For how often I see articles talking about the dangers of tech, I’m surprised at the lack of mention for watch_dogs. Sure, its just a silly little Ubisoft game series, but this game series predicted so much of today’s world. The 2nd game is basically propoganda against corporations hoarding so much data, exploring how each of them exploit the world they inhabit. If you haven’t played the game, I highly recommend checking it out just for the intro alone. It might not be real world events or actual statistics, but it sure broke down some of the major problems in the industry into something my 13 year old brain could comprehend when I first played the game.
Let’s produce marginally less data - tracker removed:
Did it really predict these things? We’ve had data surveillance and algorithmic targeting for a while before Watchdogs. A lot of “prescient” sci-fi is just writing about stuff that’s already happening but which people don’t pay much attention to.
This video doesn’t seem to be necessarily wrong, it just doesn’t seem to be very useful/actionable. It’s like a teaser for a hypothetical documentary film.
I think that today the prevention takes some effort and time to learn. In my personal experience people are mostly oblivious/shrug off the data mining, not thinking about the consequences (“what can they possibly do with this data?”).
I’d argue awareness is a big factor still
Games can help people talk about issues, bridging the communication barrier to some topics. Can’t believe they managed to explain the issue in 2 mins lol.
I thought it was a flop, but the reviews are positive