Imagine not being able to board a plane because you forgot to pay your water bill… or being denied access to a train because you jaywalked.

It sounds like something ripped from the pages of George Orwell’s 1984. But this will soon become reality for people living in China. That’s because the Chinese government is getting ready to roll out a social credit system.

Basically, the Chinese government will soon prevent people from accessing everyday services if they aren’t deemed “good citizens.”

It’s one of the most disturbing things I’ve ever read. Still, most readers won’t care about this. That’s because “this sort of thing could never happen in America!” [Full article]

As more and more data flows from your body and brain to the smart machines via the biometric sensors, it will become easy for corporations and government agencies to know you, manipulate you, and make decisions on your behalf. Even more importantly, they could decipher the deep mechanisms of all bodies and brains, and thereby gain the power to engineer life. If we want to prevent a small elite from monopolizing such godlike powers, and if we want to prevent humankind from splitting into biological castes, the key question is: who owns the data? Does the data about my DNA, my brain and my life belong to me, to the government, to a corporation, or to the human collective?”―Professor Yuval Noah Harari [Full article]