What is the Digital Prison?

Your phone alarm wakes you up and you get ready for work. You scan your face to use your phone so you can text your coworker that you’ll be late. You stop to get a coffee anyways, and you scan the QR code to enter the coffee shop. Your membership is still good. You order and go to pay, and the barista reminds you it is “card only.” You grab your coffee and go. Getting ready to cross the street, you notice a camera pointing right at you and everyone else on the corner. You think nothing of it — its for safety after all. Remembering that you are running a bit late, you pull out Google Maps to look for a shortcut right from your immediate location…

That short scene may sound like a very typical day for a lot of people around the world, not just in the US. And because it seems typical, it seems normal. And normal always means right, right? Wrong.

In 2023, people are starting to familiarize themselves with the idea of a digital prison, but what is it? The digital prison idea suggests that as a species, we are moving closer and closer to a state of society in which we will be asked, coerced, or even forced to utilize a digital identity to engage with aspects of life that we currently utilize freely, such as the internet, online and conventional shopping, voting, or accessing personal finances.

To many, the idea seems conspiratorial and out of a paranoid science fiction novel, but some of the effects already permeate the “free” West. In some places, like China, this digital panopticon is already functioning in the form of a Social Credit System used to surveille, control, and conform China’s citizens into inert, malleable pawns of the state.

Like most issues in 2023, the digital prison is no different in that two loud voices on either “side” of the metaphorical aisle are speaking up in defiance or defense of the issue. In the case of the digital prison, I see it as more severe.

This issue permeates borders and cultures. It has no regard for personal preferences, religious or cultural beliefs. And the defenders of such an idea do not seem to know exactly what they are supporting. That is in part because the current effects are normalized, people are conditioned to accept them. As for the future terrors, they have yet to be fathomed or revealed.……………………….

The disagreement that anti-digital-prison folks have is not with the principles behind some of the 21st century’s technological developments, it is disagreement with the collective effect of a society that forces inescapable compliance from individuals.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………….. Cell phones are a great example of the development of this fear. When they were originally created, they made the function of voice communications even more convenient. And technologies that do that tend to alter the fabric of society without a need to do so subliminally or subversively. In other words, because the thing (in this case cellphones) appears to be an unequivocal asset for the everyman of the modern era, it permeates into our lives without second thought.

The Ulez System in the UK is a good example of this:

I would imagine that most people in UK would agree that crime should be reduced and criminals held accountable; that a reasonable element of policing, patrolling, undercover work, and surveillance may even be acceptable to do so. What is not acceptable, however, is the establishment of a surveillance network, seeing everything all the time, that backlogs the personal lives, actions, and whereabouts of all of the UK’s citizens.

So we can see the problem here with rampant digital “progress”; there are great principles and functions being made by technology, but the employment of such capabilities needs to be checked.

It is in this idea — the application of technology, and the potentially tyrannical and sinister goals behind it — that we return to the collective effects of various tech that define what the digital prison is.

Ulez alone may not have been such a big deal in the UK. After all, there are cameras at street lights, government buildings, museums, stores, banks and ATMs. People walk with cameras on their phones and take pictures and videos all the time.

But as an implementation alongside everything we currently have, it’s a bit much. Cell phones are a great example of the development of this fear. When they were originally created, they made the function of voice communications even more convenient. And technologies that do that tend to alter the fabric of society without a need to do so subliminally or subversively. In other words, because the thing (in this case cellphones) appears to be an unequivocal asset for the everyman of the modern era, it permeates into our lives without second thought.

………………………. Continuing with cellphones, the problem is remains that they developed too quickly. Before we knew it, cell phones were also entertainment systems, our credit cards, our MP3s, our ledgers and address books, our maps, our news streams, our fitness trackers… The technology developed so quickly, so efficiently — and society with it — that to get by, any individual had to buy in.

That is the digital prison — unwilling consent to an inescapable lifestyle.

And if the principle of the fear is not enough, look at the application of it. In China, for example, there is a social credit system that bars people from jobs, schooling, eating or shopping establishments. The system even goes so far as to publicly shame Chinese citizens who maintain “insufficient” scores. They go so far as posting their picture, ID information, and address to the public. The reason? To entice submission and compliance.

And once again, like the Ulez rhetoric, many will present the excuse that “That is in China, such a thing won’t happen here.” But it does. We have facial ID, thumb print scanners, grocery stores that can only be accessed by QR code or facial recognition. Some places are switching to digital payment altogether, and excluding the use of cash entirely. The WEF once entertained the idea of “prescriptive elections,” in which the need to vote would no longer exist because governing entities would already “know the result” through data trends.

……………………………………………………………………………………. And aside from the examples we write off as acceptable because of “crisis,” it would appear that in the most subliminal and seemingly harmless ways, we have already taken the first plunge; we have already submitted ourselves to be molded by further effects of digitization.

In my opinion, the full-blown digital prison is nearing reality. There are zero indications that the companies who make the technologies are looking to make their platforms safer, less addictive, and less invasive. What is worse, there is also no indication that governments want to remain a healthy distance away from a society that is grafted to technology dependence.

So what do you think? Are we nearing life in a digital prison? Are we there already? What are we currently subjected to? What will we be subjected to in the future? More importantly, what can we do to stop it?