China rates its own citizens – including online behaviour

Why females?

If you actually take time to look at the chart, you will see that life expectancy plummeted between 1965 and 1985, losing full three years male life expectancy and gaining zero for women.

And it "peaked" under the rule of Gorbachev who scrapped that "new citizen" nonsense in favour of damage control, which did not help him in the long run anyway.

It did not peak before Gorbachev was in power.

They try to fight reality and thus make what they saw self-fulfilling.

Once you look for insurgents you only see them everywhere and then you are ruined.

> How did they get to this point?

Having a dictatorship as a government tends to lead down this path.

> What goes on in the mind of the person sitting in the "idea room" when they first thought of this?

I don't think the people who pitch these ideas are always the negative power hungry types - though with the media constantly pitching fear as they do in North America, it's easy to see how we'd immediately jump to that conclusion. My knee jerk reaction is incredulity, but stop and think about it for a second... their brainwashing is no different than happens in our Western "Democracy." We talk about the "freedom" we have, but our behaviour is manipulated by the media, advertising, consumerism, the society around us which seeks to enforce our buy in to their values. What's the difference if it's peer pressure making us conform or the Government? The end result is the same - it makes it a struggle to maintain independent thought, and upon reflection, is it really independent thought anyway? Are we truly free? Cases can be made for both sides of the argument with both sides claiming the other is deluded.

There are many negative personalities in society, those that don't toe the line, those that don't care about the effect their actions have on others, those that would do whatever they please and to hell with everyone else.

I can see how in some skewed perspective, one might consider "what if we can make people conform to the way we think everyone should behave to make our society a better place for all." Unfortunately, as they say, absolute power corrupts absolutely. I could see it bringing harmony to society if everyone bought into it, however, I think it's much more likely to end up in some Demolition Man style dystopia where those that conform live in the open and those that don't wish to conform and want freedom live in some alternate reality, hidden from mainstream society.

Hopefully Taco Bell doesn't win the franchise wars or they're all doomed :P

This is why I keep "pirating" and hoarding books. I know it's bad for the common good and bad for the authors but I feel paranoid about corporations and national security agencies collecting and later, perhaps, analyzing what I read, including how long I linger over a page, what I underline, when I take screenshot excerpts, etc.

I started innocently enough, by scanning all my physical books (and downloading the epubs or pirated pdfs of books I already paid for in physical form whenever available) just to lighten my steps, so to speak. Then I came upon a passage in 1984 where books were altered, entire passages excised and rewritten to suit whatever powers that be. It was completely unrealistic when 1984 was written, of course, but in 2013 (when I read it), this hit a little bit too close to home. With all our devices constantly itching to phone the mothership, this is not a fantasy anymore but a possibility. All that stands between Orwell's dark vision and reality is, in fact, political will and our collective memory of times when this was not possible. Perhaps future generations who do not remember physical books will more easily acquiesce to such intrusions for the sake of "mental hygiene" and, you know, the children and stuff.

Anyhow, today I look at a 16K+ Bibdesk database which, of course, includes the files/ebooks on my airgapped machine and feel curiously satisfied. Not in a lifetime will I be able to read all this but I know that I could spend my remaining days reading freely, no matter the external circumstances. Freedom of thought! (Also, a very neat and nifty system for me personally I admit... :)