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Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern

brookings.edu

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Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern

#91

Post by scottlamb »

impendia wrote: post #71

I don't buy it. The same factors that made Zoom easy to adopt, make it equally easy to switch to something else. And "when Zoom goes down, teachers can’t teach"? Come on. I am a college professor. In my class this fall I met my students on Blackboard on Day 1 and Zoom on Day 2. If one of them goes down for the day, we'll switch to the other.

> And "when Zoom goes down, teachers can’t teach"? Come on. I am a college professor. In my class this fall I met my students on Blackboard on Day 1 and Zoom on Day 2. If one of them goes down for the day, we'll switch to the other.

I think it's for real. Think about elementary school instead. The kids are just learning to use computers. Their parents may be also, and if not they may be trying to do their own work from home while the kids are in class. There are many low-income and/or ESL families. Even the teachers aren't tech experts.

In my son's kindergarten class, everyone got school-supplied Chromebooks. They all have Google accounts for Google Classroom. That probably means they could switch to Google Hangouts Meet, but it wouldn't be smooth. They'd at least miss a day, and subsequent days would be rocky. The teacher has invested a lot of effort just in teaching the kids how to mute and unmute themselves without waiting for their grown-up to help, and they'd have to go through that again with a different UI.

Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern

#92

Post by Robotbeat »

AdamJacobMuller wrote: post #81
citizenkeen wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife sees doctors at four different clinics. Each has chosen a different remote meeting solution. It's non-negotiable - to see your doctor remotely, you need to use their software. And that's just in one field. I'm not concerned about Zoom monopoly at all.

With COVID my grandfather has been doing telepresence visits with his doctors, for COVID among other reasons. Mostly they were using a 3rd party solution like webx/zoom/etc but one doctor (automated in an online form) noticed his number was tied to iMessage and offered to just FaceTime him at his appointment time. Super easy for him (at 94) to self-manage vs any other solution where we (my mother or myself) need to b…

It’s a shame there isn’t seamless ability to Facetime with Android users like there is to make a voice call or text with them. We (read: tech community and/or society) should fix this. It’d be in society’s interest if a video call between android and Apple was as easy as a voice call is. (and I do think Facetime between Apple users is this easy... I sometimes use Facetime purely because my WiFi is a little better than my cell signal).

Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern

#93

Post by reaperducer »

impendia wrote: post #71

I don't buy it. The same factors that made Zoom easy to adopt, make it equally easy to switch to something else. And "when Zoom goes down, teachers can’t teach"? Come on. I am a college professor. In my class this fall I met my students on Blackboard on Day 1 and Zoom on Day 2. If one of them goes down for the day, we'll switch to the other.

I am a college professor. In my class this fall I met my students on Blackboard on Day 1 and Zoom on Day 2. If one of them goes down for the day, we'll switch to the other.

That's great for college. Not every educational experience is in a college with a big fat IT department to support it.

Think elementary and secondary schools. According to the newspapers this week, the school district where I live has 27,000 students unable to get computers to go online because there simply aren't affordable, or sometimes ANY, computers available for either the parents or the district to buy.

Another 20,000 have no internet access, so the school district rolls out hotspots on school buses each day to the worst-affected neighborhoods.

Do you really think tens of thousands of students will have no problem switching from one piece of software to another? Let alone the millions of ESL and low-literacy parents and students across the nation.

Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern

#94

Post by Proziam »

rorykoehler wrote: post #85
MattGaiser wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are used to a flexible organization. How about one where IT has locked down the computers mindlessly?

Surely no company that cares about security enough to lockdown machines like that would choose zoom?

The company cares about security, the mindless manager wants to use whatever they like the most.

Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern

#95

Post by MattGaiser »

rorykoehler wrote: post #85
MattGaiser wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are used to a flexible organization. How about one where IT has locked down the computers mindlessly?

Surely no company that cares about security enough to lockdown machines like that would choose zoom?

"Cares about security" can easily be just mindless procedure following.

Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern

#96

Post by reaperducer »

rorykoehler wrote: post #85
MattGaiser wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are used to a flexible organization. How about one where IT has locked down the computers mindlessly?

Surely no company that cares about security enough to lockdown machines like that would choose zoom?

We're not talking about companies. We're talking about schools. Totally different thought process.

Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern

#97

Post by reaperducer »

notahacker wrote: post #83
MattGaiser wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are used to a flexible organization. How about one where IT has locked down the computers mindlessly?

Most of them probably have their IT team's preferred enterprise vendor's teleconferencing system set up as the exclusive videoconferencing tool long before Zoom became flavour of the month... Also, their employees probably have smartphones.

A six-year-old student is not an employee.

Re: Zoom is now critical infrastructure – that’s a concern

#99

Post by notahacker »

sigstoat wrote: post #8

has anyone built something on top of twilio's video offering? it looks relatively straightforward, and seems to me like most tech companies (and some university IT departments) could pretty easily build internal conferencing stuff on top of it if they cared to.

The startup I worked for earlier in the year added it to their existing private platform at great speed when a client asked for videoconferencing.
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