Tag: Governance

Pokemon Go: a New Tool for Gaining Power in Society?

A few months ago I wrote in this blog about the way augmented reality games will transform the face of the gaming industry: they’ll turn the entire physical world into a gaming arena, so that players would have to actually walk around streets and cities to take part in games. I also made a forecast that players in such games will be divided into factions in order to create and legitimize rivalries and interesting conflicts. Now Pokemon Go has been released, and both forecasts have been proven true immediately.

By combining the elements of augmented reality and creating factions, Pokemon Go has become an incredibly successful phenomenon. It is now the biggest mobile game in U.S. history, with more users than Twitter, and more daily usage time than social media apps like WhatsApp, Instagram or Snapchat. One picture is worth a thousand words, and I especially like this one of a man capturing a wild Pidgey pokemon while his wife is busy giving birth.

But is the game here to stay? And what will its impact be on society?

 

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Pokemon birth. Source: imgur

 

Pokemon Go in the Long Haul

It’s no wonder Pokemon Go has reached such heights of virality. Because of the game’s interactions with the physical world, people are being seen playing it everywhere, and in effect become walking commercials for the game. Pokemon Go also builds on the long history – almost twenty years – of pokemon hunting which ensures that anyone who’s ever hunted pokemon just had to download the app.

Will the game maintain its hype for long? That’s difficult to answer. Dan Porter, one of the creators of Draw Something – a game that garnered 50 million downloads in just 50 days – wrote a great piece on the subject. He believes, in short, that the game is a temporary fad. It may take a year for most people to fall off the bandwagon, so that only a few millions of the hardcore gamers will remain. That’s still an impressive number, but it’s far from the current hype. As he says –

“For the casual Pokemon Go player, the joy of early play I believe will eventually be replaced by gyms that are too competitive and Pokemon that are too hard to find.”

I agree with his analysis, but it does depend on one important parameter: that the game does not undergo evolution itself, and continually readapt itself to different groups of users. Other social games, like World of Warcraft, have successfully undergone this transition to maintain a large user base for more than a decade. Niantic may be able to do that, or it may not. In the long haul it doesn’t matter: other, more successful, AR games will take over.

Pokemon Go is bringing in a lot of revenues right now, with the estimates ranging from $1 to $2.3 million a day. Some analysts believe that the game could pull in a billion dollars a year once it is launched worldwide. That’s a lot of money, and every half-decent gaming company is going to join the race for AR very soon. It could be Blizzard that will recreate Starcraft’s fame in an AR fashion, with teams running around buildings, collecting virtual resources and ambushing each other. Or maybe Magic the Gathering or Hearthstone, with players who can collect thousands of different cards in Hearthstops around the world much like Pokemon Go, and use them to build decks and fight each other. Heck, I’d play those, and I bet so would the tens of millions of gamers whose childhood was shaped by these games. The dam gates, in short, have been broken open. AR games are here to stay.

And so we must understand the consequences of such games on society.

 

A Whole New World

Pokemon Go is already starting to change the way people interact with each other. I took the following picture from my house’s window a few days ago, depicting several people walking together, eyes on their phones, without talking with each other – and yet all collaborating and being coordinated with each other. They were connected via the layer of augmented reality. In effect, they were in a world of their own, which is only tenuously connected to the physical world.

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People coordinate via Pokemon Go.

In Australia, a hastily advertised Pokemon Go meeting has brought together 2,000 players to a single park, where they all hunted pokemon together. And coffee shops-turned-gyms around the world have suddenly found themselves buzzing with customers who came for the win – and stayed for the latte. And of course, the White House has been turned into a gym, with all three Pokemon Go teams competing over it.

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The game has made people to go to places they would not ordinarily go to, in their search for pokemon. As a result, at least two dead bodies have been discovered so far by players. If you watch players walking on the streets, you’ll also notice their peculiar pattern of movement: instead of following the road, they’ll periodically stop, check their smartphones and change course – sometimes making a U-turn. They’re not following the infrastructure in the physical world, but rather obeying a virtual infrastructure and entities: pokestops and pokemon.

And that’s just a sign of what’s coming, and of how power – the power to influence people and their choices – is starting to shift from governments to private hands.

The Power Shift

What is power? While many philosophers believed that governments had power over their citizens because of their ability to mobilize policemen, the French philosophers Louis Althusser and Michel Foucault realized that the power control mechanisms are inherent in society itself. Whenever two people in a society exchange words with each other, they also implicitly make clear how each should behave.

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Infrastructure has the same effect over people. And has been used since time immemorial as a mechanism for directing the populace. For a very long time now, governments used to control the infrastructure in urban places. Governments paved roads, installed traffic lights and added signs with streets names. This control over infrastructure arose partly because some projects, like road paving, are so expensive but also because things like traffic lights and signs have an immense influence over people’s behavior. They tell us where we’re allowed to go and when, and essentially make the government’s decisions manifest and understandable for everyone. There’s a very good reason that I couldn’t erect a new traffic sign even if I wanted to.

But now, with Pokemon Go, the gaming industry is doing just that: it’s creating an alternative virtual reality that has new rules and different kinds of infrastructures, and merges that virtual reality with our physical one so that people can choose which to obey.

Is it any wonder that authorities everywhere are less than happy with the game? It has fatwas being issued against it, religious leaders wanting to ban it, Russian politicians speaking against it, and police and fire explaining to citizens that they can’t just walk into jails and fire stations in their search for pokemon.

In the long run, Pokemon Go and AR in general symbolizes a new kind of freedom: a freedom from the physical infrastructure that could only be created and controlled by centralized governments. And at the very same time, the power to create virtual infrastructure and direct people’s movement is shifting to the industry.

What does that mean?

In the short term, we’re bound to see this power being put to good use. In the coming decade we’ll see Pokemon Go and other AR games being used to direct people where they could bring the most good. When a kid will get lost in the wilderness, Niantic will populate the area with rare pokemon so that hundreds and thousands of people will come search for them – and for the child too. Certain dangerous areas will bear virtual signs, or even deduct points from players who enter them. Special ‘diet’ pokemon will be found at the healthy food sections in stores.

In the long run, the real risk is that the power will shift over to the industry, which unlike the elected government does not have any built-in mechanisms for mitigating that power. That power could be used to send people to junk food stores like McDonald’s, which as it turns out is already in partnership with Pokemon Go. But more than that, AR games could be used to encourage people to take part in rallies, in political demonstrations, or even simply to control their movement in the streets.

This power shift does not necessarily have to be a bad thing, but we need to be aware of it and constantly ask what kind of hidden agendas do these AR games hold, so that the public can exercise some measure of control over the industry as well. Does Pokemon Go encourage us to visit McDonald’s, even though it ultimately damages our health? Well, a public outcry may put a stop to that kind of collaboration.

We’ve already realized that firms that control the virtual medium, like Facebook, gain power to influence people’s thinking and knowledge. We’ve also learned that Facebook has been using that power to influence politics – although in a bumbling, good-natured way, and seemingly without really meaning to. Now that the physical world and the virtual world become adjoined, we need to understand that the companies who control the virtual layer gain power that needs to be scrutinized and monitored carefully.

 

Conclusions

Pokemon Go is not going to change the world on its own, but it’s one of the first indicators that can tell us how things are about to change when physical reality is augmented by virtual ones. The critical question we must ask is who controls those added layers of reality, and how can we put constraints on the power they gain over us. Because we may end up controlling all the pokemon, but who will gain control over us?

 

The Real Reason We’re Losing our Privacy

“You don’t understand,” said the soldier who sat next me, who was speaking into his phone. His hand was shaking. “They’re dangerous. Really dangerous. You need to find somewhere safe! Go to your mother, and call me as soon as you get there.”

He hung up, and held the phone with both hands on his lap. I could see the beads of sweat forming on his forehead.

“Is everything OK? Is there something I can help with?” I asked politely.

He shot a frightened look toward me. “Did you hear what’s happening on LinkedIn?” he asked.

“A bit,” I said. “What, exactly? What did they do now?”

“It’s not what they did, it’s what was done to them,” he muttered, and buried his head between his hands. “Didn’t you hear that LinkedIn was hacked? One hundred and seventeen million encrypted user passwords are now being sold to anyone who can pay all of two thousand dollars for them, and I’ve heard that hackers who’ve scanned these encrypted passwords were able to decipher ninety percent of them. That means that over one hundred million user accounts are now hacked. What’s more, I’ve just returned from Afghanistan. Do you know what this means?”

“No,” I said. “What?”

“I fought the Taliban there, and now, they know who I am,” he muttered. “I had always worn a nametag on my uniform, and any Afghan wanting to take revenge on me will have already found my password. He’ll know where I live, based on the personal details in my account. They know who my wife is. They know how to get to our house!”

“Oh.” I said. “This is the world without privacy that we’re all afraid of. But it’s OK. They won’t find your wife.”

He looked up with a miserable glance. “Why not?”

“Because LinkedIn was already hacked once, four years ago, in 2012.” I explained. “They just didn’t understand how serious the problem was back then. They thought that only six and a half million passwords were stolen. Now, it turns out for all of that time, Russian hackers had all of those passwords, and although they really may have used them during that time – they might have already sold them to the Chinese, to ISIS, or to other centers of power – you can still set your mind at ease, provided that you changed your password.”

“Actually, I did,” he said. “In 2013, I think.”

“So you see? Everything’s OK,” I reassured him. “Or, in more exact terms, sufficiently OK, since this whole episode should teach us all an important lesson. Real privacy doesn’t exist any more. One of the more secured companies in the world was hacked, and this event wasn’t exposed for four years. Now, think about it, and tell me, yourself – what are the chances that some of the world’s databases hadn’t been hacked yet by the intelligence services of countries like Russia, China, or even the United States, working under the radar?”

He thought for a moment. “None?” he suggested.

“That’s what I think, too.” I said. “Hey, Snowden managed to steal enormous amounts of information from the National Security Agency of the United States, and no one was even aware that the information disappeared until he let the cat out of the bag himself. He was just one more citizen concerned about what this agency was doing. What are the chances that the Chinese haven’t managed to bribe other people at the agency to send them the information? Or that the United States hadn’t located its own agents in Russian or Chinese communities, or anywhere else in the world? Chances are that all of this information about us – not just passwords, but identifying particulars, residential addresses, and so on – are already in the hands of large governments around the world. And yes, ISIS may also have gotten its hands on it, though that’s a bit less likely, since they aren’t as technologically advanced. But one day, a Russian or Chinese Snowden will funnel all of this information to Wikileaks, and we’ll all know about everyone else.”

“But only within the period that information was gathered in,” he said.

“Right,” I answered. “That’s why I’m claiming that we’ve all lost our historical privacy. In other words, even if one day we enact new legislation to protect private information, a large portion of the information will already be circulating around the world, but it’s only valid during the period it was gathered in. It’s nearly certain that by today, various intelligence services can piece together impressive profiles of much of the world’s population, though they can only rely on the information gathered during that time. So even if ISIS managed to get its hands on those passwords, and even if they managed to hack your profile during the period between 2012 and 2013 and extract data about you without you knowing about it, the big question is if you were even married at the time.”

“Yup,” he said. “But I was married to my ex-wife, in a house I used to live in. Does this mean that ISIS could get to her?

“If all of these assumptions are true, then yes.” I said. “Maybe you should call her and warn her?”

He hesitated for a moment, and shrugged.

“It’s OK,” he said. “She’ll manage.”

 

 

This article was originally written by me in Hebrew, and translated and published at vpnMentor.

 

Do You Want to Understand the future? World of Warcraft Holds the Answers

Players of World of Warcraft love to complain. There’s nothing new to that. Blizzard largely seems to ignore the players’ pleas, yells and moans, and yet recently one of the executives has decided to answer the community. In a response to a forum thread, assistant game director Ion Hazzikostas explained how World of Warcraft is actually working right now. His response tells us a lot about the inner works of a world of abundance – where everyone have their basic needs fulfilled.

 

Catering to Minorities

The first thing we need to understand, according to Hazzikostas, is that World of Warcraft is composed of many minority groups. As he says –

“A minority of players raid. A minority of players participate in PvP. A tiny minority touch Mythic raiding. A tiny minority of players do rated PvP. A minority of players have several max-level alts. A minority of players do pet battles, roleplay, list things for sale on the auction house, do Challenge Mode dungeons, and the list goes on.”

The result is that Blizzard – the omnipotent lord and god of World of Warcraft – is catering to minorities. In fact –

“…almost every facet of WoW is an activity that caters to a minority of the playerbase.”

This is what happens when you have a world of abundance. When people know that all of their basic needs will be taken care of, they feel free to do whatever they like. A minority will create art. A minority will sail boats. A minority will focus on re-engineering their bodies, roleplay or do robot battles.

And the government will need to cater to all of these minorities.

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World of Warcraft: a future of minorities. Credit: Polygon

The Self-Focused Minorities

Another point made by Hazzikostas is that the minorities are extremely self-focused. As he puts it –

“…due to the cooperative nature of the game, players tend to make connections with others who favor a similar playstyle. I’m generalizing a bit here, and there are certainly exceptions, but I’d guess that a typical Gladiator-level player probably doesn’t have a WoW social group that consists of people who mostly solo-level alts and explore the world. And most small friends-and-family guilds don’t spend a lot of time talking to competitive Mythic raiders. So when there’s a change, or a feature, that is aimed at a portion of the game that isn’t your personal playstyle, it’s easy and in fact natural to have the sense that “everyone” dislikes it.”

Hazzikostas is essentially talking about group polarization – a phenomenon that occurs in groups in which people agree with each other. Their views resonate between each other, and the group member become more polarized in their opinions. In a way, they become detached from the complex reality of each situation, and become unable to consider things from other points of view.

Group polarization is happening in the real world too, and it’s gaining speed. Ezra Klein recently wrote about political polarization and how it’s becoming an issue in the United States. People are becoming more polarized in their political views, and part of it has to do with the virtual world. In the past, you would’ve needed to interact with people from other factions everywhere you went. Today, Facebook automatically makes sure via its algorithms that most of your interactions are with the people who think the same as you do. As a result, people are essentially segregating themselves willingly into self-selecting groups, and their views become more polarized, so that each group finds it more difficult to agree with the other groups than ever before.

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World of Warcraft: a future of group and minority polarization

A Mirror for the Future

In those two aspects at least, World of Warcraft is a mirror of our future. As we reach a state of abundance in food and shelter, we will start identifying ourselves according to our hobbies and our interests. A world of abundance would therefore also be a world of minorities. And due to the virtual nature of much of that world, those minorities would find it more difficult to agree with each other than ever before.

It just might be the in the long-term, the only viable solution would be to essentially create a different world for every kind of minority. This proposition is, of course, impossible in the physical world where resources are limited by their nature. It can be achieved, though, in the interaction between the physical and the virtual worlds.

In the case of World of Warcraft, the virtual environment ensures that funds are essentially unlimited. Blizzard sets the challenges and the rewards, which are virtual in nature. Luckily for us, many aspects of our lives in the future are going to be virtual as well. As virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) become part of our lives, we will receive highly personalized and individualized information from physical reality. In many cases, the virtual layer of reality will allow us to transcend the physical bottom layer.

To understand that, consider that in twenty years at most, many of us are likely to walk around with augmented reality goggles over our eyes. These will provide an additional virtual layer over everything that we see. In that way, a signpost on the street can consist of just a white background and a QR code in the physical world. The AR goggles, however, will translate the QR code into a personal ad that will fit specifically for the individual using the goggles. Similarly, every house can be virtually transformed into a palace, by wearing an AR device. A palace, or a cave, or a torture dungeon, or a boat. To each minority – their own.

 

Conclusions

World of Warcraft is a virtual world, in which players enjoy a state of abundance. In a way, it serves as a social or political studies lab, and the insights we gain from it can be valuable. Those insights can help us better understand the future of a world of abundance, and of a world in which the virtual and the physical layers become intermixed. If you want to know what the future holds in store for us – you probably want to keep on watching how World of Warcraft evolves.

 

Are we Entering the Aerial Age – or the Age of Freedom?

A week ago I covered in this blog the possibility of using aerial drones for terrorist attacks. The following post dealt with the Failure of Myth and covered Causal Layered Analysis (CLA) – a futures studies methodology meant to counter the Failure of Myth and allow us to consider alternative futures radically different from the ones we tend to consider intuitively.

In this blog post I’ll combine insights from both recent posts together, and suggest ways to deal with the terrorism threat posed by aerial drones, in four different layers suggested by CLA: the Litany, the Systemic view, the Worldview, and the Myth layer.

To understand why we have to use such a wide-angle lens for the issue, I would compare the proliferation of aerial drones to another period in history: the transition between the Bronze Age and the Iron Age.

 

From Bronze to Iron

Sometime around 1300 BC, iron smelting was discovered by our ancient forefathers, assumedly in the Anatolia region. The discovery rapidly diffused to many other regions and civilizations, and changed the world forever.

If you ask people why iron weapons are better than bronze ones, they’re likely to answer that iron is simply stronger, lighter and more durable than bronze. However, the truth is that bronze weapons are not much more efficient than iron weapons. The real importance of iron smelting, according to “A Short History of War” by Richard A. Gabriel and Karen S. Metz, is this:

“Iron’s importance rested in the fact that unlike bronze, which required the use of relatively rare tin to manufacture, iron was commonly and widely available almost everywhere… No longer was it only the major powers that could afford enough weapons to equip a large military force. Now almost any state could do it. The result was a dramatic increase in the frequency of war.”

It is easy to imagine political and national leaders using only the first and second layer of CLA – the Litany and the Systemic view – at the transition from the Bronze to the Iron Age. “We should bring these new iron weapons to all our soldiers”, they probably told themselves, “and equip the soldiers with stronger shields that can deflect iron weapons”. Even as they enacted these changes in their armies, the worldview itself shifted, and warfare was vastly transformed because of the large number of civilians who could suddenly wield an iron weapon. Generals who thought that preparing for the change merely meant equipping their soldiers with an iron weapon, found themselves on the battlefield facing armies much larger than their own, because of new conscription models that their opponents had developed.

Such changes in warfare and in the existing worldview could have been realized in advance by utilizing the third and fourth layers of CLA – the Worldview and the Myth.

Aerial drones are similar to Iron Age weapons in that they are proliferating rapidly. They can be built or purchased at ridiculously low prices, by practically everyone. In the past, only the largest and most technologically-sophisticated governments could afford to employ aerial drones. Nowadays, every child has them. In other words, the world itself is turning against everything we thought we knew about the possession and use of unmanned aerial vehicles. Such dramatic change – that our descendants may yet come to call The Aerial Age when they look back in history – forces us to rethink everything we knew about the world. We must, in short, analyze the issue from a wide-angle view, with an emphasis on the third and fourth layer of CLA.

How, then, do we deal with the threat aerial drones pose to national security?

 

First Layer: the Litany

The intuitive way to deal with the threat posed by aerial drones, is simply to reinforce the measures and we’ve had in place before. Under the thinking constraints of the first layer, we should basically strive to strengthen police forces, and to provide larger budgets for anti-terrorist operations. In short, we should do just as we did in the past, but more and better.

It’s easy to see why public systems love the litany layer, since these measures create reputation and generate a general feeling that “we’re doing something to deal with the problem”. What’s more, they require extra budget (to be obtained from congress) and make the organization larger along the way. What’s there not to like?

Second Layer: the Systemic View

Under the systemic view we can think about the police forces, and the tools they have to deal with the new problem. It immediately becomes obvious that such tools are sorely lacking. Therefore, we need to improve the system and support the development of new techniques and methodologies to deal with the new threat. We might support the development of anti-drone weapons, for example, or open an entirely new police department dedicated to dealing with drones. Police officers will be trained to deal with aerial drones, so that nothing is left for chance. The judicial and regulatory systems are lending themselves to the struggle at this layer, by issuing highly-regulated licenses to operate aerial drones.

 

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An anti-drone gun. Originally from BattelleInnovations and downloaded from TechTimes

 

Again, we could stop the discussion here and still have a highly popular set of solutions. As we delve deeper into the Worldview layer, however, the opposition starts building up.

Third Layer: the Worldview

When we consider the situation at the worldview layer, we see that the proliferation of aerial drones is simply a by-product of several technological trends: miniaturization and condensation of electronics, sophisticated artificial intelligence (at least in terms of 20-30 years ago) for controlling the rotor blades, and even personalized manufacturing with 3D-printers, so that anyone can construct his or her own personal drone in the garage. All of the above lead to the Aerial Age – in which individuals can explore the sky as they like.

 

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Exploration of the sky is now in the hands of individuals. Image originally from DailyMail India.

 

Looking at the world from this point of view, we immediately see that the vast expected proliferation of aerial drones in the near decade would force us to reconsider our previous worldviews. Should we really focus on local or systemic solutions, rather than preparing ourselves for this new Aerial Age?

We can look even further than that, of course. In a very real way, aerial drones are but a symptom of a more general change in the world. The Aerial Age is but one aspect of the Age of Freedom, or the Age of the Individual. Consider that the power of designing and manufacturing is being taken from nations and granted to individuals via 3D-printers, powerful personal computers, and the internet. As a result of these inventions and others, individuals today hold power that once belonged only to the greatest nations on Earth. The established worldview, in which nations are the sole holders of power is changing.

When one looks at the issue like this, it is clear that such a dramatic change can only be countered or mitigated by dramatic measures. Nations that want to retain their power and prevent terrorist attacks will be forced to break rules that were created long ago, back in the Age of Nations. It is entirely possible that governments and rulers will have to sacrifice their citizens’ privacy, and turn to monitoring their citizens constantly much as the NSA did – and is still doing to some degree. When an individual dissident has the potential to bring harm to thousands and even millions (via synthetic biology, for example), nations can ill afford to take any chances.

What are the myths that such endeavors will disrupt, and what new myths will they be built upon?

Fourth Layer: the Myth

I’ve already identified a few myths that will be disrupted by the new worldview. First and foremost, we will let go of the idea that only a select few can explore the sky. The new myth is that of Shared Sky.

The second myth to be disrupted is that nations hold all the technological power, while terrorists and dissidents are reduced to using crude bombs at best, or pitchforks at worst. This myth is no longer true, and it will be replaced by a myth of Proliferation of Technology.

The third myth to be dismissed is that governments can protect their citizens efficiently with the tools they have in the present. When we have such widespread threats in the Age of Freedom, governments will experience a crisis in governance – unless they turn to monitoring their citizens so closely that any pretense of privacy is lost. And so, it is entirely possible that in many countries we will see the emergence of a new myth: Safety in Exchange for Privacy.

 

Conclusion

Last week I’ve analyzed the issue of aerial drones being used for terrorist attacks, by utilizing the Causal Layered Analysis methodology. When I look at the results, it’s easy to see why many decision makers are reluctant to solve problems at the third and fourth layer – Worldview and Myth. The solutions found in the lower layers – the Litany and the Systemic view – are so much easier to understand and to explain to the public. Regardless, if you want to actually understand the possibilities the future holds in any subject, you must ignore the first two layers in the long term, and focus instead on the large picture.

And with that said – happy new year to one and all!

China is Implementing a Social Rating System

I loved her, on the spot. There was something in her stance, her walk, her voice. Hesitantly, I approached and opened a light chat. There was an immediate connection, a feeling of rapport between us. Finally, I dared pop the question – “Do you want to meet again tomorrow?”

She went quiet for a second, then asked to see my social credit rating. I tried to keep my face still while I took out my smartphone and showed it to her.

She went quiet for more than a few seconds…

 

This system – a social credit rating – is in the process of being created and implemented today in China. If it works out well, it’s going to have an impact that will spread far beyond the People’s Republic, and may become part of our lives everywhere. Because, you see, this system might actually be a good idea – as long as we use it wisely.

What is a social credit rating? In a way, it’s similar to the ordinary credit history rating being used in America and other countries. Every person in America, for example, has a credit history that speaks volumes about their past behavior, how soon they return their loans, and how they handle their money. When one applies for a new loan, a mortgage or even for a new credit card, the banks and financial institutes take a good hard look at the inquirer’s credit history to decide whether or not they can be safe giving him that loan.

Up until today, only 320 million individuals in China had any kind of credit history, out of 800 million people registered in China’s central bank. Things are about to change, though, since the Chinese government is authorizing several companies to collect and compare information about the citizens, thus creating an omnipotent, omniscient system that assigns a “social credit rating” to anyone who uses any kind of online services, including dating sites like Baihe, and commercial sites like Alibaba.

And the Chinese people are really gobbling it up.

While it’s obviously difficult to know how the common person in the street is responding, it looks like the Chinese companies (again, under close scrutiny and agreement by the government) really know how to sell the idea to their customers. In fact, they’re letting the customers ‘sell’ the idea themselves to their friends, by turning the social credit rating into a game. People are comparing their ratings to each other, and are showing their ratings on their smartphones and their profiles on dating services. For them, it has become a game.

But it is a game with very serious consequences.

Her face fell when she saw my rating. I talked quickly – “I-It’s not what it looks like. You gotta understand, I didn’t have the money to repay Big Joe last week, but now I’m getting all the wages I was owed. Seriously, it’s OK. I’m OK financially. I really am.”

 

There’s no denying that credit history ratings can serve a positive purpose. They alert individuals and companies to the past history of con artists, scammers and generally unscrupulous people whom you’d rather not have any dealings with. The mere presence of a credit history rating could cause people to trust each other better, and also to behave themselves in their financial dealings. People from market societies tend to deal more fairly with strangers because they know their actions are always counted for or against them. A credit history rating essentially makes sure that everyone knows they are monitored for best behavior – and that’s a powerful force that can help maintain civil order.

It is also a powerful tool in the hands of a government that wants to control its citizens.

She bit her bottom lip, and her brow furrowed. She kept my smartphone in her hand, scrolling down quickly and reading all the fine details. Suddenly she raised her head and stared at me.

“You played Assassin’s Creed for one hundred hours last month?” she demanded to know. I nodded dumbly, and watched as the smile spread slowly on her lips. “I love that game! I play it all the time myself!”

I felt butterflies swimming across my vision. She was obviously The One for me. Such a perfect fit could never happen by chance. And yet, I felt I needed to check one last thing.

“Can I see your social rating too?” I asked timidly, and waited an eternity for her answer.

It’s pretty easy to understand how one’s credit history rating in America is determined. You just need to pay your bills in time in order to maintain a good credit history. A social credit rating, however, is a different thing altogether. At least one of the companies in charge of calculating it, does not agree to expose how the rating is determined, except that the calculation is based on “complex algorithm”. Which essentially means that nobody knows exactly how they’re being judged and rated – except for the big companies and the government.

Does that make you feel like the Chinese are entering into an Orwelian totalitarian rule? It should. There are persistent rumors that the Chinese social credit will be determined according to the users’ online activities in social media. When the Chinese government is in total control, who do you think will get a better social rating: the citizens who support the government unconditionally, or the dissidents who oppose the government’s doings?

In short, a social rating could be a great way for any government to control the population and the opinions and points of view it advocates and stands for. And since the social rating could be a dynamic and constantly changing parameter, it could change rapidly according to every new action a person takes, every sentence and cussword they utter. The government only has to set the rating algorithms – and the automated monitoring and rating systems will do the rest.

I walked back and forth in my small room, silently cursing myself for my foolishness. So what if her social rating was so low? She must have been a supporter of the opposition for it to drop by so much, but what of it? I’m not a political activist anyway. Why should I care?

And yet, I had to admit to myself that I cared. How could I go out with someone with that kind of a low rating? All my friends will know. They’ll laugh at me behind my back. Worse still, my own social rating would go down immediately. I will not only be the laughing stock of my class in the University – I would not even be legible anymore for a scholarship, and all my dreams for a higher degree would end right there and then.

I sighed, and sat back on the squeaky bed. She just wasn’t right for me, in this time in life. Maybe when I have a better social rating, to balance her own. Maybe the algorithms would change their decision about her someday.

But that would probably be too late for us.

 

The social rating system is currently voluntary, but within five years China is planning to rank everyone within its borders. It’s going to be interesting to see how it’s working out for the Chinese. And who knows? Maybe we’ll get to have a taste of the system as well, probably sooner than later. Whether that’s a good or bad thing, is still up to grabs.