As more of our life moves online, digital marketers and spies gather more data about us, with more serious consequences. Our online activity becomes a reputation record which can be used to judge us. How can such judgments create economic and other borders in our lives?
Even if the actions you take online today don’t have immediate consequences, all the data is stored in corporate and state databases as a record of who you are and how you think. It may be used in future for a variety of purposes: to check your suitability to cross a border, to estimate your personal wealth or credit-worthiness, even to reconstruct your personality when you’re gone.
In an age that Brian Massumi argues is dominated by pre-emptive forms of power, the link between online reputation, access to paid services, and judgements by border agents is likely to increase.
So what might your Facebook profile tell businesses or state actors about you?
As Facebook is de facto one of today’s great public spaces, you might see this as a kind of identity-based, border control.
