Technosolutionism Isn’t the Fix

Technosolutionists were blithely dismissive of such proven measures not only because their advocates were often inconsistent in their advice (don’t wear a mask, wear a mask) but because the recommendations relied on the public (that mass of humanity whom technosolutionists, in the main, view as irrational and misguided) to adhere to them voluntarily. Other traditional methods for controlling the spread of a pandemic—including contact tracing—were criticized for their slow response time and, of course, their reliance on fallible humans rather than efficient technology.

Instead, Apple and Google together created a smartphone app that uses Bluetooth and proximity location to automate contact tracing, thereby removing the role of the individual public health workers who trace such information manually. Lawmakers across the country quickly embraced such approaches, tapping into the vast trove of data created by the digital exhaust our cellphones emit to track outbreak risks. As the Wall Street Journal reported, “The federal government, through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and state and local governments have started to receive analyses about the presence and movement of people in certain areas of geographic interest drawn from cellphone data.”8 In one instance in New York City, data researchers noticed that groups of people were gathering in Prospect Park, and alerted local authorities to the fact that citizens were flouting lockdown rules. Critics of the technosolutionist approach point out that contact tracing apps, which were quickly embraced in countries like China and South Korea, were effective only if public health services were also able to successfully test the majority of people at risk, something that has yet to occur in the United States. Furthermore, contract tracing apps require the use of a technology—the smartphone—that only half of US residents over sixty-five (i.e., the segment most vulnerable to COVID-19) even own.

Beyond the practical challenges such apps pose are privacy and surveillance concerns. As researcher Sean McDonald argued in a study of the digital response to COVID-19, “Undeniably, we need to use technology as part of disaster response, but the regulatory immaturity of the industry has made technology companies risky allies, even in the best of circumstances.” McDonald continued that “normalizing government-enforced, digitally delivered controls on our individual and collective rights creates the machinery for redeployment in future contexts, which may or may not be at this scale of emergency.”9

In a time of intense political polarization, technosolutionist approaches can appear to bear a veneer of nonpartisan authority. But the same sort of surveillance used to track the spread of a virus can just as easily track one’s movements during a political protest, for example. That is both the appeal and the danger of technosolutionism, depending on the amount of power one holds. Whether the crisis is one of public health or public safety—riot control or virus control, for example—the response is the same: increased surveillance, especially by the state. As privacy activist Wolfie Christl noted, “The location-data industry was ‘covidwashing’ what are generally privacy-invading products.”10

Powerful technosolutionist fixes during a pandemic can look like South Korea’s contact tracing system, which has been praised by public health experts for its early adoption and its effectiveness in slowing the spread of the pandemic. Yet few mention that South Korea’s success relied on a smaller, more homogenous population than America’s—and for that matter, one that is far more trusting of its government and institutions than we currently are.