Silicon Valley's Contact-Tracing Tech

In the United States, Apple and Google teamed up to create contact-tracing tech software. 

The premise was simple: if someone with COVID-19 was diagnosed, the software would use their phone’s location history to track whom they had come into contact with. The main benefit is that digital contact tracing is a lot faster than an analogue approach and requires less manpower to do the work.

Despite these benefits, the software has not had many takers. Even California passed on the offer - the state where these tech giants reside.

Here is what digital contact tracing could look like. The below is a beach in Florida during spring break back in March. Each orange dot is a cell phone of someone that was on that beach during the two week period.

This second image is where these phones ended up by March 22, and whom they had come in contact with.

I’m not sure how I feel about this technology - it is impressive but at the same time intimidating.

If you’re interested to learn more, I read about this concept from these two articles:

Contact-tracing: https://www.wired.com/story/health-officials-no-thanks-contact-tracing-tech/?mc_cid=9a09ee4438&mc_eid=58ae316446

Florida example: https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/04/tech/location-tracking-florida-coronavirus/index.html