NODE 2
The role
of technology
From widespread automation to the impact on work dynamics
From widespread automation to the impact on work dynamics
data management and activity tracking
One of the first unknowns ready to catalyze the world’s attention will be the creation of new “human factor” management tools. If we are already in the era of tracing today, with the detection of a whole series of individual parameters to better control people and their inclinations, the future is anticipated through the need to extend to biometric data (health, first of all) all monitoring activity.
We have already experimented with smartphone applications that keep track of movements and habits, as well as an infinite amount of apps that collect sensitive and strategic data from an economic and financial point of view. For many companies, the near future will play on whether or not to enter the big data business.
Recent legislation to protect privacy has only curbed this pervasive problem, while leaving open the possibility that data is spontaneously provided to the major players in the technological and digital world, perhaps aggregated and anonymous. Furthermore, it only partially obliged companies to fully clarify the details of their use or constrained the secrecy of these data in a definitive and certified way.
The change of pace will occur when more invasive tools appear on the market, capable of monitoring not only position, movements, sites visited, pages read, etc. but also and above all capable of verifying individual biometric data. We have been working on this topic for some time and numerous peripherals and widely used applications have already appeared that are working to make the switch possible, as soon as the times are ripe. Covid 19 has only accelerated this process, and indeed has made it clear just how the possibility of having specific data relating to individual people is a complex topic that intimidates the most but equally allows futuristic perspectives.
Let’s take an example, which concerns public health. In times of large scale contagion, what is the best strategy to manage thousands of people in quarantine because they are sick (therefore dangerous) or immunosuppressed? Wanting to do it physically would need to create a widespread and territorially widespread network to be established in a short time. Although it is hoped that cords of this type are still made (we will talk more about this in the section dedicated to public health) it is clear that the help of technology in the field of complex interactions cannot be underestimated.
An application can show where the person is located: if it violates the quarantine or if it moves in dangerous places. It can provide feedback on the places visited, on the incidence of contagion in those areas, on the health status of the people met and on their possible hospitalization.
To be able to do such a thing it will be necessary to be able to make cross-checks by continually exiting the virtual to enter the physical world. It will be necessary to certify, for example, that the person holding the profile is really the one present in the house. Using recognition tools such as, for example, the fingerprint (in the future also iris and DNA) it will be possible to undoubtedly associate the person with the peripheral and therefore set up a monitoring system that prescinds the physical presence of a controller.
If on the one hand the presence of this kind of technologies opens up fast and immediate collective assistance scenarios, on the other it is undeniable that it introduces still unknown perspectives, both from a legislative and ethical point of view. The problem of data management, their protection and dissemination, should be one of the first items on the political menus of the institutions, at least as much as they are for companies in the technology sector.
Let’s go one step further: with these scenarios, it is easy to imagine that in the future the presence and respect of some biometric or social parameters will allow access to a different degree of law. The services (public or private) will no longer be provided in the rain or simply reserved for those belonging to wealthy social classes. Rather, they will be reserved only for those who can meet certain “agreed” minimum requirements.
There will automatically be a disparity within the population: on the one hand those who “can” and on the other those who are “forbidden”. The possibility or not of acquiring these rights will depend on the correspondence of the data collected with a predefined standard.
For example: only people in good standing with certain vaccines or serological tests will be able to travel. We are already talking about it now, to understand how concrete the hypothesis is, regarding the 2020 summer holidays. Or again: only those who will be in good standing with a certain physical, genetic, immunological quality can renew a document. Which, by the way, already happens if we think about it. As already happens that displacements are constrained by standardized protocols: if you move to areas of the planet infected with communicable diseases, for example, a certain prophylaxis is a must. In this case, too, it is therefore the amplification of an ongoing process: a process that is however extended and maintained through the coercive and relentless power of artificial intelligence.
This system, extended, multiplied and renewed in the control systems, will lead to the creation of two populations: the former endowed with rights that the latter it does not possess. A transversal humanity in which some – motivated by work, government or simply physically and immunologically stronger – will enjoy an advanced form of freedom.
The dark side of this new control system naturally concerns the definition of exclusion and the consequences it would have on people. Not being able to take a vacation is an annoying but bearable limitation. Seeing your civil rights canceled or limited, not being able to visit family members, not being able to vote, being marginalized only as a consumer is another matter entirely. Here the state will have to do a lot to set up a system to guarantee people and their moral, civil and psychological integrity.
Equally obvious is that this process of bio-technologization will fuel corruption, the creation of parallel markets, flaws in the control system and in general it will be the fertile ground towards which the new underworld will decide to invest. The Italian challenge, and in general of the various States, will first of all be to hinder these illegitimate attitudes. Secondly, work to regulate and control the enormous power of those who could have access to individual data and manage them fraudulently or for profit.
This side of the coin brings rights to an assessment in geo-political and strategic terms. In fact, the quality of the protection of collective data and their legitimate use will be one of the issues for assessing the reliability of leadership at a political level. Through these parameters, the Community institutions will endorse the participation of individual countries in common economic programs, the provision of funds, framework agreements.
States will be made responsible worldwide for the consequences of their internal management and digital policies on data processing.
It is conceivable to think that heavy sanctions at international level will be adopted towards all those nations that cannot guarantee a health standard and a certified and shared conduct on platforms validated by common bodies. Mass information campaigns, designed to remove inefficient or corrupt rulers, will be established to ensure that data transparency and truthfulness is maintained.
As already in use for air traffic – where standards and data are shared for the common good and where companies are required to adopt certified protocols to guarantee the overall security of the system – also the various States will have to know that the accuracy and the truthfulness of the data provided may be both a growth vector and the motivation for heavy sanctions at international level.
In general, the challenge for Nations will be to promote their belonging to a “privileged” group of states, capable of guaranteeing high quality levels of living of the population and measurable internal security criteria. All of this without sacrificing or endangering citizens’ freedoms, privacy and a whole series of new fundamental ethical rights that have not yet been fully explored.
Collective socio-political analysis project on Covid 19. Post Coronavirus scenarios: opportunities and dead ends. What can we learn from the Covid 19 epidemic.
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Texts updated on May 4, 2020.
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Individual control systems
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