Imagine your entire existence being directed by someone else. You’re told when to get up, when to sleep; when, what, and how much to eat; when and how much you MUST exercise; what job you will have, regardless of whether you want it or not; whether you are allowed to travel; what you’re allowed to possess, because you don’t actually OWN anything since it all belongs to the state; etc, etc, etc.
The technology monitored the characters in the book “1984” and was used to keep them in line, and that book read like a prophecy when you look at today’s technology and how it is increasingly being used to influence and even control our lives.
Carry your phone everywhere? The phone companies, and the government, track your every move by monitoring your phone. Like the convenience of credit/debit cards, Apple Pay, and other such cashless methods of payment? The companies, and the government, track your location and spending habits, know what you buy, what you eat, etc with those digital “currencies.” Think we should have a cashless society? When a government employee or banker with a simple keystroke can decide how much money you “have,” and whether or not you will be allowed to access and use it, they control your life. With cash, you have at least SOME measure of freedom and autonomy.
It’s here, folks. If you don’t wise up, and WE don’t make the hard choices to ensure that safeguards are in place to prevent this tech from being used to RULE us, we will indeed become subjects. One way or another.
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Is Big Tech Merging With Big Brother? Kinda Looks Like It
David Samuels | Opinion | 1/23/19
A friend of mine, who runs a large television production company in the car-mad city of Los Angeles, recently noticed that his intern, an aspiring filmmaker from the People’s Republic of China, was walking to work.
When he offered to arrange a swifter mode of transportation, she declined. When he asked why, she explained that she “needed the steps” on her Fitbit to sign in to her social media accounts. If she fell below the right number of steps, it would lower her health and fitness rating, which is part of her social rating, which is monitored by the government. A low social rating could prevent her from working or traveling abroad.
China’s social rating system, which was announced by the ruling Communist Party in 2014, will soon be a fact of life for many more Chinese.
By 2020, if the Party’s plan holds, every footstep, keystroke, like, dislike, social media contact, and posting tracked by the state will affect one’s social rating.
Personal “creditworthiness” or “trustworthiness” points will be used to reward and punish individuals and companies by granting or denying them access to public services like health care, travel, and employment, according to a plan released last year by the municipal government of Beijing. High-scoring individuals will find themselves in a “green channel,” where they can more easily access social opportunities, while those who take actions that are disapproved of by the state will be “unable to move a step.”
Big Brother is an emerging reality in China. Yet in the West, at least, the threat of government surveillance systems being integrated with the existing corporate surveillance capacities of big-data companies like Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon into one gigantic all-seeing eye appears to trouble very few people—even as countries like Venezuela have been quick to copy the Chinese model.
Still, it can’t happen here, right? We are iPhone owners and Amazon Prime members, not vassals of a one-party state. We are canny consumers who know that Facebook is tracking our interactions and Google is selling us stuff.
Yet it seems to me there is little reason to imagine that the people who run large technology companies have any vested interest in allowing pre-digital folkways to interfere with their 21st-century engineering and business models, any more than 19th-century robber barons showed any particular regard for laws or people that got in the way of their railroads and steel trusts.
Read entire article here: https://www.wired.com/story/is-big-tech-merging-with-big-brother-kinda-looks-like-it/
Filed under: oppressive government, Politics, technology | Tagged: 1984, Android, Apple, cashless society, China, communist, Communist Party, credit card, debit card, FitBit, George Orwell, Government, iPhone, social rating, technology, totalitarian, tracking | Leave a comment »