News//1984 is Today

George Orwell’s novel, 1984, is shockingly accurate in its predictions about how a dystopian government tracks and controls its people. Orwell was only off by about 40 years.

Orwell’s Big Brother government seems increasingly similar to today’s China. China works hard to shelter its people from events in the country and the world it deems unhelpful. The Great Firewall restricts its people’s access to the internet.

2020, the new 1984

Now China is putting in place technology that will allow it to monitor and control the day-to-day lives of its people.

By 2020 the Chinese government will have a program in place that assigns a “social credit” number to each of its citizens. A social credit rating will "allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step." For instance, a person would lose 5 points for a traffic ticket or gain 30 points for a heroic deed.

Social credit 

Points are lost and gained, in large measure, based on readings from a sophisticated network of 200 million surveillance cameras. (Over the next 18 months this figure will triple). The program has been enabled by rapid advances in facial recognition, body scanning, and geo-tracking.

 In addition, because the government tracks what citizens purchase. As well as where and when they travel. Of course, officials have access to phone records and the tracking phones provide. Medical and educational records become part of the mix. So do financial standing and internet browsing histories.

Credit score pluses and minuses 

If a person has a high social score, they enjoy waived deposits on hotels and rental cars, VIP treatment at airports, discounted loans, priority job applications and fast-tracking to the most prestigious universities. Social scores are lowered because of infractions like jaywalking, spending too long playing video games, wasting money on frivolous purchases and posting on social media, late payments on bills or taxes, buying too much alcohol or speaking out against the government.  

China’s rationale

From the government’s perspective, it is not attempting to take over citizen’s lives. It is attempting to improve and strengthen China. Sarah Zhang, who founded an artificial intelligence business in China, explains, “It's the government trying to say, 'We need to build a society where everyone supports everyone, and it's very important to make sure a lot of the social conflicts are being resolved in a peaceful way.'”

Sources: News.com.Au, Foreign Policy, eMarketer, Medium