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posted by Fnord666 on Saturday May 19 2018, @04:03AM   Printer-friendly
from the totally-just-a-thought-experiment dept.

Google's Selfish Ledger is an unsettling vision of Silicon Valley social engineering

Google has built a multibillion-dollar business out of knowing everything about its users. Now, a video produced within Google and obtained by The Verge offers a stunningly ambitious and unsettling look at how some at the company envision using that information in the future.

The video was made in late 2016 by Nick Foster, the head of design at X (formerly Google X) and a co-founder of the Near Future Laboratory. The video, shared internally within Google, imagines a future of total data collection, where Google helps nudge users into alignment with their goals, custom-prints personalized devices to collect more data, and even guides the behavior of entire populations to solve global problems like poverty and disease.

When reached for comment on the video, an X spokesperson provided the following statement to The Verge:

"We understand if this is disturbing -- it is designed to be. This is a thought-experiment by the Design team from years ago that uses a technique known as 'speculative design' to explore uncomfortable ideas and concepts in order to provoke discussion and debate. It's not related to any current or future products."

7m53s explainer video. The Selfish Ledger is embedded on The Verge or can be found elsewhere. Also at Business Insider.

See also: Philip Bloom is Angry at Google for Using His Work in an Internal Video


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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by richtopia on Saturday May 19 2018, @09:15AM

    by richtopia (3160) on Saturday May 19 2018, @09:15AM (#681552) Homepage Journal

    I know you are being sarcastic, but the generational aspect of data is surprising to me. Your parent Googled for a lot of freaky porn? Well guess what we know you are going to love!

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