The opening of the most depressing thing I’ve read so far today, Eddie Earnest’s well-written Venture Beat essay about the possibility of humans being assigned a “character score” online, because American culture hasn’t yet been reduced enough to high-school level by Facebook, comic-book movies and reality television:

“As the globe shrinks and our social worlds expand, the need for more transparency in both our on and offline dealings is increasing. In a virtual world, we may need a universal character score.

Before the Young’s Modulus measurement of elasticity, engineers had to guess when a material would fail. A chancy proposition in the context of bridge-building, yet a risk we still take when it comes to assessing the fortitude of a person’s character. When daily business was conducted face-to-face, judging character was a fairly straightforward, albeit highly subjective, process. Now, in a digitally connected world, assessing character can be a stubbornly elusive task.

The potential for a universal character score is huge. A standardized measure could help us decide everything from who to partner with on a business venture to whose yard sale we should attend — and everything in between. Measuring and quantifying personal character has long been considered an impossibility, yet we may find it helps us in both our social and professional digital interactions.”