"Our Super Technological Future"? Here's Hoping Not!

Recently, I came across this video of a presentation by Carnegie Mellon University Professor Jesse Schell, given at D.I.C.E. 2010.

Schell spends the first part of the talk discussing the surprising success of certain technology and games over the past year, and trying to explain that success, but then he spends the last part projecting a near-future world which will emerge from this "Facebook Games" era in which we find ourselves. He argues that all aspects of our lives could soon be governed by (primarily) corporate technology that will monitor quite literally everything we do, in order that we may earn various points and rewards.

You can find the entire talk posted on various websites, but this excerpt contains the scariest part:



At the 7:11 minute mark, he brings up something that hits especially close to home - the tracking of our reading habits. Here is a transcript:

"You sit down with your new Kindle 3.0, which, of course, has the eye-tracking sensor in it that can tell what you've read and how much you've read of the book. And it's important to read the whole book because, then, if you leave a review on Amazon, you'll get super bonus points if it knows you read the whole book through. As you finish the book [...] you get an achievement unlocked. This thing has been tracking you for 20 Years. You finished 500 novels, this is like a big achievement. You are thinking, "I'm really embarrassed that my 500th novel was this dumb Star Trek novel that I'm reading, because, like, I'm going to remember that forever". And then you start thinking about all these achievements and points and things and realizing that, you know, you have no idea what books your grandparents read or where they went on their daily basis. But these sensors that we're going to have on us and all around us and everywhere are going to be tracking, watching what we're doing forever. Our grandchildren will know every book that we read. That legacy will be there, will be remembered. And you get to thinking about how, wow, is it possible maybe that -- since all this stuff is being watched and measured and judged, that maybe I should change my behavior a little bit and be a little better than I would have been? So it could be that these systems are all crass commercialization and it's terrible. But it's possible that they will inspire us to be better people [...]"


So here's what I thought when I heard this, in approximate order:

1) What is wrong with Star Trek novels?!
2) Dude is actually saying that this will cause us to self-consciously police our own reading lists and this is a good thing?!
3) Didn't librarians win acclaim for, you know, not revealing users' reading histories when faced with the Patriot Act? Why on earth would people entrust their reading histories with corporations instead?
4) OMG, I have a Kindle. Big Brother is watching me right now...


Setting aside the fact that it would indeed be interesting to know what our grandparents read, it is a little bit narcissistic to assume that our grandchildren will wish the same about us. (Personally, I would be thrilled to discover that my grandmother was reading Star Trek novels!) And setting aside that concern about narcissism, I must admit that it's still a boon to anthropologists of the future that we are leaving behind such a huge amount of information about ourselves already.

But! And this is a really big BUT. I fail to see how reading, not reading, or secretly reading particular kinds of books is an accurate measure of a person's worth, intellectual or otherwise. And I also fail to see how any corporate interests collecting our reading histories would always use their powers for good.

Technology, books, privacy and libraries - this is far too much to unpack in a simple blog post.
But after seeing Schell's presentation, I am even happier to be part of a profession that helps people to read whatever they want, without fear of commercial enterprise, or the Thought Police.