Government - the app we cannot delete

As we struggle to extricate ourselves from the coronavirus debacle here in the UK, it has become obvious that a number of features may be here to stay in one form or another. A rather hefty clue has been the NHS contact-tracing app, although the entire pandemic episode has been an even bigger clue to our likely future.

A government app which comes pre-installed on all communication devices is hardly a new idea, but was previously the stuff of dystopian science fiction or in a much more concrete form as the intentions of the Chinese Communist Party. It can be done technically, it can be placed on an acceptance spectrum from tolerated to necessary to positively virtuous. Anything beyond the spectrum doesn’t much matter.

A government app is only part of it though – a clue. Another clue is daily life, the life we actually lead in this modern world of ours, the comforts it offers, the routines it imposes, the background it allows us to forget, the restrictions it persuades us to ignore, the degeneracy it almost manages to hide.

An unmissable clue is how we slipped so easily into the coronavirus version of a police state. So easily that many seem not to have noticed and many more seem unconcerned. Some of us may deplore, hate or be outraged at what has happened to us, but it did not just happen, the pieces of the jigsaw were on the table to begin with.

Daily life itself has become very much like a government app we cannot delete and it is far from being a new situation. We are governed all the time, much of it in our heads, installed from the day we were born and updated every now and then. We are now on version 2021. Version 2022 comes next year. The coronavirus debacle was an update.

To a good approximation the pervasive reach of government is everywhere and this has been the case for many decades. Ever since it became possible via rapid communication. So much so, that it is impossible to catalogue the myriad influences government has on our lives . From the washing instruction label inside my shirt to the paint on the front gate to the design of the lamp post on the street – I effectively live within a government app and unless I’m horribly mistaken so do you.

When the NHS app evolves, it cannot possibly evolve in a direction which spells more freedom, less interference, less probing, less control. That wouldn’t make sense. Government functionaries make business for themselves. There is no freedom business.

Play the game or don’t play the game, it makes little difference because most will play it. It then becomes normal, accepted, the way things are done. Make an eccentric move or two – that about as far as the freedom game goes.