Computer Virus

Computers & the Web by NANCY ROBERTS

Technology has always driven markets. Think of the ticker-tapes of the booming markets of the 20s, that became the suicide weapon of the crash. Or consider the fortunes made in the birth of the home computer, and the new money found in the development of apps. As streaming entertainment decimated “appointment television” with “what I want when I want,” a new set of players not only made new ways to make money, but kept actors and production houses busier than ever they’d been producing movies and television. And of course the demands of the blockbuster movie’s CGI (computer generated imagery) created enormous profits for the companies that could create them.

The cell phone - really today a handheld computer such as Tesla predicted a hundred and more years ago - drove new means of communicating that added ways for restaurants and bookstores to drag in customers, while at the same time they eliminated the need to go to these places with friends.

This same device has changed the way we get our news. Yes, the “TV news” and the “mainstream media (newspapers, news outlets, press conferences, etc.)” are all still major players in the dissemination of news and information, but quite a while back a friend in the Philippines alerted me to the virus that has now taken center stage on all news platforms - before it had become the news of the day.

Looking back in history, there have been plagues and flu epidemics as long as history has been written. Some were worse than expected, some more mild. Certainly in the last 40 years, the computer era, there have been at least one every 5 years or so that have impacted multiple countries, some as badly as predicted, others less so.

This latest one, however, has occurred at a time with no precedent in terms of peer-to-peer communication, and both video sharing and online “news.” Has anything looked more like a movie and less like an actual event than the spraying of Chinese cities, and the HazMat-suited workers in high level containment centers? If ever there was a computer virus, COVID-19 is it.

The chatter has left government officials worldwide in a dilemma: err on the side of caution and shut down borders, schools, and gatherings, or err on the side of assurance and go on as usual, assuming this one will be no more or less dreadful than the ordinary flu season that carries away tens of thousands of at-risk people yearly?

To put it mildly, I’m glad I’m not having to make those calls. The fallout from closing down any event, venue, mode of transportation, or other gathering place will dust everyone from the immediate venue to the people who clean, transport, sell memorabilia, or rent rooms. The financial market reacts by swinging wildly and frightening investors and particularly people who rely on their investments.

And as we have learned in the last few years, our “news and information” has planted a stake in the ground in terms of its viewpoint. No longer are our sources innocent of an agenda - though in this particular case, it’s probably wiser to step off any given soapbox and try to only report what is, in fact, news, and not try to make anyone look better or worse than they are: as noted, the fallout is, in fact, radioactive, and will hurt everyone. But remember those prescient Greek writers? They told the story of Pandora, who opened a forbidden box, unleashing the woes of the world. Ones they were let out, they couldn’t be gathered back in. We have this tool, the Internet, and we have a constant stream of alarms setting our phones buzzing. Now would be a good time to use the tool to spread as much calm and truth as can be obtained so that people can react to that rather than “scare quotes.”