But after the outbreak has now driven some 40 percent of the world’s population (more in the U.S.) out of the public square and into our homes, we continue to crave contact with the outside world.
And Big Tech is there to deliver it to us.
We FaceTime more. We Snapchat. We WhatsApp. We Skype. We are dating, intermingling, visiting, and interacting virtually now, and each day it seems that, as the outbreak widens and deepens, our leaders keep moving the self- isolation and social distancing goal posts.
And throughout it all, we seem to be more willing than ever to disregard digital privacy as we feed our desire to interact.
“Likewise, the market power that made Big Tech look so dangerous makes it look vital and dependable now,”
Amazon, for instance, “which has always wanted to be the Everything Store, is now the Only Store in cities like Paris and San Francisco, where it’s an essential lifeline for a myriad of household goods (with some restrictions) that can’t always be found in the grocery stores or drugstores that are still operating,” Laurent continues.
And now, a mega-corporation once accused of killing off large sectors of the economy — malls, retailers, even food distributors — has become, in the Age of Coronavirus, the only part of the economy that still functions.
Ditto for the other tech giants....<<<Read The Full Article Here>>>...