Data culture 2.0

My son took me on his Halo web page today. He plays it on the Xbox 360 but all of his stats are accessible via the bungie.net website.  On there among other things is a database of every online game of Halo3 he has ever played. Plus a map which shows how many of his buddies are online so he can decide whether to go online and challenge them. He can store movies of his best games as souvenirs for sharing and screenshots for wallpapers for PC or phone. Most interesting to me were the heatmaps - these are charts which show how he has played the game - they can be viewed by weapon so you can see how much he uses each weapon, how effectively he uses it and critically which locations he tends to use which weapon. Now this information is available to his opponents also. A huge security hole - the diagnostics aren't primarily for your benefit but for those who can research how most easily to wipe you out!

This it seems to me is really interesting because it shows how ambivalent our use of data is.  While an older generation worry about privacy what is much more interesting is what people do with the data they can get access to. We're not nearly as worried about who has the data as we think we are.  I must have had at least 15 fraudulent emails today trying to cheat me out of money - I ignore them.  In the last couple of days I have been asked to join the Spock verification network - so I did because I trusted the source - and forwarded it to a lot of people. Only one asked me what it was and whether it was a scam. Most have joined without objection presumably because they trust me.  Why are we doing it? Because we're interested to see what will happen. This is data as improvisation - my son is working on the basis that this information sharing makes the game more interesting. If he is beaten all the time then he will no longer play the game. Sharing more informatino increases the interest of the game.  This is network thinking with a vengeance.

When the pachinko parlours in Japan put the details of every single machine on the internet with the frequency of pay out, the amount of the payout and the date of the last pay out the amount gambled increased dramatically - even if there was really no evidence that more information made it easier to win - it just made it more fun to play. Data is content - if it is handled well enough - and a lot cheaper than storytelling - the users can supply the narrative themselves.