I left Google to spend a year cycling with my partner from Alaska to Argentina, and couldn't recommend it more highly.
I strongly agree with other comments about having some structure/mission to your experience. I'm sure the need for it varies from person to person, but I know that I would have gone crazy or felt guilty for wasting my time if we had just been hanging out and drifting from one tourist hotspot to another, as seems to be popular on e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gringo_Trail.
Having a theme or purpose, even if it's totally arbitrary (like "let's go from the top of the Americas to the bottom, by bike!") was definitely important to me to maintaining a positive mindset and achieving a satisfying experience.
We're taking an approach that empowers individuals to take their data out of big tech companies and contribute it directly to their local healthcare providers and public health agencies: https://www.covidcontacttracing.com/.
This approach is highly practical -- the penetration (location history in Android, Google Maps) is already there, and we've already built out a set of tools around it to deliver insights to first-responders, epidemiologists and doctors, while ensuring individual privacy.
I think the only way to do effective contact tracing while respecting individual privacy and agency is to put the user in control of the data, and make sure that any data transfer is done with consent and deliberation.
,,the only way to do effective contact tracing while respecting individual privacy and agency''
The problem is that the government wants to achieve just the opposite. They see the current crisis as a way to extend their power over people, and intend to do that as much as they can get away with.
Right now, everyone in public health is 100% focused on solutions that can deliver results. If we can demonstrate effectiveness with a system that is privacy-first, it'll be all the more difficult to push a system that's collecting data just for the sake of it.
"They see the current crisis as a way to extend their power over people, and intend to do that as much as they can get away with."
Where is your evidence for this?
While it's always a risk, I see people trying to mitigate a crisis the likes of which none of us have ever seen.
There are literally billions of people locked in their homes and there is no feasible plan to get out. 'Contact tracing' Korea style is the only proven option on the table.
There's no reason to believe reasonable operational elements can't be put in place.
I'm from a country that just made dictatorship official (Hungary), took away most money from the opposition, raided hundreds of big companies with the Hungarian military while keeping the companies secret, distributed more PPE outside the country than inside for us.
In US the states are fighting for getting PPE for the doctors (fighting over millions of dollars), while the FED increased the balance sheet by more than 70% (trillions of dollars) to prop up big zombie companies that were already highly overvalued, bailed out Blackrock investments instead of paying salaries for people who they want to stay home.
I'm right now in France, where people are getting their paychecks every month normally, just not from their employer, but the government.
Regarding south Korea, I read an earlier interview where he doesn't understand why the western world doesn't use masks (basically he called us stupid, just didn't say the word).
Masks were working 100 years ago, and everybody had one, I just don't believe that the government couldn't have ramped up production if they really wanted instead of just thinking of their investments potentially losing value.
+ Hungary is obviously problematic but most Western countries are not relevant.
+ Your comment about US PPE is completely wrong: the issue is not a lack of money, it's the scarcity of the resource.
+ France is teetering on real bankruptcy, and will have vicious unemployment, low wages and not a lot of opportunity while the US will rebound quite well (inequality notwithstanding). PS I lived in France as well. Their socialised medical program is obviously good, but France is broken and poor. I now live in Montreal where there are tons of French citizens flooding in looking for jobs.
+ The masks issue may or may not be relevant - it's certainly not the primary factor. Absolutely without question the aggressive contact-tracing/testing done by the South Korea teams is 'the gold star' in terms of Covid response.
Contact-tracing is the only known solution to the problem and frankly it work well, people have to work together.
As for Hungary ... there are 20 other problems you get to before the problem of 'the government has my location'. First - the government already knows where you already knows where you are if you're there -> you're at home! Second - you need a functional and intelligent governmental apparatus to do the 'contact tracing' system. Lots of people, lots of procedures. Hungary probably doesn't have the capability. FYI they probably don't have the capability to do a whole lot with location data anyhow.
> FYI they probably don't have the capability to do a whole lot with location data anyhow.
I thought before that Hungary won't be able to implement a survaillance state that fast, because the government doesn't have any IT capability, but what's happening is even scarier: they started outsourcing it to Chinese companies, and I wouldn't be surprised to see that trend continuing.
I believe that Palantir is behind China in surveillence software (especially gathering data about people from public cameras, but of course using GPS data is much easier.
Of course the funniest thing is that the name of the surveillence software is SkyNet, because the CEO of the company loves Terminator.
> FYI they probably don't have the capability to do a whole lot with location data anyhow.
The only “capability” required is the ability to pay a Palantir invoice and ship data to them.
The UK is another good example of a western country which has attempted to use the COVID-19 crisis to extend government power - it is naive _in the extreme_ to believe that every other western government is not doing the same when this behaviour has not been demonstrated in the past 20 years.
It is naive _in the extreme_ to sit locked in one's home, in the greatest curtailment of civil liberties in human history, while the economy is a patient with heart failure, about to die, with the largest bailouts (Trillions!!) in history and then only enough to hold on for a 'few more weeks' - and then have as a 'primary concern' some, specific umbrage with the privacy of data by some gov agency, which is secondary in the first place because it has nothing to do with contact tracing, probably would be illegal for the gov. to use it, and even if they did, it probably won't cause any short term harm.
It's completely irrational to the point wherein the issue of interest really boils down to how people could have such a perspective in the first place.
Though there are 'concerns' obviously, and certainly 'some' impropriety will take place, and 'some' government will behave poorly, it's conspiratorial _in the extreme_ to suggest that 'every other government' is going to turn their country into China and to illegally and inappropriately just turn their countries into Big Brother.
The 'game has changed' - fundamentally and existentially.
For the next few years at least, there is a completely different context for everything. Everything.
People are going to have to adjust their thinking.
> Contact tracing' Korea style is the only proven option on the table.
That only works if, like Korea and Taiwan, it is done from
the beginning.
We now know that the virus was in the US and moving through the population since Feb and Jan, i.e. the US has inadvertently been on the "herd immunity" path.
It is also the case that the US is geographically diverse with very different infection patterns across regions and clusters. Hence the federal plan is for states to make local decisions.
I'm surprised that there isn't more discussion of leveraging the extensive location data that Google already routinely collects via Android and Google Maps mobile apps.
I'd love any feedback on this simple proposal for a way to enable individuals to contribute their Google location history data to health care organizations: http://covidcontacttracing.com.
This uses public Google APIs and Google Takeout to get raw gps data and inferred semantic locations from Google to COVID-19 response organizations. I've got a prototype that's essentially ready to deploy if anyone has suggestions for potential partners.
I think the Google/Apple proposal is very promising, but I don't see any reason not to also put existing data to work on this problem.
I strongly agree with other comments about having some structure/mission to your experience. I'm sure the need for it varies from person to person, but I know that I would have gone crazy or felt guilty for wasting my time if we had just been hanging out and drifting from one tourist hotspot to another, as seems to be popular on e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gringo_Trail.
Having a theme or purpose, even if it's totally arbitrary (like "let's go from the top of the Americas to the bottom, by bike!") was definitely important to me to maintaining a positive mindset and achieving a satisfying experience.