Flat Eye presents a possible future which may be neither desirable nor avoidable.

To create this world and make it credible, MONKEY MOON took inspiration from the present. There is no lack of sources: online articles, social media videos, scientific journals and more. On the team's private chat, one observation came up again and again: ""when reality goes beyond fiction."" Things that may seem a long way off or even impossible in the game may in fact have already happened, and some of the game's narrative threads were directly inspired by these true stories.
As archivist for the project, my mission, toward the end of the development process, was to gather all of these articles to create this coherent bibliography. It provides a closer look at what inspired Flat Eye, of course, but also at our present--a time of such rapid, constant change that we don't even realize it's happening anymore.
The goal of this snapshot of the world is to place Flat Eye's major themes (artificial intelligence, the future of work, social change, etc.) in their context. The bibliography sorts articles into several different categories (with frequent overlaps) and provides a summary for each. If you're only after the links and references, you'll find it all at the bottom of the page.

September 2022. The archivist.

A crisis? A problem? No need to panic: people will find a technological solution. Not a realistic, easily rolled out, effective or existing solution, no. But an innovative, expensive, modern or even futuristic solution that inspires people and leaves them in awe, an invention that raises capital and builds a reputation for its designers. In short, a new product, because a problem or a crisis is first and foremost an opportunity.

DeepSense, a company based in San Francisco and New Delhi, uses artificial intelligence to assess job candidates’ personalities based on their social media accounts.

Published on October 26 2019

Seen by Flat Eye team on December 24 2019

{Content in English}

Start-up DeepSense uses machine learning and psycholinguistic concepts to determine a person's personality from their public social network profiles. The tool is aimed at recruiters, who could use it to quickly filter candidates and exclude incompatible profiles. When interviewed by The Wall Street Journal, DeepSense's founder got defensive but admitted he estimates the tool's accuracy at around 75%.

https://twitter.com/WSJ/status/1187866426910167046

[SOL-0] See reference details

Here's what boring company is doing to solve this insanity.

Published on November 22 2021

Seen by Flat Eye team on November 24 2021

{Content in English}

Replying to a Tweet of a 2021 video of a commuter traffic jam in Los Angeles, an Elon Musk fan reposts a commercial for The Boring Company, owned by Musk, which builds tunnels for cars. In the video, the cars which access the tunnel are conveyed aboard a specially designed vehicle at 200 kph. Other Twitter users highlight the fact that these tunnels will only be able to accommodate a few hundred vehicles per hour and that trains would be a much better solution.

https://twitter.com/Mr_Gauti/status/1462881688426483714

Note from the archivist: The first tunnel opened by The Boring Company in Las Vegas has yet to live up to is promises. Cars drive at a speed of 50 kph in the tunnel, which has no specially designed vehicle. On the Monkey Moon forum, someone said, "Elon Musk has to be the CEO of EyeLife."

[SOL-16] See reference details

References