Game Changing
In choosing what our future looks like with streaming services, technology can shape us or we can shape it.
Prologue
A quick note, I wrote this post over the 2019 Christmas holiday, and rereading it in our current world makes me even more convinced of how important the control of networks will be going forward. With COVID-19 forcing people to stay home, the network has become the vital channel through which all communications and, to some degree, life flows. So now, more than ever, the idea of who owns these networks and how they are used is crucial to understand and to critique.
In the next few years, video games will see massive changes. These changes will impact the games themselves, as well as determining who will hold financial power in the industry (no longer just the game publishers and platform owners). These shifts will also portend changes far beyond the gaming world; they could shift the way you think about computers and technology. Up until now, computers have been like toasters; the device itself determines what you can make with it. But what happens when you no longer need to own an expensive and limited piece of hardware? What happens when the device could cost $25 dollars but give you access to a supercomputer in the cloud? What could you do with that access, and what are the unintended consequences for you as an individual, for the companies that own this technology, and for culture at large?
For years games were delivered on optical discs or via download; now Google, Microsoft, and Sony have game-streaming subscription services that allow consumers to access anything they want for a monthly fee. In addition, Apple and Google are launching mobile gaming download subscription services which provide another all-you-can-eat option.
Nintendo is moving in a different direction: planning to charge a subscription for just one game—Mario Kart—on mobile. While they’re proposing this new model they also have massive triple-A games like Overwatch coming to their Switch platform. In the end, this may lead to Nintendo becoming the company with the best hardware for the game-streaming world, a cheap portable device that can stream internet content.
Yet, other factors are important here. While the advent of 5G makes streaming viable, it also has the potential to create a two-tier market of people with access to bandwidth and people without that access, now that net neutrality is a thing of the past thanks to the current FCC.
This is a new turn of events. For a long time carriers have been the people who provided so-so customer service and phone hardware; they will now suddenly be the people who control the apps on your phone. In the near future, those same carriers (Verizon and AT&T) will also control the TV and advertising networks. This will be the first time companies control the network, content, advertising and (in some cases) the hardware and software. No more downloading, everything is streamed to every device, you no longer own anything but subscribe to both the software and hardware. This sounds like a technology-first, people-second future.
There is an alternative future that could see opportunities for people and companies to connect in new ways. For example, imagine that you run a weekend music festival. Right now no one will download your festival app because it's too hard to find, it's another app on their phone, making a good app is expensive, and what do you do with it once the weekend is over? In a streaming world, the app could be integrated into an advert for the festival; instead of downloading an app, the content is streamed to your phone with an option to buy tickets to the festival. Press the button and your tickets are purchased. No app download, no logging in, no credit card entry. As a festival organizer, you would only pay to have a service app for the week leading up to the event; the app would do just what was needed, and once the event was past it would no longer clutter the App Store.
In choosing what our future looks like with streaming services, technology can shape us or we can shape it.
Grey Space
Too often, people look for black and white answers to complex problems.
The last in my series of book pairings is Computer Power and Human Reason and Maigret’s Memoirs. Two very different books, they are linked in that they each look at how human life can be over-simplified in their representation and what happens when some of the most important aspects of that life suddenly go missing.
In Computer Power and Human Reason, author Joseph Weizenbaum writes about the founding of artificial intelligence and how his computer program LISA allowed people to form the most unlikely and intimate relationships with a machine. People thought this machine was understanding their complexity as people but was, in fact, nothing more than a system which had incorporated their own words into a feedback loop. Reflecting on the danger of this deception, Weizenbaum wrote:
“What emerges as the most elementary insight is that, since we do not now have any ways of making computers wise, we ought not now to give computers tasks that demand wisdom.”
While Weizenbaum explains how over-simplification resulted in a false intimacy engendered by a computer program, Maigret’s Memoirs is an entirely different kind of fiction (within a fiction) that makes clear the dangers of another kind of over-simplification. Maigret’s Memoirs is a brilliantly meta-story in which Georges Simenon (the author of the Maigret series of mysteries) turns himself into a character in his own novel, and shifts his character, Detective Chief Inspector Jules Maigret of the Paris Surete, into the position of the writer and narrator. The book purports to “set the record straight,” as Maigret recounts how he watched Simenon turning himself (Maigret) and his own behavior into a character. A key part of the fictional Maigret’s critique of the real Simenon (which is, of course, written by Simenon) is that authors oversimplify the messiness of real life. The “real Maigret” is irritated and wants to let the reader know how Simenon shortens time and leaves out all the boring aspects of police work to keep the reader engaged in, rather than repulsed by, the complex and deadly world of crime.
Both books address the dangers of over-simplification. In the first case, by accident or misunderstanding, something which is actually very simple (the LISA computer program) appears, wrongly, to be very complex and very human. In the case of Maigret’s Memoirs Simenon shows how the telling of stories often leaves out the day-to-day, step-by-step (sometimes boring) processes which are, in fact, crucial to getting to the heart of the matter, even when that matter is solving a fictional crime.
Too often, people look for black and white answers to complex problems. This can lead to oversimplified solutions: walk 10,000 steps a day to be healthy, work 10,000 hours to master any skill, etc. Yet, the reality is always more complex and nuanced and requires us to engage more deeply with problems and people, to develop our own best solutions and tools, to be patient and live in the grey space.
Computer Power and Human Reason by Joseph Weizenbaum
Maigret’s Memoirs by Georges Simenon
Tools That Shape Us
There seem to be many tools to make your life easier, but very few to help you get smarter and learn more.
On the weekend I drove a car which had a feature I had never seen before. It had a small LED indicator in the wing mirror which appeared when a car drove by me in the blind spot of the wing mirror. This saved me from having to crane my neck back over my shoulder to check that blind spot. Great! I thought, That’s handy, that makes my life easier.
Later on in the drive I had become used to this new tech and basked in its glory. No need to look any more, the little LED will just show up and I will be safe. Safe in this knowledge, I checked my mirrors and started to pull into the curb at which point I swerved quickly to avoid hitting two cyclists who were in my blind spot! Woah! It doesn’t work in that situation?
What had been a convenience a moment earlier now became a liability, making me think about all the trade-offs people make everyday for convenience. Google maps on your phone, no need to know where you’re going, right? Apart from all the people that ask me for directions while holding a smartphone in their hand, in New York, a city built on a grid for easy wayfinding.
This post is not about features, but about systemic problems of learning and how we apply our learning to the world. There seem to be many tools to make your life easier, but very few to help you get smarter and learn more.
Why? Perhaps it is that getting smarter and better at things requires hard work and patience, things that are not convenient. I am not advocating going back to the dark ages (or even the 90’s) and using maps and compasses again, but what I am advocating for is that we use technology to start building our own personal cultures, our own ways to think about the world, creating tools for ourselves to be more successful, happy and fulfilled.
What does that mean practically? Simple example. If you love sushi, instead of using yelp, spend the time looking up the best sushi restaurants in your area, make a list, map the locations, list out the specials and what you might eat there. Now make something, a blog post, email, instagram, anchor, snapchat about it and let other people know.
Do this every time, soon you are the expert instead of yelp, you have taken something you love and learned more and helped others learn more. This doesn’t have to be a job or make you money, but it is a way to share your personal culture — what you think and how you think — with others. That is how great ideas start.
Smart Cities
Smart cities can seem an odd concept, as it sounds as if the city by itself will improve; the reality is that cities are not just made from concrete, steel, and sensors but are mostly made of people.
This collection looks at the idea of using technology to build "smart" cities. Smart cities can seem an odd concept, as it sounds as if the city by itself will improve; the reality is that cities are not just made from concrete, steel, and sensors but are mostly made of people. I'm interested in exploring how technology can help connect people and data to build towards the “'triple bottom line' of economy, environment, and social equity," as one of the articles suggests.
New York's Bryant Park is tracking visitor behavior
"As AdAge reports, PlaceIQ and several other similar companies gather their information from mobile app location data (which most users allow access to when they download free mobile apps) or from geo-targeted mobile ads. Although the data is anonymized and not tied a specific user's phone, it still creates a surprisingly complete picture of the visitors to the park."
Same Strategy, Bigger Problem
"better neighborhood seems to matter and moving to areas of opportunity can increase income by 31% annually."
How Smart Cities Save Money (and the Planet)
"Cities around the world are getting bigger, fast. By 2015, there will be 22 metropolitan areas with populations of more than 10 million people. Around the world, some 180,000 people move into cities every day."
An Exclusive Look At Airbnb's First Foray Into Urban Planning
"Is it naive to think that you can simply drop a building onto a community and expect them to reorient their lives around it? Gebbia answers that community centers have always been a strong part of Japanese culture; this effort, in fact, is simply piggybacking on government efforts to build new ones."
Tools for Sustainable Cities
The effort builds on IBM’s Smarter Cities initiative, which is focused on how the strategic use of data and technology can drive sustainable growth and prosperity.