At first, my reaction to this was that it was overly uninteresting. However, I recalled our conversation in class about how long the Facebook like button took to design and was reminded at how intensive the process of just this simple icon to be used as a reaction.

I was also taking interest to the empathy of designers for this addition to facebook. They were really taking the users wants and needs into account for this one. In a time of people wanting to spread more love and empathy themselves this was something that people maybe did not totally recognize that they needed it however, I see it being very used right now as a reaction to various personal stories being shared on facebook and articles that are passed around.

I believe in a time like this, this is not only a great PR move but it is a great move by facebook to further connect people and express their emotions. This simple update has so much more meaning once I thought about it from a designers stand point and through and empathetic lens. Additionally when you think of all of the work went into the simple, tiny icon it is kind of mind boggling how much is held in that little image.

Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2020/04/17/facebook-messenger-coronavirus-new-hug-emoji-reaction-support-family-friends/5147510002/

It has been known that there is a digital divide in America. It is something we covered in class by looking at the map of the United States. There was a shocking amount of people that were not connected to the internet.

With the current state of the world, Internet connection is more important than ever. It connecting people to continue to work and socialize. However, this new normal has reflected in the Americans that are not connected to the internet or do not have sufficient internet connection.

This is something that needs to be addressed in our society. In one study by Microsoft, it says that half of Americans do not have access to fast internet. This is causing people to be left behind in the current climate of the world. They cannot keep up with work let alone the news of what is happening daily.

Companies like AT&T and Comcast are who the New York Times believes are to blame because of the pipeline that they have created. They suggest a re-do of the internet pipelines made more for the common good. However, based on what we discussed in class people are still going to be coming on with extremely outdated phones not to mention that some of the people that have slow internet cannot afford fast internet.

This will require a lot of work from local governments according to the New York Times and I am just not sure that this is something that they can be focusing on at this point in time.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/14/technology/coronavirus-digital-divide.html

Zoom, the platform that many schools and companies are using to continue business as usual throughout this time of social distancing is facing unforeseen issues. The main issue that they are facing is what they are calling Zoombombing.

Zoom was initially set up for not this much use, and for the use of companies to “zoom” in people who could not be at a meeting. So essentially a much lower volume of use with much less people in the meetings.

When companies and schools moved to remote learning and work from home, this greatly increased Zooms user volume which they were not prepared for. This lead to a whole host of cybersecurity issues. Two of the largest issues thus far have been people hacking into Zoom meetings and harassing participants. Additionally, there are reports that the Zoom iPhone app has leaked data to Facebook and that certain users have been able to access other users’ LinkedIn data.

Zoom is seemingly doing everything in their power to keep up with all of thee changes in their business as well as the current world. This has caused them to hire the former chief security officer of Facebook as well as for an advisory board of some of the most established people within cybersecurity to fix the mistakes that have been made and prevent further issues.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/business/zoom-video-privacy-security-coronavirus.html

Thomas Siebel who founded C3.ai is using his company to find a way to slow the spread of Coronavirus. The goal of this is to stimulate finding new ways to slow the spread of thee virus, developing drugs and vaccines and even improving on current methods to change the way that situations like this outbreak of Coronavirus are handled in the future. This company specifically is setting this research up at potentially 26 different universities with a due date of May for their research. The founder, Siebel is very hopeful that at least something good will come of this use of artificial intelligence.

What I can imagine this use of Artificial Intelligence looking like is stimulations and decision making. Problem-solving is obviously a huge part of of Artificial Intelligence and slowing down the spread of Coronavirus. So using these technologies some very interesting solutions could result. I cannot fathom what kind of problem-solving goes into to controlling a pandemic however, that is part of the beauty of Artificial Intelligence, it can tap into ideas that the average human might not be able to even fathom.

The results of this in the coming weeks have the potential to bee quite interesting and could call for some new strategies on how we treat the virus and slow the spread of it.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/26/science/ai-versus-the-coronavirus.html

Technology like Fitbits, Apple Watches, and other products like them are potentially being used for much more than their intended purpose to help with the Coronavirus pandemic. The idea behind turning to these technologies is for a few reasons. First, it can track populations pretty easily like peoples locations and their movement patterns. This is allows researches to pinpoint where outbreaks are more likely to occur. Another use of these products is giving people a better idea of their conditions. Certain applications can be put on things like the Apple Watch that can track temperature, heart rate, oxygen levels, and coughing events. This can give more people a window into the severity of their condition and lessen the burden on hospitals if people can track themselves at home and know when it is necessary to go to the hospital. Additionally it could give people who do not realize their symptoms a better idea of the reality of their health.

Their are a lot of possibilities for these products to help with the coronavirus from many different standpoints. The main takeaways is this can significantly help medical researchers, hospitals and doctors during this time. This ties into the Internet of Things in that we are using these technologies to collect data and transfer it seamlessly. This is collecting data on our locations and movements as well as basic medical information.

Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/2020/04/03/wearableslikeapple-watch-fitbit-may-play-coronavirus-detection-role/5111959002/

The spread of the Coronavirus is slowing down no time soon and with that, many industries are being effected specifically the technology industry which is deeply rooted in china for manufacturing needs.

It has been reported that Apple has seen a decline of sales in China due to the virus outbreak by USA Today. This has lead two questioning manufacturing speed and development ahead of drops of new products for apple. This is in part duet to the fact that people do not want to be in areas where it is easy for the virus to spread which would constitute a factory.

However, Apple does believe that they will be able to stay on track for the release date and keep everything moving smoothing.

What makes this so fascinating is that the spread of a disease can effect things outside of just human bodies. It can effect entire industries and companies. Apple one of the largest technology companies in the world was almost pushed behind schedule for a product release because they were effected by the spread of a disease.

Travel, business as well as technology are all being effected which again is crazy to think about because something so different and generally unrelated can have such a large impact on some of the worlds largest industries.

When there are reports like this it makes me think about how tightly the internet and technology connects us. Without it or with a decline of use or maintenance which is what a massive disease could potentially cause we could be faced with a crash of the internet.

This would cause a shockingly different reality because like we have talked about in class technology and the internet needs to be kept up with and maintained and if no one is there to do it because of disease that could be an issue.

What did this report open your eyes to?

source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2020/02/17/coronavirus-impact-apple-iphone-se-sequel/4786849002/