ABSTRACT Using a core idea of critical social theory, alienation, we interrogate the failure in the design and adoption of a Stop-COVID app in France. We analyse the political and scientific discourse, to develop an understanding of the conditions giving rise to this failure in this unprecedented moment. We argue that the digital-first solutionist approach taken by the government failed because, as in all Western countries, most stakeholders were alienated from the reality of the COVID-19 pandemic and lacked concrete knowledge of it. Furthermore, the French government and its COVID-19 council excluded relevant scientific experts in favour of quantitative modelling based on abstract partial knowledge. This along with coercion and lack of transparency about the app, reinforced alienation, undermined effectiveness in managing the crisis and resulted in the digital design failure. We suggest that such alienation will prevail in the COVID-19 era characterised by regimes of control, rampant abusive location tracking, and data collection, and where public officials are more concerned with managing effects than seeking causal explanations. The digital-first solutionist approach was adopted, not because digital solutions (to contact tracing) are superior to traditional ones, but by default due to alienation and lack of interdisciplinary cooperation.

中文翻译：

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COVID-19 时代的接触者追踪应用程序和疏远

摘要使用批判社会理论的核心思想，异化，我们询问了在法国设计和采用 Stop-COVID 应用程序的失败。我们分析政治和科学话语，以了解在这个前所未有的时刻导致这次失败的条件。我们认为，政府采取的数字优先解决方案失败了，因为与所有西方国家一样，大多数利益相关者都疏远了 COVID-19 大流行的现实，并且缺乏对它的具体了解。此外，法国政府及其 COVID-19 委员会将相关科学专家排除在外，支持基于抽象部分知识的定量建模。这与应用程序的强制和缺乏透明度一起，加剧了异化，破坏了管理危机的有效性并导致数字设计失败。我们认为，这种异化将在以控制制度、猖獗的滥用位置跟踪和数据收集为特征的 COVID-19 时代盛行，在这个时代，公职人员更关心管理效果而不是寻求因果解释。采用数字优先解决方案的方法，不是因为数字解决方案（接触追踪）优于传统解决方案，而是默认情况下由于疏远和缺乏跨学科合作。