The most insightful vision of the future at CES came from HBO’s ‘Westworld’

When media folks received a cryptic invite to an HBO Westworld experience at CES, we knew we were in for it. But no one could’ve predicted that the night would end in the fifty or so gathered dinner guests erupting in shocked gasps.

By the end of the 2.5-hour interactive performance experience at Las Vegas’ NoMad, the activation put together by creative agency Big Spoon revealed itself to be much more than just a clue about Season 3 of HBO’s dystopian TV series. It was also one of the most incisive commentaries on our real-world future to emerge from the biggest conference in tech.

This wasn’t the first time Westworld made a big splash at the future-focused conference, either. In 2018, HBO shuttled attendees hours into the desert for one of the most talked-about experiences of South by Southwest. 

This year’s didn’t disappoint one bit.

Promising that the “path to your future is here,” the invitation to 2020’s experience came from a company called Incite Inc. Each attendee was required to fill out a survey in advance with their dietary restrictions, social media accounts, as well as answers to questions like whether they experience guilt after eating animals or feel anxious about the future.

Earlier that month, HBO had launched an in-universe advertisement for the new fictional tech company, presenting it as an apparent rival to or evolution of the Delos Corporation from the first two seasons. Yet while Delos pedaled the ultimate choose-your-own-adventure fantasy future with endless possibilities, Incite instead posits a technological utopia where data chooses the best path for you.

And honestly, that felt way too close to comfort at a place like CES.

For days, attendees of the conference have been subjected to endlessly optimistic promises about what lies ahead when computing grows more powerful, the Internet of Things more ubiquitous, algorithms more precisely attuned to human behavior, and data gathering more expansive. 

Meanwhile outside the blindly idealistic bubble of CES, unchecked technology continues to wreak havoc. A Facebook memo leaked yesterday revealing how the tech behemoth sees no issue with how targeted, data-driven ads played an enormous (and ethically dubious) role in electing the current president of the free world.

Westworld‘s dinner was a confrontation with all the dystopian implications of tech that CES refuses to address.

As I walked into the line, a woman I did not recognize gave me a big hug, saying how nice it was to finally see me and asking how my dog and boyfriend were doing (by name). I couldn’t tell if I’d either forgotten if we’d met before, or if the game had already begun.

Quickly, it became clear that it was the latter.

Throughout the night, random folks approached me and my coworkers to discuss personal details about our lives, our work, the articles we’d written, changes to our hair color, and — in one case — uncertainty about whether or not a move out of their current city was warranted. To be clear, there were some misses in what I later learned was a 600 page, personally tailored script for the evening. We noticed that those of us with little online presence were harder for them to pin down. Other times, details got switched around (like my boyfriend and dog’s names.) 

But it was enough. We got the game. Our over-sharing digital selves were being thrown back in our faces, as we were forced to dine with our choice to give up every ounce of our internet privacy.

Then the real show began. A woman who called herself Barbara Quinlan, Incite’s development co-chair, stood up to give us the pitch. It sounded eerily similar to the legitimate ones we’d been hearing all week at CES from countless tech innovators.

“Here at Incite, we’re about choices, the choices that people make that define their life. Our mission is using new and powerful technology in order to empower individuals to make their best choices,” she said. “We believe that by revealing the pattern and calming the chaos, Incite can lead each of us to a better life, to a better you. Now, life doesn’t have to be as complicated and chaotic as it so often seems. Clarity is achievable and the possibilities are limitless.”

After playing the Incite Inc. advertisement, each guest sat down at their assigned seat for dinner. At least half of my table were unknowns — which, in retrospect, might mean there were a lot more actors than we were led to believe. But if they were, the illusion was near flawless.

We ate our predetermined three-course meal, each guest’s order slightly different from the others. A quick survey of my table gave credence to my hypothesis that those who expressed extreme guilt over eating animals received irresistibly delicious streak.

In the midst of our lively discussions between complete strangers, Quinlan returned, spouting more hauntingly familiar tech speak.

“This can’t be real,” many people murmured under their breaths.

Sixty-seven percent of those gathered in that room said they felt stressed about making everyday decisions, she said. Nine out of 10 were anxious about the future. “That anxiety can be damaging. It can distract us, depress us,” she said. “It can rob us of our very ability to make our best decisions.”

The next slide is when the gasps and uncomfortable laughter began. Quinlan singled out one specific attendee at the dinner, calling her their “case study,” and providing all her personal information — age, hometown, marital status — alongside her photo. 

“This can’t be real,” many people murmured under their breaths as Quinlan proceeded to lay out every major life decision this woman at table 3 had ever made: going to college instead of backpacking through Europe, getting married, staying in Ohio instead of moving to California, having a child (photo of said child included).

As dinner guests continued to furiously debate whether or not it was all real, Quinlan persisted, making it personal to everyone in the room.

“Decisions confront us every day of our lives. What’d you order for dinner? Well, clearly, we chose that one for you tonight. But wasn’t it surprising how nice it was to give up that little bit of freedom?”

The room grew silent as everyone considered just how true it was. Deciding what to eat was always a chore. But at a conference with so few options and opportunities, it turned into an ordeal. I had indeed been relieved to have the best choice — that delicious steak — served to me without any alternative whatsoever, even alleviating me of the guilt I usually feel from eating meat.

“Big tech companies are profiting from your data. But what are you getting back in return? We have more data than ever, we have more computing power, yet we live with even more uncertainty. Our information revolution should make us more sure about the future, not less,” she said in her soothing and assured voice. “At Incite, we believe that we can do just that. We believe that by making your information work for you, we can relieve you of this burden of uncertainty. With our new technology, we can make the decisions that you did not know you wanted to make.”

“Our information revolution should make us more sure about the future, not less.”

She had a point. In reality, people don’t want more choices, more possibilities, more information. The future of tech is driven by convenience, thrives on providing us with more comfort rather than more opportunity.

Embedded in this subversive commentary on the state of tech in 2020 was a hint at the fascinating places HBO’s sci-fi series might be going. Because if Season 1-2 was about showing just how human robots could be, Season 3 appears to be about just how robotic humanity really is when you strip us down to our essentials.

In Season 2 of Westworld, (spoiler alert) it’s revealed that Delos has been monitoring and scanning all the decisions of every human park-goer for decades through the iconic black or white cowboy hats. With that data, the corporation could do any number of nefarious evils: replace real people with identical robot clones, predict all their future behaviors, etc.

But what if they didn’t have to do any of that in secret or with any hostility? What if the next season of Westworld explores how we give away pieces of our humanity to evil tech corporations willingly rather than through any sort of coerced manipulation?

I mean, don’t we already do that right now? Didn’t all of us sitting in that dinning room give away all our data for free?

“If you give us your data we’ll give you certainty. If you give us your information, we can erase all doubt. The only way to get to this new world, the only decision that you need to make, is us. Thank you,” said Quinlan.

Was the woman at table 3 whose life story we saw play out over a few presentation slides real or fake? Well, I realized, it didn’t matter (though I did spend hours Googling her name and every detail of her life, and came up empty). Like Westworld, the whole experience left me with the unshakable understanding that, ultimately, we’re all just a bunch of data points in an interconnected network. Real or fake, it makes no difference.

What makes us human, actually, is what we choose to do with those data points that make us who we are — who we choose to entrust our information with.