1) What is plausible and what is implausible about the future that Jesse Schell describes and, most importantly, make a clear case for why?
A lot of what Jesse Schnell brought up is definitely plausible, and has begun to happen even more in the four years (!!! we’re getting old, guys!) since this talk.
I especially recognized what he was saying about points as something that’s already a reality. I was working at Walgreens a couple years ago when they instituted the Balance Rewards program, which, speaking as a cashier, was a nightmare of explaining to people whythey needed to sign up so my line would go faster. Basically, people would put in their information – at the very least, a full name, phone number, and zip code – and then swipe their card or enter a phone number whenever they checked out in the hope of earning bonus points that would eventually add up to discounts. You also needed to be signed up or you wouldn’t be able to get sale prices anymore. That was what really made most people sign up, but a fair amount of customers realized that this was intended as a way to both promote customer loyalty and track what consumers purchased and some were pretty incensed about it.
It sounds Orwellian, but I stood there day after day seeing how the coupons that printed out with receipts were tailored to the customer based not only what they had just purchased, but on their previous purchases as well. Lots of other stores uses coupon printers from Catalina Marketing that deliver “individualized marketing” to businesses by tracking purchases in this way.
The example of receiving experience points for performing everyday tasks also rang true for me. There are already some free apps like Habit RPG, which promises to provide “external motivation for completing your day-to-day activities” by allowing players to assign themselves tasks of different difficulty levels that they can earn points for completing, or lose points for not completing. I tried using it earlier this year, and I can see how it could be effective, but I guess I’m just too talented a procrastinator since according to my Habit RPG account I’ve been “resting in the inn” for about a month now.
2 ) How do you think current city screens (such as animated billboards) and future ones (as described in Living Skins) will factor into a future where we continue to be constant contributors of data (of both personal and impersonal nature). For example, how might this bring communities closer, educate us, empower us, alienate us, and/ or commodify us or de-commodify us? Provide at least two exampls of where this is happening already. Use the links to the left.
As for Peter Hall’s Living Skins essay, I think he made sure to focus more on artistic or community-driven uses for “city screens,” but in discussing the examples by Edlar brothers it was clear that steps had to be taken to ensure they wouldn’t end up as advertising pawns. I think there is probably greater potential for such screens to be used for marketing than anything else, though. We already have video billboards on streets and in subway systems. Anything that can be used to make art can also be used to try to sell you things, so it seems inevitable.
On the other hand, lower resolution systems that use shapes to create messages are probably easier to use for raising awareness since they use less expensive technology, like strategically lighting the windows of a building to spell “GO HAWKS” or post a message about fighting a certain illness.
3) How might gaming factor into this (or not)?
Jane McGonigal’s TED Talk had a lot of interesting things to say about this and how the energy expended into gaming can be harnessed to create creative solutions to problems. I’m reminded of Habit RPG again, and how I initially thought it would be really useful to apply XP and Health points to my actual life, since several of my friends and I have all been playing a phone game called The Simpsons: Tapped Out for months now. It basically involves building a Sim City-esque version of Springfield where you collect money, XP, and donuts for assigning tasks to characters from the show that they have to complete in real time. The thing is, you can use donuts get special content or to complete tasks faster so you don’t have to spend a day waiting for a building to appear, except that donuts are really hard to get in the game. To get more donuts, you have to spend real world money, which some people apparently do, because EA can afford to offer the game for free with no ads. I guess my point is that people are easily motivated by the act of playing a game, since they will devote time and potentially money every day just to amass fake stuff in a game where nothing particularly exciting happens.