How Autocracies Could Misuse Digital Health Innovations

How long do you think it will take for authoritarian governments, dictatorships or tyrannies until they realize the vast potential in digital health technologies and until they learn how to harness their powers? Twenty years? Ten years? We have to warn you, the era of 24/7 surveillance and intrusion into the innermost secrets of human life is even closer than that. Watch out! Dystopic worst case scenario-alert! Digital technologies are double-edged swords: they promised social change… On 17 December 2010, a Tunisian vegetable vendor set up his cart on the street in Sidi Bouzid to sell goods that he obtained the day before from borrowed money. Police began to harass him as he didn’t have a permit to sell his wares and confiscated his products. Being deprived of his only chance to make a living, and not listened to by the authorities, he set himself on fire. Within a couple of hours, the tragic deed of Mohamed Bouazizi sparked protests in his home country, Tunisia, which spread around like wildfire in the entire Middle East. The flames were fed by the dissatisfied populations and diffused by the power of social media. Back in 2011, news outlets around the world hailed how Facebook, Twitter, and the Internet promoted democratic uprisings in authoritarian regimes around the Middle East. For a moment, it seemed that in Tunisia, Egypt, Lybia, Syria, and Bahrain, average people were empowered by technology to change the course of their own lives and take control over the bigger ...
Source: The Medical Futurist - Category: Information Technology Authors: Tags: Bioethics Future of Medicine Security & Privacy AR artificial intelligence big data biotechnology black mirror dystopia genes genetics genomics Health health sensors Healthcare insurance MR Personalized medicine scifi Source Type: blogs