My wife and I are watching Black Mirror on Netflix lately. For those of you who don’t know, it is a British dystopian science fiction anthology TV series.
One particular episode that caught our attention is Nosedive. The world portrayed in this episode has a concept similar to the concept of social security and credit rating we currently have in our world, with just one catch.
Instead of social security, it’s social media security. And instead of credit rating, it’s social approval rating. Just like how you leave a good or bad 5-star-based rating for restaurants or service providers on Google or Yelp Reviews today, people in this fictional world leave ratings for the other people they encounter in their day-to-day lives.
They give these ratings via a mandatory app that runs on everybody’s mobile phones. Just point your phone at someone, and leave your rating for them. You can even visit their profile on this app and leave your rating. Want to hear something even creepier? Everybody’s eyes have this small scanner device that sits on their lens, not unlike contact lenses, that scans someone’s social approval rating and shows it to you, like a car’s heads-up display, when you just look at them.
Act nice and appreciate someone with a seemingly genuine smile, chances are they will give you a 5-star. Use swear words, show your frustration, or piss someone off, they will probably give you a sub-3 rating, depending on how badly you affected their mood.
The more good ratings you get, the higher you move up the societal ladder. Better job prospects, better housing, better approval for credit, better social relationships, and faster servicing from vendors.
On the other hand, the more bad ratings you accumulate, the lower you move down the societal ladder. You may get fired from work, you may get evicted from your apartment, people will move out of your way when you walk toward them, you have to wait in long lines at the airport check-ins, you get poor goods and services from vendors, and may ultimately end up on the street or prison.
This long description about this fictional world aside, I just can’t help but think, is our current world headed toward slowly transforming into this fictional world? Something to think about.
