not sure quite how to sum this up but recent conversations on here about technology, the net, fascism, etc are all converging in this long read. I specifically thought about @anon82218317’s comments and the conversation that followed in the Brexit thread when I read this article;
what do we all think of this? How long before the system is upon us (it already is but I mean a front-facing, Govt. run version as opposed multiple disparate tech-mining capitalist orgs trying to influence purchasing behaviour)
How do you think you would operate/do things differently with an SCS score permanently embedded as a motivating factor in life ?
Preaching to the converted innit. Anyone who’d be into it would be those lucky enough to do anything about it, doesn’t really change anything other than being particularly crass and shallow as modern life just tends to be anyway.
This, from yesterday, is also worth a read:
I’m not sure what you mean here
Have a read of the article first if you get the time, it covers a lot and one thing it covers is the inevitability of our data being used as a prime force in organising the class structures of the near future
yeah, I read that yesterday when you tweeted it - interesting article
Makes me wonder if the future for the west is corporate fascism and the future for the east is State fascism and whether there will be any essential difference between the two when social control & tech are so heavily weaponised that there are no neutral spaces left
Just that as someone with maybe £40 to feed myself with, take myself to/from work, and heaven forfend anything else, until Friday - that conceptual data based tyranny really doesn’t feel like such a change from what we already have, and that the idea of gameification of social capital/privately run cities etc would only ever appeal to those fortunate enough to be able to do anything about it.
If it comes in, it’ll be because banks, insurance companies and tech companies drive it. A move to an insurance-based health care system would make the tools to make it possible almost inevitable, I think.
but the Chinese system will be compulsory & state-wide there from 2020, it’s way beyond conceptual
…as you say though it’s not that materially different from what we already have & the article says as much
but this is a new era of data-optimized social control that we’re stepping into and there’s a distinct lack of public discussion (even perhaps understanding) about it
I’m presuming that it’s something that all but the few who stand to gain would oppose but I just wondered if that’s naivety on my own part in imagining that most people would be as horrified as me. I mean, if you feel that you have some semblance of freedom you wouldn’t want that taken away. But if you felt you were being watched & judged anyway (by either Govt. or whatever deity or belief system drives your moral SatNav) then maybe you might be neutral.
It might even also be a case that you lead a life that it beset by local vandals/crime/whatever - or your perception of that risk/fear… and so you’re pro-authoritarian — I could well imagine that surveillance capital like this would be sold in the UK on the back of the Great Brexit Immigrant Fear (as discussed in the Brexit thread)
Bottom line is that it’s a human rights issue that seems in some kind of sci-fi far off fantasy but it actually right here, right now and there needs to be a public discussion about it pretty quickly
I had a similar idea idea to this for the setting for a near-future sci-fi short story recently. That’s the trouble with writing speculative fiction now - no matter how weird or terrifying your idea it’ll be reality before the time you reach your second draft.
brexit + immigration control + NHS decimation + insurance based public service usage = data driven control
good luck in your interview
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Is this that one episode of black mirror where everyone’s rating everyone else and you can’t get a car if your rating’s too low?
I do think Chinese attitudes towards “the individual” are vastly different than the West but yeah do think it could easily happen here and in the US too. But yes don’t feel like there’s much difference between oppression like that and oppression of the market now.
Government led - privately run no doubt
I think you hit on something though, the UK govt have been so notoriously incompetent in rolling out IT projects that as someone else said in the Brexit thread, the idea of something like this headed up by G4S fills one simultaneously with laughter and horror
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kind of the nuclear version of that, yeah
And as someone points out in that twitter thread, its a lot like MeowMeowBeenz from Community, too:
