THIRD ANNUAL SCREENS ISSUE - MediaPost

meaning the board actually said the
words I saw above me.
“You a Shakespeare fan?” The voice
came again.
“Sure,” I said, turning to see where
the voice was coming from.
“Up here, Chuck.” I looked back at
the board and one side of the screen was
shaped like a smiley-face icon. The lips
moved when it spoke.
“Thought I’d go with a smiley face
versus a scary Tron-looking thing.
Besides, Tron Part Two sucked.”
“Agreed.”
“They call me the Bard. A few years
back, MOMA did a real-time data exhibit
thing, and they ran Shakespeare quotes
on my screen. Somebody got cute and
took the ‘o’ out of ‘Board,’ and it trended
on Twitter, so here we are.”
I looked at the other side of the
screen, opposite his “face.” “So what’s
with the quote? Am I a ‘mere layer’?”
I assumed the metaphor had to do
with the Smart Grid, where the notion
of Big Data meant that with networked
Artificial Intelligence, we’d arrived at an
Internet of Things mentality. In a sense,
everything with a chip in it was alive, or
in this case, a layer. Being a geek, I’d felt
the whole idea (Singularity) was inevitable,
starting around 2011 or so. I was
also sure Bard was hooked to the Internet
and dozens of cameras in the station that
pumped images he could access anytime
from the cloud.
“Sort of,” Bard responded. “Don’t get
pissed, but I accessed your email and
social channels just now.”
I wasn’t that pissed. “Privacy” had a
whole new definition these days. Since
a GPS knew where you were at all times
and everyone’s virtual games were
hooked real time to the Web, government
types simply accessed video or
Outernet feeds from citizens whenever
they wanted. Everyone’s lives were
recorded at all times. According to CNN,
no event occurred without at least two
cameras recording what happened for
potential public usage. News and law
enforcement had become whole different
animals the past few years.
“Why is my foot wet?” I said, interrupting
Bard as warm liquid seeped onto
my right foot. I looked down to see my
black loafer had a dark stain.
Bard spoke quietly. “That’s what I’m
trying to tell you, Chuck. Look.”
His screen switched to an image of
me arriving at the platform downstairs
from a few minutes ago. I saw my journey
from the train and could tell I was in
my game since my eyes appeared glazed
and distant. The camera views switched
a few times, from commuters to station
cameras and back. And then as I turned
a corner, I saw myself stumble where I
had kicked the sack of grain.
But it wasn’t a sack of grain. It was a
homeless guy. He had blocked my path
and I had stumbled hard into his arm.
And then I watched in horror as I pulled
my foot back and kicked him squarely
in the face, breaking his nose. Blood
poured onto my shoe as he clutched his
face in agony while I simply took a step
back while my points tallied.
“You weren’t supposed to kick the
grain, Chuck,” said Bard. “That’s what
the money signs are for. Kicking good
things means you lose points. But you
were too fast. And Tom sat up at a bad
moment.”
I couldn’t move. The image of me
kicking the homeless guy — Tom —
kept playing over in my brain. It was
an image I knew I’d never erase. And it
wasn’t a game.
What kind of man am I?
I stood for a long moment, gameblinded
commuters rushing by. For once
I heard the sound of shoes on pavement
— no soundtrack, no sound effects. This
was reality. And it sucked.
“Chuck.”
I looked up. Bard had cleared
his screen, and the following words
appeared slowly, one by one:
What are you prepared to do?
About a year later, on my birthday,
Bard said he had a surprise for me.
“Turn on your CPRS game.”
I did, and my commuter SIM went
live. Bard had hacked it so it was pointing
downstairs, and I followed the arrow to
the spot where I had kicked Tom. Instead
of a sack of grain, I saw a huge virtual
package with the words “The Impossible
Idea” written on the side. An icon on the
upper left of my vision flashed, indicating
it would open if I moved my eyes quickly
to the left.
My Impossible Idea had been fairly
simple. I quit my job and volunteered
at the Robin Hood Foundation to create
an app that rewarded people for kind
actions to the homeless in New York City.
Gwyneth Paltrow was their spokesperson
and with her avatar in the SIM, the
game took off. Starbucks joined in, and
pretty soon the pay-it-forward mantra
went full swing in Penn Station. Within a
few months, people donated their Klout
perks and accountability bonuses so that
actions generated behavior change as
well as words.
So now I looked at the spot where I
had kicked Tom, my life transformed by
a mistake. I moved my eyes to the left,
and the virtual package fell open.
And I saw Tom. He was clean-shaven,
waving and smiling. He was piped
in via Skype, wearing the Robin Hood
T-shirt they’d given him the day we first
met. He’d gone from being a volunteer
to a full-time staff member, and gotten
the first assisted-living residence made
via profits from my app.
I smiled. “Thanks, Bard.”
Staring at the spot, I blinked three
times rapidly to turn off my SIM’s
contact lenses. My vision cleared of all
icons, layers disappearing between me
and the empty pavement where Tom
used to lie.
And it was empty.
Spring 2012 MEDIA MAGAZINE 51