In this brief article, I comment on Burrows, Wallace, Beer, Ciocănel and Cussens’ article ‘envisioning mortgage futures’. I consider the epistemic continuities between established and emerging credit scoring technologies, questioning the extent to which their opacity and consequences for inequality represent a departure from existing practices. I focus particularly on the implications of network-based credit assessment for family relationships, alongside the challenges of collective mobilisation and the role of regulation in shaping these developments. I ultimately call for critical social science to engage more directly with the future.
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Julia Anne Cook (2026) studied this question.
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