MGS2 forced you to play as new protagonist Raiden, not series' hero Solid Snake, to make a wider point about the information age and the nature of free will. How has the world been influenced by data profiling and manipulation? This is not science fiction, but rather an uncanny prediction of the digital society in which we live today – which affects us all in subtler, more sinister, ways than Mueller’s investigation into voter manipulation – that has already changed our political landscape and capacity for debate. MGS2's 'villains' aren't an exact analogue of a social media giant like Facebook, or even a data firm like Cambridge Analytica, but more a system of control in which we are active, if unwitting, participants.
Hideo Kojima’s misunderstood MGS2 foretold of a shadowy organisation called The Patriots who aimed to control society through digital manipulation, using social profiling, targeted memes and stealthy pervasion. It will only slow down social progress, reduce the rate of evolution.” Rose and Colonel Campbell, MGS2 All this junk data preserved in an unfiltered state, growing at an alarming rate. Rumors about petty issues, misinterpretations, slander. “In the current, digitized world, trivial information is accumulating every second, preserved in all its triteness. The irony is that MGS2 had warned us how memes were hindering the transmission of worthwhile information by cluttering the world with trivial data. The meme became the story, distracting us from closer inspection of Kojima's work. The topic is currently making headlines via a firm called Cambridge Analytica, who harvested over 57m Facebook user profiles to create targeted advertising aimed at influencing voting intentions. Amusing as it was, the meme was shared and forgotten within 24 hours, with few pausing to consider the accuracy of MGS2's predictions of a digital society where personal data held the key to behavioural manipulation.
0 kommentar(er)
