The Most Disturbing Presentation of the Year | Hacker News Reader

The Most Disturbing Presentation of the Year

spectrum.ieee.org

48 pointsmightybyte13 comments

I wouldn't be too scared about the presentation. Mr. Schell is a super smart guy, no doubt, but his sense of what will be popular in the future is way off. He admits to being blindsided by the wii, almost all the games he mentions in his talk, and he makes a joke about how everyone hates the iPad, which has already run out of stock for new preorders. His taste != the taste of consumers. Which is not to say there's anything wrong with his taste, just that it's very hard to predict the future when you are shocked that people find wii sports fun.

"But everything we do and (more importantly) all the information we attend to will win us points and benefits across a vast incentives network engineered by corporations and government entities. Or, more tersely: we will live in a game."

I didn't watch the presentation, but based on the description, I think that's the way things always have been. The great game is called "economics" and the points are called "money".

I think he overestimates the capability of these kinds of incentives. Incentives do have an effect, but not always the effect you intended.

I'm kinda old fashioned for my age, but I thought the end of the video where humanity was coerced into cleaning up its act was the scariest part. I disagree with his definition of 'cleaning up its act.' It sounds like he equates 'cleaning up humanity's act' with the small changes, like brushing your teeth, cleaning your room, and eating your vegetables. Is it really to our benefit to have this god watching over us, and we'd better act good otherwise we'll go to hell. I mean, let's be reasonable, no game system in the world is going to end rape, theft, or murder. but what would it change?

Apart from my crotchety rantings, it was nice seeing how many of his ideas of the future seemed to come from Futurama. :)

Agreed. I did not find the end to be optimistic at all. I found it to be a totalitarian nightmare. Let's face it, technology like this isn't going to be "opt out" if the government has anything to do with it. Show me a government that, when given more data about the personal lives of the governed, didn't become more oppressive in using this information to first encourage, and later coerce specific behavior.

We already see this coming with "smart grid" technology, whereby the power companies would be able to control when you use certain appliances. Now imagine gaming that system, whereby you would be allowed to use certain devices more if you correct certain behaviors. There's just no end to this.

Now imagine a group of people decides that they are going to "opt out" anyway, and go off grid. They defeat the sensors in their lives in some fashion because they no longer wish to be tracked and monitored. The response is predictable: These people are labeled as subversives who use resources without accountability. They are not good citizens. They promote societal unrest. They cannot be allowed to ruin the lives of their fellow countrymen with their selfish behavior. They must be forced to comply.

Yeah, disturbing to say the least.

It takes all kinds of people to make the world go around, and birds need a left wing and a right wing to fly. So long as people just talk about visions of the future with people acting "the way they're supposed to", "responsibly", whatever...it's quaint. And if your name is Plato, people still might read and talk about your ideas 2,400 years later, but whenever people have banded together to bring these visions about it's resulted in distopia.

Sorry, meant to vote this up, not down.

Schell's followup talk at GDC allegedly gives some important context. Unfortunately it's not online from what I can tell. Gamasutra talks about it in passing here: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/27754/Opinion_Fear_and_Lo...

The idea that you need to hack yourself ie trick yourself into doing things is pretty well-known and not limited to just tricking yourself by rewarding yourself somehow.

We already have a point system that works: money. For all these points systems to really be adopted they need to be tied to money or to "social value". Basically, the points only work if they help people with more of them get laid. We already have those, we already deal with them.

This line of thought is not that revolutionary, disturbing, or disruptive.

If this idea about objects is interesting to you, check out Bruce Sterling's book "Shaping Things, " (non-affiliate link: http://www.amazon.com/Shaping-Things-Mediaworks-Pamphlets-St... )

He talks about how objects have changed and will change over time. Jesse is talking about "spimes" in this particular talk.

The step after this? "Biots."

America, please quit playing! Start reading!

I find specially scaring the fact that one like idea of "Levels 9 Student" Is that the way education system should be fixed? Can it be fixed that way? Oooh really??? Seriously all the sudden kids will start studying math just for another "level up"?? I might be sounding old-fashioned but my school motivation was greediness for the new knowledge and i hardly can imagine high school students studing better just because simple teacher name them "Level 78 Master of Chemistry". Or maybe i am just too old and completely missing a point. To me guys is just overexcited about "Gowalla syndrome"

When framed in the right way, people will pay you for the opportunity to level up. See: World Of Warcraft.

How is "Level 9 Student" different than an "'A' student" or a 3.8 GPA?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com