Done for the day and taking a small breather before getting my daughter from daycare. My wife is on call at her new job this week and will therefore be home late each night, even though she starts early. This means that I am both taking and picking up our daughter, which isn't a problem other than making the working days a bit shorter, but this is the life we lead.I actually don't mind being busy in life as long as I feel that what I am busy doing has value.
What about the value of what we have done? What about the harm?
One of the things that I am looking forward to in the coming blockchained world is the record and immutability of our pasts, even though there are many risks in having this. What I think will happen though is that while there will be for some time a culture of dredging the past for infractions to be leveraged, overall we will end up having to find ways to forgive each other for past errors, as everyone will have a range.
However, what about those who of consistently made errors and have a track record of being wrong or causing harm, will their recorded errors be forgivable if the behavior is consistent? It would be interesting to see the immutable records of all that the economists say once filtered through hindsight and wonder if they were forced to give a level of confidence with each prediction, how many would be as bold if they knew that once events come to pass, their prediction will be held in comparison to the actual outcomes.
Would you be bold in predicting outcomes if there was the potential that there was consequences for being wrong?
This is an everyday occurrence on Steem when it comes to the recording, but is still not tied to the consequence of being wrong. Most of the internet is not tied to consequences of what is said or positions taken as there is a distance between the words , the audience, and the speaker themselves. Record and immutability as well as traceability will start to more accurately connect the dots at a public level to connect words to person.
I say "public" because for the most part, the information is already collected by the data funnels owned by the likes of Google and Facebook that through their various methods, have built digital profiles on essentially all internet users, which is why they are able to so easily target us, and why their data sets are so valuable to their customers. What happens if the same level of information becomes public knowledge?
If through some hypothetical accidental flip of a switch, where every word you have written, site visited, chat message sent and digital data connected to you suddenly become public and searchable, would you be concerned? Would the positions you hold and the relationships you have survive?
What if on top of that, a hypothetical Artificial Intelligence ran through that same data set and gave you a behavioral rating that was also public that would give people a clear view of your position across a spectrum of relevant points. Would those you deal with trust you, would they want to get into business with you, will they want to even talk to you after knowing what you have done in the digital shadows?
While that is quite a dystopic outcome for humanity, it is interesting to think about at the personal level when we consider if who we are at more than the public level is the kind of person that represents us at the private. I wonder what the average rating would be and what would then become the new normal of what is considered "good" and "bad" when I will assume that near all have some dirt, some skeletons in the digital closet.
As the biblical saying goes, let those without sin cast the first stone but, while there are plenty of stones cast online, who is without sin? It is generally only the protection the screen offers and the pseudonimity that protects many who would otherwise have less than a leg to stand on morally. Would this lead to a new approach at acceptance of flaws when we would clearly see that all are flawed in some way, all are broken, all have errors of the past that have hurt and harmed others? Could intention be gleaned with enough data?
How different do you think our public presentation and our digital avatars are from each other and which is closer to the truth?
Taraz
Taraz
[ a Steem original ]
