I once wrote a film idea about a woman who quit her job working for corporate banking because she didn't agree with what they were doing.
The bank came after her and her family. One of their tactics was to block access to all her accounts, leaving her penniless in a society where cash was hard to use.
For the last two months I have - despite having a £0 balance and a £6,500 credit limit - had almost every transaction on my credit card declined. When I question this with the bank they tell me 'the transaction filled their criteria for a suspicious transaction'. They refuse to tell me what these criteria are.
The most recent transactions to be denies are for Amazon (twice), AirBnb (three times), and now a family restaurant in Eastbourne where I was taking my daughter out for her birthday meal. These policies have left me in serious danger at times (thank heaven for good people) and - last night - emotional distress.
It isn't OK. We have handed control of our lives over to automated processes and we are helpless when the machine says no. I have a complaint lodged with the financial ombudsman but that isn't likely to yield anything. And it won't help me to pay for paintballing today with my son.
Some of my younger, more political friends look forward to a future where the machines do all the work. That frightens me: To be marginalised; to be the victim of either a deliberate or accidental obstacle to access, in the absence of humans, is terrifying.
Supporters of an automated future often cite the error rates in humans as a justification of their goal. But we *are* human. We make mistakes. We get ourselves into difficulty. And, as humans, we can override the protocol and help each other out.
But now we can't. We can't live freely if we insist everything is prescribed and there is no room for error. If there is no way to get round the rules then we need 'GOD' to have written them - some intelligence so powerful, so all knowing, that it truly can predict and accommodate all of the chaotic truths that it's ruleset might encounter.
If we want to be living in an automated world, we are going to have to be homogenous, rule-based organisms. We are going to have to leave behind the beauty of nature, the chaos of truth, and fit ourselves into little boxes and patterns that exactly match the rules we decided to live by.
Please be careful what you wish for.
[with gratitude but not permission from the prophetic and pioneering Radiohead. http://www.radiohead.com/deadairspace]
