From the natural world to outer space, Inverse offers timely journalism and interesting points of view for people who want to know what's next. Health research, updates on SpaceX and NASA, sleep psychology, pseudo-science debunks, nightmarish robots, advancing A.I., shifting cultures, more sustainable energy, and those never-ending studies on caffeine and beer: The Abstract delivers weird facts straight to your brain, three times a week, two stories at a time.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, technology remains a driving force in the path to find answers and grapple with the unknown. As we search for solutions and explanations in uncertain times, science can either drive us toward life-changing solutions -- or weird conspiracy theories.
Trying times have sprung technologists into action, bringing tech firms, scientists, and researchers together like never before to take on a global pandemic. But when times are hard, humans are further motivated to find explanations that make sense of things they don’t understand -- even if that means seeing patterns that don't exist. It all boils down how we handle uncertainty.
Our first story examines technology’s key role in the fight against Covid-19. As Apple and Google team up to take on the spread of the coronavirus, we’ll explore how advanced tracking technology can make contact tracing more effective and radically transform the pandemic response. By using the smartphones that reside in almost everyone's pockets, the two firms aim to fine-tune a contact tracing app that could potentially contain the spread of the virus without the need for mass lockdowns.
Our second story traces back to a strange, baseless theory that emerged in February 2020: that 5G wireless technology caused the Covid-19 pandemic. As these false theories spread, psychologists help explain the flip side of new technology, and how the confusion it creates can drive some toward conspiracy theories.
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