Re: <nettime> Philosophy of the Internet of Things

[dan@geer.org]

Rob,  I will study your references.  Thank you, and my compliments
on being so very early.

The self-interest of the insurance industry in sensor-informed risk
calibration is natural and to be expected.  In larger societies,
both in the U.S. (from whence I write) and Europe, fully calibrated
risk pricing has tended to become a political question, e.g., should
genetic information adjust the price of life insurance coverage,
even trivially observable genetics such as whether you are female
or male (or in the case of Obamacare, whether you are young and
invicible or old and chronically decrepit).  It is perhaps in
insurance pricing policy that the debate you seek can most readily
be framed for the greater audience.

When government declares that you must buy insurance of this or
that sort, it is certainly debatable whether such insurance ought
be agnostic as to your condition insofar as you have no choice in
whether to buy that insurance, or pay that tax as the Supreme Court
defines the mandate found in Obamacare.  One might even argue that
calibrated with enough real-time data, insurance of all stripes
becomes taxes across the board, and insurers become taxing authorities
in some sense.  Vandalism rose in your neighborhood each of the
last six months?  You must now pay more for your homeowner's policy
going forward in proportion to your house number.  You drove way
too fast yesterday and the day before?  A micropayment is now due;
click here to proceed.  One almost thinks of the sale of indulgences,
but where confession is not required as confession is recorded
automatically regardless of your state of contrition.

There is much room here to consider philosophy.

--dan


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