point systems

[gfish]

Everyone interested in predictive futurism and the effects of technology on economic systems needs to watch this video. The whole thing is awesome, but it really becomes genius around 20 minutes in.

Wii Games - E3 2010 - Guitar Hero 5

It's a dark, alternate version of the whuffie from Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. I certainly hope reality ends up being closer to the latter -- I much prefer adhocracies. But it definitely gives me a lot to think about. At what point do game points and dollars (economic points) merge? We've already seen that to a small degree in MMOs, of course, but almost always only in one direction. When do game points start to drive economic action on their own?

Comments

[maribou]

Indeed!

[orawnzva.livejournal.com]

I'm skeptical about the future described, because it's one in which, not only do consumers willingly trust every company with total surveillance (consumers can be bought), but the companies all trust each other — the health insurance company trusts the manufacturer of the pedometer, for example. The very same divergent trends [that guy] (what's his name again? he's a great speaker) points out weigh against the kind of common infrastructure that would make the world of bonus points work as described.

If you need a smartphone app to game the points system at the grocery store, why do you need a thin web client in every can of soda (which then can't be recycled) — sure, components are getting cheaper all the time, but is that really going to happen? RFID widgets that will interact with a personal area network, I'll believe, but I don't see self-powered computers being embedded in purely disposable packaging as realistic, and I hope I'm right, because that would be an awful waste of physical resources. Embedding data in disposables which can be displayed or executed by a non-disposable device you happen to have lying around (and possible new niches for such devices) seem like a much better idea.