Opinion | In a post-coronavirus pandemic world, technology may not be the panacea

With the election of Joe Biden as the next US president, a collective sigh of relief spread across much of the world’s media. Normality, as well as a vaccine, had arrived on the horizon.

But, unfortunately, while there is good news, it is unlikely that we will be able to put the events of 2020 to bed quickly. We argued in May that the immediate consequence of “the crisis” was likely to be short-term stasis; now that we’ve passed this peak, the actual impact of the pandemic will quickly become apparent.

You don’t need to be a historian of technology to see that one lasting legacy of the pandemic is likely to be even greater use of surveillance, artificial intelligence and algorithmic control. The majority of developed nations have used technology to try and manage public health, and it is probable these organisational assumptions will set future paradigms of governance.

In Chinese cities, citizens are apparently colour-coded. In Britain, the National Health Service’s contact tracing app assigns risk scores to users. Some observers have proposed the use of enhanced apps that award points and benefits to users who assiduously wear masks and practise social distancing.