Om Malik did an excellent piece recently entitled The Inevitable has happened. And in a hurry, on fairly recent past crises and the opportunity zones that they created for technology. Head’s up, people: take note of this current crisis, especially since we’re still in medias res and observing first-hand where the shortfalls are. Case in point: The Great Toilet Paper Shortage of 2020.

It’s not tech,but it’s there.

Where is tech in all of this? While it’s true that Only 44 Startups In Silicon Valley Got Funded Last Month, as Bloomberg reported, Malik observed that “Last week, we saw the mid-pandemic report record results for Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Facebook. Spoiler alert: they’re not exactly suffering. Microsoft saw its revenues go up to $35 billion for the quarter, compared to $30.5 billion for the same quarter in 2019. Amazon’s revenues came in over $75 billion. Even with a shutdown, Apple reported earnings of $58 billion. You get the drift.

“Sure, there might be some companies…that suffer in the near term. The startup ecosystem might contract. But overall, this is a big moment for technology, and it’s only going to get bigger.

“As the pandemic ravages our social fabric, we are seeing a wholesale digital transformation in a compressed time frame. Each economic setback creates a craving for convenience, and in the long-term, this opens the door for the widespread adoption of technology.”

It’s amazing what we can accomplish and adapt to, given no lead time, from the ‘comforts’ of our own homes. Education is being delivered, as is food, entertainment, events, and various and sundries for our daily needs. Telemedicine is also the new norm, given that many doctors are currently disallowed to treat all but emergencies.

With Zoom having entered the patois as a verb and never one to let a good crisis go to waste, “The recent controversies surrounding early frontrunner Zoom allowed Google to pounce at the opportunity, making rival Google Meet free to the general public…Google has begun positioning itself as the pro-privacy option because of supposed protections it has in place, even as many in the public remain skeptical. No protections in the world, however, will change that Google is a corporation whose whole business model revolves around tracking, mining, and selling personal user data, along with the history of privacy violations that has accompanied it,” reports Townhall.

Note to self, entrepreneurs: If you’re launching a software and one of the members of the tech cabal is already in the space, expect them to step up their game. Also keep in mind that they don’t always win or do it right.  Case in point: Google+, the company’s attempt at social media that failed miserably.

Also, just as companies suddenly posted URLs on their adverts when the web was first becoming ubiquitous (they even included http:// back then), something new is now emerging: we received a flyer that offers consultations via phone or a Zoom video chat.

Also, is this a time when AR and VR may finally come into their own? Take a look at @cyrildiagne’s tweet – and AR ditty. Bored with your surrounding? AR, baby:

Cyril Diagne
@cyrildiagne
May 3
4/10 – Cut & paste your surroundings to Photoshop Code: https://github.com/cyrildiagne/ar-cutpaste

Time to think outside of the dispenser.

The world is at last starting to reemerge. A Number of States Easing Lockdowns (this past) Friday Amid Pandemic, and in states where masks are not mandated, we’re seeing them less and less (without reports of rising death tolls or hospitalizations). Yet the Zoom address continues to be present on flyers.

It’s part of that craving for convenience that Malik noted. Take heed.

Whether you subscribe to the belief that this novel virus is to be feared as it’s something we’ve never witnessed before, or that it’s appropriately name ‘novel’ as the projected mortality rates proved to be more or less fiction, habits are changing. As to whether or not people will allow themselves to be subcutaneously chipped in order to resume their ‘normal’ lives, time will tell, but we did note how quickly and fearlessly they dispensed with their masks.

People also no doubt noted that despite his insistance on the urgent necessity of universal vaccines, extreme caution and that Bill Gates will use microchip implants to fight coronavirus, given all of his public appearance of late, why is it that Bill Gates is never seen either wearing a face mask or ‘social distancing?’

Despite the death tolls from Covid-19 reported by the media at (not saying that they’re biased but here’s A Rundown Of Major U.S. Corporate Media’s Business Ties To China) and worldometers.info, according to the CDC’s website, the C-19 mortality rate in the US as of May 4: 38,576.

Given the freedoms and livelihoods that we at least temporarily surrendered, while there was a time when people knew that Google, Apple, Amazon et al were tracking their every online burp and chirp and gave no thought to the privacy that they were giving up in the name of convenience (“What’s the difference?” we often heard, they already know everything about me and I have nothing to hide”), not so sure that this will be the sentiment going forward. Hundreds of millions – much less a third of the human population – did not perish from the world with this so-called pandemic, as we were warned, and as the satirical Babylon Bee observed, Scientists Who Didn’t Predict A Single Thing Accurately For Last Two Months Confident They Know What The Weather Is Going To Be Like In 100 Years.  As Town Hall noted, “Google also announced a partnership to develop a Bluetooth-based user tracker to help stop the spread of coronavirus, but that too has been met with resistance.” People have changed.

And welcome to the new normal. Onward and forward.