The Rise Of Surveillance Capitalism And Social Control Systems

Part two of a four part series

A new economic system is taking hold and it’s called surveillance capitalism. There is a reason that we are constantly hearing about internet sites, governmental authorities, and cellular phone companies surreptitiously collecting our personal data. In a world economy ruled by privately owned trade and industry, data is the new king.

Data powers the artificial intelligence programs that can now reproduce your voice, your face, and even your thoughts. Massive amounts of data. The AI has been fed so much data that it can now beat humans in any game including Go and Chess. AI can analyze trillions of possibilities from a data set, extrapolate possible outcomes of billions of strategies, and deploy actions deduced to provide the desired outcome in mere milliseconds.

So how does this impact us? Primarily through social control of the population. Disturbing reports out of China and Australia show that these countries are using an AI generated surveillance system that gives each person a social credit score. Even here in the United States the program My Life publicly assigns every person a reputation score. That might not sound too ominous until you stop and consider what these scores are based on and how these scores can impact your life. Much like a credit score, these social scores are only based on specific factors and should not be represented as determinative of whether you are a good or bad person. Yet that’s exactly how the scores are being used right now. Even more terrifying is how these scores can be used in the future. Have a low score; well you can’t fly on an airplane. Speak out against the powers that be; your score tanks and you are unable to buy or rent housing. The nightmarish possibilities are endless.

Another aspect of surveillance capitalism the overtly Orwellian control over the majority of the information that the average person receives. By disincentivising and banning independent journalists, they make sure that the mainstream narrative is controlled. The puppet masters then manipulate mainstream media and information on sources to further solidify total techno control over our reality. When you control information, you can control people’s perception. Perception creates reality.

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