The touchless, work-from-home future is here, earlier, but at a cost

May 28, 2020 10:33 PM

“It’s a one-time shift in technology. After this, it’s going to stay like this forever,” says Saurabh Bajaj, CEO of Swiftlane, a Silicon Valley touchless startup using facial recognition. He says that Covid-19 had enabled technology to leapfrog into an immediate future of touchless elevators, doors, and trash cans. Our Economy Was Just Blasted Years Into the Future (Marker.Medium.com) More than interacting with the physical world at a distance, the article covers the increased focus on, and fights against facial recognition technology (STAT News), work-from-home becoming more widely adopted and supported (The Guardian), but researchers estimate that 42% of recent layoffs will result in permanent job loss (NBER).

Impacts to supply chains, previously focused on cost-cutting (Supply Chain Drive), may drive companies to diversify sources for goods, increasing the cost of the finished products.

More in future technology: Ford postpones autonomous vehicle service testing until 2022 (Tech Crunch), while other automation, such as police patrolling and disinfection, increases in China (Geospatial World).

In addition to being a possible boon for surveillance capitalism, the pandemic will make big companies more dominant than ever (Bloomberg), similar to how established firms innovated more than independent inventors during the Great Depression, as documented in research on crisis innovation. Billionaires got significantly richer during the pandemic in the US (Business Insider) and in China (Finance.TownHall.com).

Speaking of surveillance capitalism, Anna Merlan used the California Consumer Privacy Act to see what information the controversial facial recognition company has collected on her, as reported by Vice. More recently, Clearview AI, which has alarmed privacy experts, hired several far-right employees, a HuffPost investigation found.

posted by filthy light thief (27 comments total)

Not to trivialize, but I'm beginning to worry about the availability of good lime juice, which is kind of a staple for me.
posted by not_that_epiphanius at 10:45 PM on May 28, 2020

I hope working from home becomes a regular thing. I like working from home.

But other changes make me nervous.

while other automation, such as police patrolling and disinfection, increases in China (Geospatial World). ("Disinfectant Robots aid in bringing in a new level of epidemic resistance")

"Citizens! Take cover! Ultraviolet and chemical disinfection begins in... five minutes!"

Four minutes later: *crickets*

Five minutes later: *localized hell*

Ten minutes later: *no crickets*
posted by pracowity at 11:42 PM on May 28, 2020

The only way to deter facial recognition is if everyone started wearing mas... oh wait.
posted by fullerine at 12:45 AM on May 29, 2020 [8 favorites]

Inside the NSA's Secret Tool for Mapping Your Social Network - "Edward Snowden revealed the agency's phone-record tracking program. But thanks to 'precomputed contact chaining', that database was much more powerful than anyone knew." (Edward Snowden, the Surveillance State, and the 'Dark Mirror' Still Watching Us All)
posted by kliuless at 1:49 AM on May 29, 2020 [3 favorites]

"Citizens! Take cover! Ultraviolet and chemical disinfection begins in... five minutes!"

That's not all that far removed from the plot of TNG Season 6, Episode 18: Starship Mine.
posted by lumensimus at 2:52 AM on May 29, 2020 [3 favorites]

The only way to deter facial recognition is if everyone started wearing mas... oh wait.

And put a stone in your shoe to prevent gait recognition. Everyone is Verbal Kint.
posted by pracowity at 3:16 AM on May 29, 2020 [5 favorites]

On-line shopping, pre-ordering for curb-side pickup and business preferences for more "sanitary" credit cards are reducing opportunities to use cash so more and more transactions are now trackable and subject to bank fees. Another transition that was happening has been accelerated by this disaster.
posted by Botanizer at 5:27 AM on May 29, 2020 [17 favorites]

This is mostly just interesting science fiction.

It's pretty clear the U.S. response and much of the western world's is to pursue a policy of simple denial rather than make any substantive changes to anything.
posted by srboisvert at 5:41 AM on May 29, 2020 [5 favorites]

It's really a lot like the show Counterpart
posted by rossmeissl at 6:49 AM on May 29, 2020 [2 favorites]

Botanizer, it'll be interesting to see how those trends change. In the US, use of credit card was already high, between 70-80% of the population having and using credit cards, depending on the sources (though there's still a significant percentage of households that are unbanked or underbanked, for whom credit or debit cards aren't an option). In some ways, the US is behind the technological curve compared to China, where, in 2018, 92% of people in China’s largest cities use Wechat Pay or Alipay as their main means of payment [and] 47% of the rural population is reported to regularly use mobile payments in China.

The use of mobile payments in rural areas is notable, for not just the general use of the technology, but also the fact that internet service supports this technology.

I won't speculate or muse on whether mobile payments are better or worse than use of credit cards, because I'm not informed enough on the topic to speculate.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:43 AM on May 29, 2020

I hate working from home. The only fun part of jobs for me are commuting to work and talking to people. Sad days ahead.
posted by mrgrimm at 7:46 AM on May 29, 2020 [2 favorites]

I also prefer cash. Less traceable for illegal use. :(
posted by mrgrimm at 7:46 AM on May 29, 2020 [2 favorites]

It's pretty clear the U.S. response and much of the western world's is to pursue a policy of simple denial rather than make any substantive changes to anything.

It sure provides a nice excuse for creating an infrastructure that makes surveillance and control of dense urban populations that much easier (especially in the wake of uprisings in response to police murders caught on tape).
posted by Reyturner at 9:29 AM on May 29, 2020 [3 favorites]

My job hasn't changed much as I'm in a technical hands-on field. What has changed for me is that I no longer get to ride public transit (I'm hopeful I can go back to that soon). So my car bills have gone up, for gas and maintenance. The shift to working from home has my family footing the bill for things normally taken on by an employer. Now our AC is on during the day (supposed to hit 96 today) instead of being off for 10 hours, my home power and internet is being used for work, home printer is printing out the occasional document, even dumb stuff like water and TP usage has gone up because someone is home all the time. Just one more cost to absorb while everything is in upheaval. Luckily I'm in the condition to absorb it, but those on the margins aren't and it seems like it could be an issue.

I'm also noticing an erasure of gains made in consumer habits. Nobody is using reusable bags anymore, and disposable everything is the rage right now because it's easier than sanitizing things. I know consumer activities don't amount to a large contingent of global pollution, but it seems like an unwelcome slide back at precisely the wrong time.
posted by msbutah at 9:37 AM on May 29, 2020 [8 favorites]

I know at least one person whose employer made the switch to all-WFH and went 'wait, do we even need a physical office?' They've since decided to make WFH permanent and terminated their lease.
posted by nonasuch at 10:06 AM on May 29, 2020 [8 favorites]

I am wondering about long-term WFH options and things like, "will my company pay for better internet? Will they buy a printer/ink for me?" ("Will the buyer for these things be my technical employer--a staffing service--or the company I actually do work for?")

I bought a pair of monitors the first week after shutdown started, because I haven't had a separate monitor at home for years. I wanted them for my own purposes - but if things were only a little different, I wouldn't have, and I'd be struggling to work on a 15" screen instead of two 24" screens.

...Maybe workplaces will shift from "huge office where everyone works" to "small office suitable for occasional client meetings, actual paperwork-wrangling, and a storehouse of office supplies." Right now, there's a big push for "just work from home with your home office supplies" and while that's fine for temporary purposes, I don't want it to become yet another way of pushing corporate costs onto individuals.

I don't have air conditioning at home. At all. I live in a loft; it's got a skylight and a large front window - on hot days, we open all the windows and stay downstairs. We have a few fans. When I've been stuck at home during the heat of summer in the past, I've just decided "fuckit, no real work gets done between noon and 6pm; I can work a few hours in the evening." That's less possible when I'm connected to a real office with schedules.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 10:48 AM on May 29, 2020 [6 favorites]

I'm all for WFH but question how that will work without subsidizing employers for the things everyone else has mentioned. My daughter rents an apartment from us and our electricity bill has indeed gone up as well her use of the broadband. Her AC now runs 24-7 and she brought home her desk monitor. It's not a huge hit and she's agreed to pay $50 more per month but we shouldn't be agreeing to shoulder the costs of working from home while
companies cut utility and lease costs.
posted by photoslob at 11:07 AM on May 29, 2020 [6 favorites]

Yes, people seem to not be taking in how much going WFH on a much broader/more permanent scale will imply dumping costs on employees ordinarily borne by the employer. Sure, right now, if you're a tech guy and you voluntarily work from home, your boss probably pays for a nice monitor, etc. If this becomes mass practice, companies will do everything they can to shift all those costs to you--and, thanks to the recent tax law change, home-office expenses aren't even deductible anymore. And, yes, it's fine for the suburbanites, but what about the space issues for everyone else? Great, the company gets to terminate its lease, and you get to pay to have enough space to work! (I'm managing for now, but if I had to go permanent full-time WFH, I'd probably have to move.)

I'm honestly kind of amazed at how little awareness of this 100% predictable dynamic seems to have penetrated into the broader conversation on this topic.
posted by praemunire at 11:33 AM on May 29, 2020 [8 favorites]

At my (publicly-traded, US-based) internet company, we all shifted to work from home in March and they've said they're prepared for every single person to work from home for the rest of 2020. They've given us a generous reimbursement and very flexible limits to pay for Work From Home needs, from electronics, to equipment like desks and chairs, to child care and even utilities. I recognize that this is abnormal but some places seem to get it.
posted by sleeping bear at 1:30 PM on May 29, 2020 [4 favorites]

For now, and for some. Most people don't even remember that when corporations started moving to 401(k)s instead of pensions, the expectation was matching for all.
posted by praemunire at 1:54 PM on May 29, 2020 [7 favorites]

(And the "some" will tend to be the most privileged workers, thus further reifying, etc.)
posted by praemunire at 1:55 PM on May 29, 2020

and the "some" will eventually be none, even for privileged workers, because that's what capitalism does.

Also, anybody else recognized the degradation of (already piss poor) telephone customer service? Very long queue hold times, a hard push to text-based support (likely with some shitty AI), etc. We will all look back with nostalgia for the days of ten min waits to speak to a customer support rep in the Philippines some day . .
posted by flamk at 2:24 PM on May 29, 2020 [2 favorites]

I'm all for WFH but question how that will work without subsidizing employers for the things everyone else has mentioned.

I've wondered about this as well. My employer (federal government, one of the larger agencies) has been very supportive of WFH and workplace flexibilities, but wouldn't issue actual equipment to most of us for some reason - instead expecting all employees to just figure it out. It made for a very haphazard start to remote working back in March, most of my coworkers had to rush out to buy new laptops, monitors, etc.

Unfortunately I think some of my leadership has already taken this as a sign that WFH can't work, and are already pushing us to return in the very near future. Unfortunate, as I personally love working from home (we had a no-WFH policy previously so this is the first time I've ever done it) - perfect match for my hyper-introverted personality, not to mention my productivity has been through the roof. Much easier to get work done when I don't have to tune out noisy coworkers or deal with people interrupting me every five minutes.
posted by photo guy at 2:45 PM on May 29, 2020

re the Bloomberg piece, it's a depressing thought that the top big-businesses (the 4 A's: Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Ass-fbook) are all structurally situated to thrive in the Covid-era while small businesses are being killed off. It's dystopian.
posted by ovvl at 4:53 PM on May 29, 2020 [1 favorite]

It looks like most places that want to push for long-term WFH want to say "oh look, no office infrastructure costs" instead of "okay, no rent costs... what do we normally pay for equipment, utilities, employee-related shipments, food, and special events... now let's divide that by the number of employees... how do we allocate those dollars so employees at home can be just as productive as they were in the office?"

And they really should be looking at it, because if water-cooler talk and friday drinks with the accounting team are gone, the people with the best skills are going to move seamlessly to the highest bidder. If all their work is done at their home office desk, they don't care who's working at the next desk.

You can more-or-less maintain an office community online, but it's damned hard to build one, and companies need to figure that out ASAP.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 10:49 AM on May 30, 2020 [1 favorite]

I know at least one person whose employer made the switch to all-WFH and went 'wait, do we even need a physical office?' They've since decided to make WFH permanent and terminated their lease.

My employer, a large professional services firm, has got our real estate specialists helping clients work out their future office needs and develop strategy to realise that for at leat six weeks now.

They have also been making noises about ‘leveraging this new flexibility long-term’ and ‘figuring out how we’re going to use offices going forward’ for the last three weeks and last week they started to survey us about how we’d like to work in the future - what mix of on site client, our own office, what do we like about WFH and what makes it difficult for those who find it difficult and what can be done to overcome these things...so yes, I expect offices will never again be used the way they were.

It’s all well for people with established careers who have made the switch to more spacious accommodations to be told to work from home. Chances are they have a dedicated home office already or at least space to repurpose. But my trainees are sitting at kitchen tables, on sofas or their beds and are engaged in endless rounds of musical chairs with their housemates or partners so as not to interfere with each other’s calls and zoom meetings. To make WFH sustainable long term they have to change their living arrangements, move sooner than they otherwise would, never mind who pays for incremental electricity or a monitor. They have nowhere to put one.
posted by koahiatamadl at 2:57 PM on May 30, 2020 [4 favorites]

koahiatamadl: my trainees are sitting at kitchen tables, on sofas or their beds and are engaged in endless rounds of musical chairs with their housemates or partners so as not to interfere with each other’s calls and zoom meetings.

This sounds similar to some of the home-life issues my wife's students were facing. Trying to learn from home, like trying to work from home, is fine if you have a quiet space of your own. But if you're sharing space with others, or worse, a sharing computer, you'll be craving the normalcy and personal space offered by school or work.
posted by filthy light thief at 3:42 PM on May 30, 2020 [1 favorite]