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There are numerous descriptions of the history of industrial revolution and the claim that there is a fourth such revolution remains to be seen, much like the sobriquet of “2.0” to reflect versioned improvement. Technological determinism persists and insists on its inevitable progress, even as we experience the failures of post-Fordism.

The analog world remains, despite digital improvements, and we are pestered by commodity fetishism, the latest of which in telecommunications is “5G”. Most of us with smart phones now use a 4G device that provides an unprecedented amount of communication. More likely your next phone replaced by obsolescence will be more biometric in terms of user interface and access safeguards.

Our online sincerity is now tested by a variety of technologies, some biometric, others because there’s enough bandwidth to provide live, visual full-motion communication, but also there’s the processing speed to consult multiple large databases of personal information. “Googling someone” is changing.

Will your presence, your social being, be valued by some external system of credit much as your “credit rating” now measures your net worth and for some your social status.

Even more insidious will be social interactions valued instantaneously by technology comparing databases with few controls on privacy. “Background checks” will be more intrusive, as entire cottage industries will develop to “improve your social credit standing”.

Digital dating could become more rigorous and needless to say less fun.

In some dystopian future the “eugenic inferiority of your DNA” might establish your class-standing, or your reproductive prospects with or without marriage. This would develop in parallel with improved medical treatment because of big data access, as it already does with genetic matching.

Eventually the cop who discharges their firearm in your direction could also be making a biometric calculation. A future smart gun might be the difference between life and death.

The same technology that will determine whether some troll is swatting you and keeping you safe by not initiating a false, paramilitary police assault on your home will also determine whether it’s worth killing you or prosecuting you because asset forfeiture might improve police revenues.

More often than not, decision-making will be made at higher speeds.

5G (from "5th Generation") is the latest generation of cellular mobile communications. It succeeds the 4G(LTE-A, WiMax), 3G (UMTS, LTE) and 2G (GSM) systems. 5G performance targets high data rate, reduced latency, energy saving, cost reduction, higher system capacity, and massive device connectivity.

5G is the natural evolution of network improvement and despite the usual PR puffery, will be dominated by Chinese technology in spite of the fantasy proclamations of “6G” tweeted by Individual-1. Because only to an idiot are bigger numbers always better.

5G deployment,  will improve some social relations of production while also enabling those things now being deployed in the PRC system of social credit. “Industry 4.0” is the beneficiary of 5G deployment.

There are four design principles in Industry 4.0. These principles support companies in identifying and implementing Industry 4.0 scenarios.^[1]

• Interconnection: The ability of machines, devices, sensors, and people to connect and communicate with each other via the Internet of Things (IoT) or the Internet of People (IoP)^[10]
• Information transparency: The transparency afforded by Industry 4.0 technology provides operators with vast amounts of useful information needed to make appropriate decisions. Interconnectivity allows operators to collect immense amounts of data and information from all points in the manufacturing process, thus aiding functionality and identifying key areas that can benefit from innovation and improvement.^[11]
• Technical assistance: First, the ability of assistance systems to support humans by aggregating and visualizing information comprehensively for making informed decisions and solving urgent problems on short notice. Second, the ability of cyber physical systems to physically support humans by conducting a range of tasks that are unpleasant, too exhausting, or unsafe for their human co-workers.
• Decentralized decisions: The ability of cyber physical systems to make decisions on their own and to perform their tasks as autonomously as possible. Only in the case of exceptions, interferences, or conflicting goals, are tasks delegated to a higher level.

en.wikipedia.org/...

Can exceptions, interferences, or conflicting goals be modeled as an algorithm for social control?

Is your insincerity as measurable as your sincerity. How authentic are you in an age of “burner phones”.

We see this everyday with the challenges of whether your identity is sufficient to conduct everyday personal and commercial transactions. The more complicated side comes from the number of George Hollidays rendering documentary proof of an untold number of sociopathological crimes the latest of which is #SidewalkSally where a white woman decided she would speak for the polity and harass black folks in a public park.

The informal economies built on identity theft are symptomatic of similar threats to everyday life. Your phone could betray you simply because you’re being geolocated, and your geolocation could be the measure of your sincerity, as it now becomes a contingency for internet access.

Perhaps spurred on by their distaste for everything implied by such liberality, the Chinese government has become convinced that a far greater degree of social control is both necessary and possible. It now has access to a set of tools for managing the complexity of contemporary life that it believes will deliver better, surer, and more reliable results than anything produced by the model of order from below.

Known by the anodyne name “social credit,” this system is designed to reach into every corner of existence both online and off. It monitors each individual’s consumer behavior, conduct on social networks, and real-world infractions like speeding tickets or quarrels with neighbors. Then it integrates them into a single, algorithmically determined “sincerity” score. Every Chinese citizen receives a literal, numeric index of their trustworthiness and virtue, and this index unlocks, well, everything. In principle, anyway, this one number will determine the opportunities citizens are offered, the freedoms they enjoy, and the privileges they are granted.

This end-to-end grid of social control is still in its prototype stages, but three things are already becoming clear:

• First, where it has actually been deployed, it has teeth.
• Second, it has profound implications for the texture of urban life.
• And finally, there’s nothing so distinctly Chinese about it that it couldn’t be rolled out anywhere else the right conditions obtain.

The advent of social credit portends changes both dramatic and consequential for life in cities everywhere—including the one you might call home.

www.theatlantic.com/...

The Chinese Social Credit System unlike Douglas’s Christianist version, also implies social control and because the former depends on Big Data, it will at some moment become a place where abuse of civil liberties will occur. It will not be restricted to application in the PRC.

Consumer databases in the US already have less protection. We already saw such abuse in the misuse of Facebook databases in 2016 by malign agents. We know that law enforcement routinely abuses such data.

The partnership, first reported by BuzzFeed News, marks the first known time a consumer DNA kit company has voluntarily given law enforcement access to a private database. Detectives have increasingly turned to DNA databases as a way to jumpstart cold cases, but previously kept searches limited to public and free databases, such as in the recent Golden State Killer case. While in that particular case law enforcement relied most heavily on GEDmatch, an open-source database, FamilyTreeDNA was also subpoenaed to provide the identity of a single user who was a genetic match to the killer.

That relationship has since “morphed,” a FamilyTreeDNA spokesperson told BuzzFeed. FamilyTreeDNA’s fresh agreement with the FBI gives the agency the ability to search more than a million genetic profiles—the majority of which were given by consumers without knowledge of the company’s relationship with the FBI. As part of the agreement, the company has also agreed to test DNA evidence and identify remains of deceased individuals in violent crimes for the FBI in its own laboratory.

gizmodo.com/...

We’ve seen the sincerity of Elizabeth Warren challenged because she relied on the local, familial knowledge untested with DNA, and was trashed by institutions arbitrarily deciding on terms of enrolled tribal membership not identical to genealogy.

Such sincerity tests may not overcome the racist media framing promoted by a known racist like Individual-1, but fortunately history has yet to be made, even if we now have more granular levels of detail to determine “social” credit.

If anything, self-testing the DNA of any number of potential Trump bastards could make the 2020 election more fascinating, even if we can already guesstimate Individual-1’s sincerity score.