“Accelerating Curve of Anxiousness: How a Governmental Quarantine-App Feeds Society with Bugs”

Daily, media reports on countries eagerly introducing advanced surveillance tech-nology to counter the COVID-19 pandemic (e.g. Byers 2020, Doffman 2020; Holmes 2020, Stojanovski 2020). The critics and commentators focus – rightly – on multifaceted dangers lurking behind the technological optimism, which drive our hopes of defeating the pandemic (e.g. Cahn and Veiszlemlein 2020;Ikeda2020; Swire 2020). Majority of the critical voices concerns the future risks, and the (unintended) consequences of the implemented products, which do their (intend-ed) job. But some technological interventions not only have unintended conse-quences, they simply do not work. A case in point: a Polish bugged app. Consider-ing this app, I invite the readers to a discussion about how a bugged app may im-pact social relations, citizen’s wellbeing and sense of (in)security in the already dis-turbed political and health context. Read full text