Im about 90% through No Place to Hide, the latest book from Glenn Greenwald on the NSAs abuse of power. From the 10,000 foot perspective, it becomes clear how little of the NSAs mandate is about terrorism or protecting the homeland. The NSA have essentially turned our real-world into a global Massively Multiplayer Online Game - in which were the pawns and they are the game masters. Greenwald makes specific mention of a group within the NSA whose primary goal is manipulation of public perception through media, entertainment, and online platforms like Facebook and Google. In other words, the NSA doesnt operate in a uni-directional fashion. Based on data they collect about us (metrics) they make adjustments to the game balance, thereby manipulating the very fabric of our reality and our response to future stimuli. Games (especially the F2P, online/mobile type) have received a lot of flack in recent years for becoming metric driven. We instinctively dislike the idea of being analyzed and manipulated towards desired behaviors. Maybe because we know how easily manipulated we really are. When it comes to games, we know the science and application exists. There are conferences, books, hell... as I type this on Facebook Im seeing an ad for Tableau Software (one of the tools we use to visualize player behavior in our games)! Data collection, analysis, and tuning is everywhere. With games, marketing, and consumption in general, we can make efforts to escape the Matrix. But when a government agency turns our core mediums for expression and communication into a tool for manipulation... how do you unplug? And is it the awareness of our inability to escape thats made everyone so passive to the issue? Or is reality being hidden from us? It does seem there is literally no place to hide... amazon/No-Place-Hide-Snowden-Surveillance-ebook/dp/B00E0CZX0G
Posted on: Wed, 21 May 2014 00:04:38 +0000
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