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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
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Monday May 21 2018, @01:02AM
As expected, the public outrage providers have twisted this into a headline guaranteed to maximize outrage and attention. I decided to actually go watch this video after hearing so much shouting about it, and lo, it has nothing to do with the reporting.
It's basically a thought experiment comparing a person's digital data with their genes.
Key points:
1. Digital data is modified during a person's lifetime, e.g. epigenetics and Lamarckian evolution.
2. Digital data can be passed down through generations to improve the species, like genes.
3. Genes evolve toward what is best for its own survival, not for the good of the organism itself (e.g. praying mantis males get eaten by the female, the genes are not in the best interest of the survival of the male, but of the praying mantis genes).
4. Maybe the ledger (a person's digital data) can also be selfish (e.g. it is used to encourage or trick the user into providing more of their own data, through devices like Google Home or smartphones, not for the benefit of the individual, but for the benefit of the ledger of data itself and perhaps for the species as a whole.
5. Like how we can use genetic data to help cure or potentially modify ourselves for the better, maybe we can also use these ledge to help improve ourselves.
The chapter titles are also thought provoking. Il Grillo Parlante is the cricket in Pinocchio who tells Pinocchio to behave and go to school and Pinocchio kills the cricket rather than listen. Cornelius Fudge is a character from the Harry Potter series who is in denial about the truth and with traditional values. Unus pro omnibus is part of a quote: One for all and all for one.
The fact that the titles is The Selfish Ledger really drives home the though experiment part of it. Should the ledger prioritize its own survivial over the individual, and what would that look like?
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