
On one side authoritarian
governments want to strengthen their
grip on their citizens by monitoring
their online activity and having the
ability to shut the internet down at
times of protest. On the other side,
huge American companies such as
Google and Facebook make billion-
dollar profits, while being seen as
monetising consumer data, avoiding
regulation and taxation. General Data
Protection Regulation is the EU’s
flawed attempt to counter those
perceptions. And criminals use theinternet to engage in activities ranging
from phishing, cyber attacks, terrorism
and paedophilia to intellectual
property infringements and sextortion.
The long-term solution, however, is
not more government control over the
technical layers of the internet, as
China and Russia have proposed at the
UN’s International Telecommunication
Union (ITU). The technical layer is
fine. The problems areonthe internet,
notofthe internet. Governments need
to ensure criminals are prosecuted,
global companies taxed, data protected
and security standards implemented,
and to invest in educating their
populations for the digital age.
Lousewies van der Laan
Ambassador for the Digital Economy,
The Hague, The NetherlandsCity brokers burst into
song over cheap shares
Further to Merryn Somerset Webb’s
op-ed “Some rare good news: equities
are cheap” (March 28): the headline
reminded me of the time during stock
market crises in the 1970s and 80s
when you could hear brokers around
the City singing “shares are cheap
today, cheaper than yesterday” to the
tune of “La Donna è Mobile”.
Myra van Hus
Amstelveen, The NetherlandsVisitors drove me crazy
when I worked at home
Edwin Heathcote (“We are all home
workers now”, March 21) doesn’t
mention one of my biggest bugbears
when I was working at home. Visitors.
Friends and family know you are
working from home so feel free to drop
round for a coffee and a chat when they
are at a loose end. They don’t seem to
comprehend that “working at home”
means you are actually working. Would
they think about dropping by your
office for the same purpose? Don’t
think so.
That’s not likely to happen at the
moment, but when this crisis is over,
do yourself a favour and don’t answer
the door.
Anya Lawrence
Broughty Ferry, Dundee, UKI was horrified by parts of Jenny Lee’s
account of life at home in Washington
DC during the reign of the coronavirus
(“A family in lockdown”, House &
Home, March 28). This account
includes her, rather self-approvingly it
seems, locking her father in the house.
There is no suggestion that he is
suffering from severe mental illness or
dementia. Her excuse is that “there is
no negotiating with him” — though she
could try — and she compares him with
her two-year-old son, reinforcing the
infantilisation of her father.When Ms Lee is middle-aged, and
her small children have become young
adults, they may from time to time
behave in a way that she considers to
be endangering themselves or others
(drinking too much, taking drugs,
driving too fast, staying in an abusive
relationship or any of a number of
other “undesirable” activities). She
might question their activities, or
explain why she doesn’t agree with
them, but she won’t, I imagine, lock
them up. Have we reached a point
where we believe it is acceptable tolock a person in a house because they
are over 70 and behaving in a way we
consider undesirable or unreasonable?
And is it an acceptable justification to
state that we love them, and that we
know better what is good for them?
All adults of sound mind should
surely be entitled to retain their sense
of agency and autonomy, regardless of
their age and regardless of what,
objectively, might even be better for
them and others.
Briony Beaven
Munich, GermanyDad should be allowed his sense of agency
Letters
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to the FT Editorial Complaints Commissioner: [email protected]Correction
cRoddy Clarke was the author of an
article on South African design in House
& Home on March 29, not Roddy Doyle.OPINION ON FT.COM
Peter Millett
Foreign powers are blatantly flouting
Libya’s arms embargo
http://www.ft.com/opinionIf there is a silver lining to the Covid-
pandemic, it is that it has injected a
sense of togetherness into polarised
societies. But the virus, and the eco-
nomic lockdowns needed to combat it,
also shine a glaring light on existing
inequalities — and even create new
ones. Beyond defeating the disease, the
great test all countries will soon face is
whether current feelings of common
purpose will shape society after the cri-
sis. As western leaders learnt in the
Great Depression, and after the second
world war, to demand collective sacri-
fice you must offer a social contract
that benefits everyone.
Today’s crisis is laying bare how far
many rich societies fall short of this
ideal. Much as the struggle to contain
the pandemic has exposed the unpre-
paredness of health systems, so the
brittleness of many countries’ econo-
mies has been exposed, as govern-
ments scramble to stave off mass bank-
ruptcies and cope with mass unem-
ployment. Despite inspirational calls
for national mobilisation, we are not
really all in this together.
The economic lockdowns are impos-
ing the greatest cost on those already
worst off. Overnight millions of jobs
and livelihoods have been lost in hospi-
tality, leisure and related sectors, while
better paid knowledge workers often
face only the nuisance of working from
home. Worse, those in low-wage jobs
who can still work are often risking
their lives — as carers and healthcare
support workers, but also as shelf
stackers, delivery drivers and cleaners.
Governments’ extraordinary budget
support for the economy, while neces-
sary, will in some ways make matters
worse. Countries that have allowed the
emergence of an irregular and precari-
ous labour market are finding it partic-
ularly hard to channel financial help to
workers with such insecure employ-
ment. Meanwhile, vast monetary
loosening by central banks will help the
asset-rich. Behind it all, underfunded
public services are creaking.
The way we wage war on the virus
benefits some at the expense of others.
The victims of Covid-19 are over-
whelmingly the old. But the biggest vic-
tims of the lockdowns are the young
and active, who are asked to suspend
their education and forgo precious
income. Sacrifices are inevitable, but
every society must demonstrate how it
will offer restitution to those who bear
the heaviest burden of national efforts.
Radical reforms — reversing the pre-
vailing policy direction of the last four
decades — will need to be put on the
table. Governments will have to accept
a more active role in the economy.
They must see public services as
investments rather than liabilities, and
look for ways to make labour markets
less insecure. Redistribution will again
be on the agenda; the privileges of the
elderly and wealthy in question. Poli-
cies until recently considered eccen-
tric, such as basic income and wealth
taxes, will have to be in the mix.
The taboo-breaking measures gov-
ernments are taking to sustain busi-
nesses and incomes during the lock-
down are rightly compared to the sort
of wartime economy western countries
have not experienced for seven dec-
ades. The analogy goes still further.
The leaders who won the war did not
wait for victory to plan for what would
follow. Franklin D Roosevelt and Win-
ston Churchill issued the Atlantic Char-
ter, setting the course for the United
Nations, in 1941. The UK published the
Beveridge Report, its commitment to a
universal welfare state, in 1942. In
1944, the Bretton Woods conference
forged the postwar financial architec-
ture. That same kind of foresight is
needed today. Beyond the public health
war, true leaders will mobilise now to
win the peace.Radical reforms are required to forge a world that will work for all
The office once felt an inextricable part
of the modern urban landscape. Build-
ings such as the Gherkin, Chrysler
Building and Fox Plaza are declarations
of the ascendancy of white-collar work:
monuments to administrators, clerks
and coders, written in glass and steel
and concrete and brimming with
wheely chairs.
Yet as the coronavirus pandemic has
dislodged workers, tech evangelists
have proposed that they can slip the
surly bonds of their desks perma-
nently. The purpose-built office — an
invention of the mercantile ventures of
the 18th century — is outmoded, they
argue. In an era of video-calling, team
instant-messaging and shared docu-
ments, there is no need to be in the
same city, country or even timezone to
collaborate with colleagues. But it
would be a mistake to treat the future
of the office as a binary choice. Employ-
ers should take the time to consider
how best these buildings can serve
their businesses.
There are obvious benefits for
employers and employees alike in the
idea of a fully virtual office. Grandiose
headquarters in capital cities may be a
symbol of success, but ditching them
allows companies to cut costs and has-
sle. Given that the infrastructure for
working remotely is standard today,
there are few extra overheads. Many
workers may also celebrate an end to
commuting and the pungent desktop
lunches of distracting colleagues.
But the surging demand for co-work-
ing in recent years — and the ubiquity
of white-collar workers in coffee shops
before that — shows that physical space
has qualities which the digital lacks.
Even for office workers in industries
such as consultancy, which can be per-
formed predominantly over the inter-
net, it is popular to have a location in
which to meet clients and share ideas.
And as many of us who are forced to
work from home have recently discov-
ered, the human touch cannot be fully
replicated through video calls.
There is a social dimension, too.
Physical proximity to co-workers and
management is important for generat-
ing a sense of community. Private sec-
tor companies have often acted as de
facto hubs for information and advice
to employees. In retrospect, as corona-
virus has spread, their responses may
be judged to have helped reduce the
impact of the disease. And moving
entirely online risks inadvertently cut-
ting off one avenue of innovation: sur-
reptitious meetings and conversations,
whether around literal water coolers,
in break rooms or at colleagues’ desks.
Rather than treating offices as they
were in the Enlightenment — spaces in
which workers were bound by the con-
straints of their work — employers
would be best served thinking how to
improve these spaces.
Tech-utopians have predicted the
internet would liberate office workers
from their glass and concrete cells for
years. With more than a little irony, the
biggest tech companies have taken a
very different course themselves. The
“campuses” of Silicon Valley behe-
moths are perhaps the best example of
how to make an office appealing. On
social media, tech workers have
recently bemoaned the loss of access to
perks such as good coffee, free food and
on-site gyms. Making offices into
spaces where employees want to be is
not frivolous but an increasingly
important part of corporate culture.
Many more established companies
have failed to make their workplaces as
engaging as they might. But they would
also balk at the revolutionary idea of
dropping their offices entirely. Right
enough. However good the technology
gets, today’s enforced homeworking
experiment looks set to prove the
enduring appeal of a good office.Home working cannot replace communal aspects of the workplace
Virus lays bare the frailty
of the social contract
The end of the office has
been greatly exaggerated
This week Austria took a striking step
to combat the coronavirus pandemic
when it announced that people would
not be allowed to enter places such as
supermarkets without a face mask.
“It’s clear that the wearing of masks
will be a big change, but it is necessary
to reduce the spread further,” declared
Sebastian Kurz, the country’s
chancellor, explaining that masks
would be distributed for free at shop
entrances.
Some might roll their eyes at this.
There is disagreement over whether
wearing low-quality masks prevents
people from inhaling the virus, even if
it does reduce the chances of them
spreading it by sneezing or coughing.
Austria will only be distributing
regular masks to shoppers, not the
N95 respirators (which do reduce
inhalation risks). Some US and
European doctors believe mask-
wearing is so pointless for those who
do not usually face the direct risks
medical staff are exposed to that they
have urged consumers to donate any
masks they have bought to hospitals
instead.
Yet I think it would be a mistake to
sneer at Austria’s move — for two
reasons. First, wearing a mask
reminds you to avoid touching your
face. This matters, as David Price, an
intensive-care doctor at New York’s
Weill Cornell Medical Center, explains
in a compelling video about treating
Covid-19 patients.
“We need to train ourselves not totouch our faces, and tell people we are
taking this seriously,” he explains.
The second reason is that mask-
wearing is not just about individual
behaviour; it has social implications as
well. Scientists sometimes ignore this,
since they are trained to rely on
statistics and the results of scientific
experiments. But if ever there was a
time when culture — and cultural
analysis — matters, it is now. This is
true not just in terms of how societies
are responding to the coronavirus
crisis, but also when it comes to how
diseases spread.
As Peter Baehr, a sociologist who
studied the emergence of so-called
mask culture in Hong Kong during the
2003 Sars outbreak, notes, when the
outbreak began masks were initially
discussed only in medical terms. But
the conversation soon assumed
another dynamic, since by wearing
masks “people communicated their
responsibilities to the social group of
which they were members”.
As Christos Lynteris, a medical
anthropologist at the University of St
Andrews in Scotland, wrote in The
New York Times: “Members of a
community wear masks not only to
fend off disease [in a pandemic]. They
wear masks also to show that they
want to stick, and cope, together
under the bane of contagion.”
This dynamic is now so well
entrenched in Asia that, as Gideon
Lasco, an anthropologist, writes in the
social science publication Sapiens:“Cultural values, perceptions of
control, social pressure, civic duty,
family concerns, self-expression,
beliefs about public institutions, and
even politics are all wrapped up in the
‘symbolic efficacy’ of face masks.”
Some Europeans and Americans
will scoff. Anglo-Saxon culture tends
to prize individualism, not the type of
collectivism that has often been
valued in Asia. In a city such as New
York, mask-wearing has been such a
minority practice that it has been
associated with a sense of stigma.
This stigma tends to disappear if
everyone puts one on. Not wearing a
mask is now almost a source of shame
in places such as Japan. In the west,
the shock of Covid-19 is reshaping our
ideas of risk and leading to a rising
appreciation for collectivist values.
Indeed, President Donald Trump
has indicated he might embrace the
widespread use of masks. Some of his
medical advisers would welcome this.
I would too. As Mr Lynteris notes,
epidemics should be understood not
just as “biological events but also as
social processes”, since this “is key to
their successful containment”. If
rituals or symbols — like masks —
help us to realise this, then so much
the better.
To put it another way, beating
Covid-19 will not just require medical
science, but a dose of social science
too.[email protected]Why wearing
masks may be
the way forward
Notebook
by Gillian Tett
What equivalent of the
corset can we do without?
Jo Ellison’s “Pressing pause on modern
life” (Life & Arts, March 28) has made
me reflect about how we should be
using this time. Most of us have dreamt
of owning a universal remote control to
pause our busy lives like Adam Sandler
inClick,and governments around the
world seem to have listened to our
demands (who would have thought?).
But the human psyche is complex, and
now too many of us are complaining
about how we wish to go back to the
status quo — or life before the virus.
I would hope that amid the angst,
horror and uncertainty of this crisis,
some of us can find the head space to
be thinking how to challenge
traditional doctrines and dogmas and
come up with ideas for life after the
virus.
What is the present-day equivalent
of the corset that we could do without?
Is shared office space something that
should stay in the past? Is it time to roll
out universal credit? While I am clearly
not one of them, I am calling on
creative thinkers out there. When we
no longer have to prove ourselves and
there are no expectations and “the
great performative exercise of existing
seems insignificant”, some of us might
be shaping the modern Age of
Enlightenment.
Adriana Ryan
Trélex, SwitzerlandAs Sjoberg says,
stories just begin
Thanks to Alec Russell (Life & Arts,
March 21) for his invitation to send
him our ideas on what we should be
reading.
I’d like to recommend Fredrik
Sjoberg’s bookThe Art of Flight, a
longtime favourite. Quote from the flap
insert: “Stories just begin. We rarely
know where and almost never why. It
doesn’t matter. Nothing is certain any
more.”
Annie Rye
Lenox, MA, USAPRIL 4 2020 Section:Features Time: 3/4/2020 - 18: 42 User: alistair.hayes Page Name: LEADER USA, Part,Page,Edition: USA, 8, 1