"Google’s Selfish Ledger is an unsettling vision of Silicon Valley social engineering" (GOOG)
From The Verge, May 17, 2018:
This internal video from 2016 shows a Google concept for how total data collection could reshape society
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.”
Titled The Selfish Ledger, the 9-minute film
starts off with a history of Lamarckian epigenetics, which are broadly
concerned with the passing on of traits acquired during an organism’s
lifetime. Narrating the video, Foster acknowledges that the theory may
have been discredited when it comes to genetics but says it provides a
useful metaphor for user data. (The title is an homage to Richard
Dawkins’ 1976 book The Selfish Gene.) The way we use our phones
creates “a constantly evolving representation of who we are,” which
Foster terms a “ledger,” positing that these data profiles could be
built up, used to modify behaviors, and transferred from one user to
another:
“User-centered design principles have
dominated the world of computing for many decades, but what if we looked
at things a little differently? What if the ledger could be given a
volition or purpose rather than simply acting as a historical reference?
What if we focused on creating a richer ledger by introducing more
sources of information? What if we thought of ourselves not as the
owners of this information, but as custodians, transient carriers, or
caretakers?”
The so-called ledger of our device use — the data on our
“actions, decisions, preferences, movement, and relationships” — is
something that could conceivably be passed on to other users much as
genetic information is passed on through the generations, Foster says.
Building on the ledger idea, the middle section of the video presents a
conceptual Resolutions by Google system, in which Google prompts users
to select a life goal and then guides them toward it in every
interaction they have with their phone. The examples, which would
“reflect Google’s values as an organization,” include urging you to try a
more environmentally friendly option when hailing an Uber or directing
you to buy locally grown produce from Safeway.
Of course, the concept is premised on Google having
access to a huge amount of user data and decisions. Privacy concerns or
potential negative externalities are never mentioned in the video. The
ledger’s demand for ever more data might be the most unnerving aspect of
the presentation.
Foster envisions a future where “the notion of a
goal-driven ledger becomes more palatable” and “suggestions may be
converted not by the user but by the ledger itself.” This is where the Black Mirror
undertones come to the fore, with the ledger actively seeking to fill
gaps in its knowledge and even selecting data-harvesting products to buy
that it thinks may appeal to the user. The example given in the video
is a bathroom scale because the ledger doesn’t yet know how much its
user weighs. The video then takes a further turn toward anxiety-inducing
sci-fi, imagining that the ledger may become so astute as to propose
and 3D-print its own designs. Welcome home, Dave, I built you a scale....
