(Yes, starting a past with the definition of a word is lazy and trite, but I haven’t written anything in a month, and need more coffee, so here we are)
“Zeitgeist” – the defining spirit or mood of a particular period of history as shown by the ideas and beliefs of the time.
Merriam-Webster
Sometime over the past month or two, surveillance and data privacy issues have slowly oozed from the aluminum-foil hate wearing fringes into the mainstream’s consciousness. While there haven’t been any significant data breaches, that we know of to trigger this change, the NYTimes has placed a sharp editorial and newsdesk focus on the issue. From their One Nation, Tracked interactive feature to the recent scoop on facial recognition dragnet startup Clearview AI, the Times continues to dedicate critical real estate and resources towards these issues.
As discussed in prior posts, for our RE: yearlong group project, we have chosen to focus on the surveillance/data economy, and our working pitch was around creating an interactive board game to create awareness about the techniques, economics, and inequalities that currently exist.
In unexpected synchronicity, the Times today released a web game called Privacy Chicken. The gameplay employs a clever juxtaposition in which the only way to win is to give up all your data and not ask questions, however in doing so, you must give up all of your personal data. The realistic outcome is that the user always loses, and the more data you give up, the more money the data chicken can make.
Beyond the ingenious game design, and awesome 8-bit retro aesthetic, the game is compelling because it employs increasingly common, but problematic, techniques for harvesting your data. To win, one must enable microphone and webcam permissions, share their location data, allow cookies, take psychographic profile quizzes, and of course, allow Facebook access.
The Times game is great…however it leaves me wondering whether there is still enough white space for us to pursue another data privacy game or whether we need to step back and start from square one, addressing the problem space from another angle?
