By the year 2030, contact-tracing will be considered a standard prevention method similar to vaccination. The majority of the population will understand that this small sacrifice in their privacy is the best way to protect our communities from health threats and to quickly suppress the spread of future pandemics. A small group of radicals will choose to opt-out of this process, and will be met with harsh public criticism, with many considering 'anti-tracers' to be selfish as they threaten the wellbeing of the population. In the time leading up to 2030, contact-tracing apps will have become as much a part of our smart phones as calling and texting capabilities. In that time, the advancements that scientists will have made with gene-hacking will be substantial, and they will be in the early stages of incorporating some features from our smart phones directly into our genes, eliminating the need to carry around cell phones. Contact-tracing technologies will be among the first that scientists start to implant in humans, and one of the most common to be requested by consumers.
While it started as a prevention method for public health threats, contact-tracing will become an important part of our society. The exposure of systemic oppression and anti-black racism in our police system has already provoked calls to defund and dismantle police forces. Policy makers will create new, community-based models of law enforcement. The proliferation of contact-tracing technologies, and the availability of that data to government entities, will make this an ideal tool to effectively identify witnesses and suspects in crimes based on their GPS location. As reliance on contact-tracing data increases, the government will increase enforcement measures to ensure people are tracing consistently and effectively. When contact-tracing is implemented at the level of mandated gene-hacking, this will serve as a significant deterrent to physical crime, eliminating most of the need for law enforcement beyond cyber crime. As our dependence on contact-tracing data grows, individuals will have some control over who has access to it and who does not. Big tech firms will likely have unparalleled access, as the suppliers of the contact-tracing software, and will use the information to control our access to financial services. These firms will have taken over most of the responsibilities of traditional financial institutions, including the big banks, and will therefore be the most likely supplier of loans. Access to contact-tracing data can provide insight into the types of people and activities that individuals are engaged in, allowing tech firms to either restrict or advance funds to people based on their interactions with religious groups, visible minorities, drug dealers, criminals, or prostitutes, for example. ​Most employers will have switched to a mostly remote model of working, but some will implement conditions around sharing their contact-tracing data in order to earn the privileges of working from home. Those who refuse will need to install alternative softwares that allow employers to track screen time, click rate and key strokes on their computers to allow employers to monitor their staff productivity. In some cases where employees decline any of these surveillance options, they will be required to continue working from a more traditional office setting, although this will likely be a shared space between several organizations, since each company will have only a few people present and will not want to pay the overhead costs for entire office buildings.
While this might seem like an extreme view of the future, many aspects of this scenario are rooted in signals that we are seeing today.
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AuthorI'm Chelsea and I'm an aspiring futures thinker. I have experience in the Canadian innovation space, and I approach everything with a global affairs lens. I'm excited about the possibilities that the future holds, and I enjoy dreaming up scenarios of what it might look like. Learn more about me here. Categories
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