4 ms·

Love the concept, but Using GPS data collected by Glass, the game generates a record of each player's daily routine. Scares me a bit. Do you have more detai

Love the concept, but Using GPS data collected by Glass, the game generates a record of each player's daily routine. Scares me a bit. Do you have more details on it?

djestrada 13y ago
I left the following comment in a reddit thread: Hi Thorse! I'm one of the developers for Swarm. You comments are well taken, and deserve a response. Our strategy for collecting and presenting data about collective action abstracts away from individual habits. We're interested in features of collective action (at the 'caste' and 'colony' level), not your personal daily routine. The data we collect will be groomed to remove individual data in such a way that, I hope, would allow people who are as concerned about privacy as you and I both are to confidently use the app. The other thing to make clear is that not everyone needs to play Swarm in order to build useful models for everyone. Consider Yelp!: maybe you don't want people to know your eating habits, but some people love leaving reviews. That record potentially helps anyone looking for a restaurant, whether or not they contribute their own opinions to the record. Similarly, Swarm trails might be useful to you whether or not you contribute to the trails yourself. I would also (humbly) object to the claim that Swarm! treats your life habits as a game mechanic. Your life is your life. Swarm doesn't intrude on that process to give you 100 points for buying chips at the store, or anything so cheap. The game aspects of Swarm interact with trails at an abstracted level, in order to reveal patterns about collective human behavior; but it won't be possible on a system like ours to watch, mess or interact with, or otherwise represent the activity of individual players directly. Its not about you, this is about us. For instance, which are the most scenic trails in Inwood Park? A populated Swarm! map instantly tells me how the populations that have traversed these trails before have distributed their walking patterns along the park. From passive players I see their aggregated preferences, and from the active players I may have incentive (both in game and out) to respond to the attractions they’ve built in the course of their travels. From that information I might choose to trust the reliability of the crowd, or contribute to the inspection of a road less traveled, or blaze a new trail altogether. In other words, you can live your life however you want; Swarm! just lets you do it with the ant superpower of instant access to collective memory. As long as enough people have that superpower, we'll all be a little smarter. http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1jysa5/our_first_look_at_the_only_mmo_currently_being/cbjw1sp http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1jysa5/our_first_loo...

Love the concept, but Using GPS data collected by Glass, the game generates a record of each player's daily routine. Scares me a bit. Do you have more details on it?

djestrada 13y ago

I left the following comment in a reddit thread: Hi Thorse! I'm one of the developers for Swarm. You comments are well taken, and deserve a response. Our strategy for collecting and presenting data about collective action abstracts away from individual habits. We're interested in features of collective action (at the 'caste' and 'colony' level), not your personal daily routine. The data we collect will be groomed to remove individual data in such a way that, I hope, would allow people who are as concerned about privacy as you and I both are to confidently use the app. The other thing to make clear is that not everyone needs to play Swarm in order to build useful models for everyone. Consider Yelp!: maybe you don't want people to know your eating habits, but some people love leaving reviews. That record potentially helps anyone looking for a restaurant, whether or not they contribute their own opinions to the record. Similarly, Swarm trails might be useful to you whether or not you contribute to the trails yourself. I would also (humbly) object to the claim that Swarm! treats your life habits as a game mechanic. Your life is your life. Swarm doesn't intrude on that process to give you 100 points for buying chips at the store, or anything so cheap. The game aspects of Swarm interact with trails at an abstracted level, in order to reveal patterns about collective human behavior; but it won't be possible on a system like ours to watch, mess or interact with, or otherwise represent the activity of individual players directly. Its not about you, this is about us. For instance, which are the most scenic trails in Inwood Park? A populated Swarm! map instantly tells me how the populations that have traversed these trails before have distributed their walking patterns along the park. From passive players I see their aggregated preferences, and from the active players I may have incentive (both in game and out) to respond to the attractions they’ve built in the course of their travels. From that information I might choose to trust the reliability of the crowd, or contribute to the inspection of a road less traveled, or blaze a new trail altogether. In other words, you can live your life however you want; Swarm! just lets you do it with the ant superpower of instant access to collective memory. As long as enough people have that superpower, we'll all be a little smarter. http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1jysa5/our_first_look_at_the_only_mmo_currently_being/cbjw1sp http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1jysa5/our_first_loo...