"Smart and Surveilled:" Building Sancturay Part 3

from Wrench in the Gears
January 11, 2018

This installment highlights  smart city surveillance and the Internet of Things. Cam and Li’s lives, including their educational experiences, are shaped by ubiquitous algorithms that align their behaviors to the economic and social expectations put in place by the Solutionists. This is the third installment in the series. If you want to read from the beginning use this link to access the introduction and Part 1: Plugging In.

Cam and Li have grown up in a world controlled by sensors and data. All day, every day sensors watch, track and transmit information. The devices that make up the vast web of Internet of Things are tiny, but their combined power is incalculable. The most common IoT sensor in the pre-lockdown years was the smart phone. Practically anyone over the age of ten had one. Acting as a sensor, people’s phones were a primary means of data collection, logging information about how people interacted with each other, with systems, and their physical world.

The first sensors were created to monitor global supply chain shipments. Then, corporate, government and academic researchers devised a dizzying array of sensors to transmit data about most aspects of the physical world and how people live their lives in it. Instead of tracking pallets on cargo ships, they now track people, buses, energy, animals, art, storm water runoff, even sounds and footsteps. Each processor gathers a particular type of information that can be merged into the data stream for analysis. Predictive analytics algorithms, complex mathematical equations that anticipate future outcomes, tap into the data stream. Such algorithms can be used to predict when the bulb in a streetlight will fail, when a storm sewer will overflow, or even where a crime will happen.

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Trump, the 'Very Stable Genius,' Is Falling Apart as Mueller Seeks Interview @alternet

Trump, the 'Very Stable Genius,' Is Falling Apart as Mueller Seeks Interview @alternet: New revelations raise the question: Is he a crook, or is he nuts? The tide of discussion of President Trump’s mental competence is rising along with the alarm of the president’s lawyers.

Christopher Steele alerted FBI to dossier because he worried Trump was being blackmailed

PDF of interview transcript available here:



Christopher Steele alerted FBI to dossier because he worried Trump was being blackmailed

China Leads the Way to Total Surveillance "Stable" Societies

When "deep learning" is entirely "data driven:"

Smart technology backed by artificial intelligence will be a tool to assist the police forces of the future. Chinese IT and telecoms giant Huawei says its Safe Cities technology has already helped Kenya bring down urban crime rates.

But who's a criminal? In China, documents for the Police Cloud project unearthed by Human Rights Watch list "petitioners" - people who complain to the government about perceived injustices - as potential targets of surveillance, along with anyone who "undermines stability" or has "extreme thoughts." Other documents cite members of ethnic minorities, specifically Muslim Uighurs from Xinjiang, as subjects of scrutiny.

Maya Wang, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, said what sets China apart is "a complete lack of effective privacy protections," combined with a system that is explicitly designed to target individuals seen as "politically threatening."

"In other countries, we are often concerned about the use of big data for deepening existing policing bias - for example, for targeting historically disadvantaged groups like African Americans in the U.S. context - but for the Chinese systems, the targeting of people of certain ethnicity is a fundamental function of the system," she added.

Vermilion Teacher escorted out of school board meeting in handcuffs

Cuffs, really?  This is what happens in Louisiana when you ask about the superintendent's $38,000 raise.

A World Without (Much) Work: Building Sancturary Part 2

by Wrench in the Gears
January 7, 2018

 

This is the second of a seven-part series that outlines a potential future where online education is surveilled by authoritarian interests, and strivers, like Talia and her daughters, attempt to secure a precarious living within the constraints of oppressive “Smart” City policies. The introduction to the series and Part One: Plugging In can be read here.

Part 2: A World Without (Much) Work

As the Fourth Industrial Revolution got underway, automation wiped out more and more jobs. The disappearance of industrial work was grudgingly accepted. Then self-driving vehicles replaced truckers, bus drivers, delivery people, and car services. Even so, many were taken aback when digitization came for the service sector. As Artificial Intelligence hit its stride, teachers, nurses, therapists, paralegals, actuaries, financial advisors, film editors all found themselves cast aside, scrambling for new careers. It seemed everyone who could work switched to coding and cyber security. The threat posed by hacks to the vast Internet of Things had spiraled out of control, and they needed more and more people to build and maintain the simulations.

After tech and energy, the entertainment sector experienced some of the biggest growth from the shift to digital life. Talia supplements the family’s meager digital stipend working as a Mechanical Turk. She picks up gigs, small jobs, coding bits of virtual worlds when people go off the scripts prepared by the Entertainment Software Group. Having a background in art gives her an advantage. Talia’s high creativity ratings keep her near the top of the MicroWork platform where freelancers compete for short-term or even micro employment.

These days, though, it’s getting more and more difficult to earn hard digital credit. Many posted gigs are now issuing payment in skill points that can boost a person’s citizen score but can’t be exchanged for durable goods or used to pay down debt. If things don’t let up soon she’ll be forced to figure out some other way to meet monthly expenses that often exceed what’s deposited to their Global Coin account.

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Building Sanctuary: A Dystopian Future We Must Fight to Avoid

by Wrench In the Gears
January 4, 2018

The next wave of education reform is one part of a much larger societal shift that hinges on the use of Big Data, predictive analytics, and digital profiling to control populations in a world of growing economic uncertainty and unrest. What follows is a speculative dystopian scenario, a world that could very well emerge from systems being put in place right now. It centers on two sisters, Cam and Li, who live in a near future New York where authorities have come to view human life primarily as a source from which to extract financial profit. Many elements of the story read like science fiction, but they are not. I’ve included links to sources at the end of each post so you can explore this reality for yourself.

The future is uncertain and unlikely to play out exactly as described. Nevertheless, we must begin to comprehend how technological developments combined with concentrated power and extreme income inequality are leading us to increasingly automated forms of oppression. My hope is that communities will begin to incorporate an understanding of this bigger picture into resistance efforts for public education and beyond. Let us join together, embracing our humanity, to fight the forces that would bring us to “lockdown.” How can we preserve our lives and those of our loved ones outside the data stream? How can we nurture community in a world where alienation is becoming normalized? What do we owe one another? What are we willing to risk? I have divided my story into seven parts. I hope you’ll read along and consider sharing it with others.

Building Sanctuary

Part 1: Plugging In

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Jared Kushner willing to blow up US alliances: ‘I’m a businessman, I don’t care about the past’

Wonder what kind of business he will run from his federal prison cell?



Jared Kushner willing to blow up US alliances: ‘I’m a businessman, I don’t care about the past’

Resolution: No More WSMV

Tennessee TV station fires reporter of 34 years after she is named as witness in age discrimination suit

Jill Stein Is a Putin Asset

WATCH: CNN’s Alisyn Camerota hammers Jill Stein for denying evidence of Russian election meddling