Fortunately, the technology writer at Slate, Will Oremus, was able to translate: “As far as I can tell, the idea is basically ‘Uber for servants.”’

In the service, Alfreds, who are hired via smartphones, come over weekly to put your laundry into the closet, clean the house and perform tasks “like putting new paper towels on a towel holder,” according to TechCrunch.

The other service is called Dee’s Tots Childcare, and it, too, is what it sounds like: day care. But not just any day care. It is “extreme day care,” a growing phenomenon described by the journalist Alissa Quart. Dee’s Tots is a 24-hour day care in New Rochelle, N.Y., light on education, heavy on chaos management, and catering to an American underclass that has lost bargaining power.

The parents who send their children to Dee’s work all hours of the day and night. Many work two 29-hours-a-week jobs, because 30 hours would legally commit an employer to providing health care benefits. Brilliant algorithms developed by the technology elite help big companies scramble schedules, change shift times and reduce hours at the last minute, to maximize the equation of revenue divided by wages. As Ms. Quart writes, “The software doesn’t care if a shift falls in the middle of the night, or that it might tear a big hole in an employee’s family life.”

Everyone knows about the widening inequality in America. But these services make one wonder whether it’s a matter of haves and have-nots’ coexisting, or whether the having is more deeply implicated in the not-having. Are the perks of living in the upper echelon of America today — Amazon’s bargain prices and shipping, Uber’s on-demand ease, Alfred’s gig-based hiring — somebody else’s health care-starved, chaotically scheduled, midnight-day-care pain?