CIS Blog 12 - Technology Company Profile

I chose IO-Interactive, because they are the developers of my favorite game series: Hitman.

They don’t seem to be unique compared to other game developers, except for having the Hitman series. They were independent for 6 years then they were bought out by Eidos Interactive and then Eidos Interactive was bought out by Square Enix. According to the lecture we had in class about video game development, those buyouts sound pretty standard. It would be hard for an independent company to compete funding wise with larger companies. Also, publishers acquiring rights to development companies and their hit series also makes sense financially for the publishers.

I might like to work for this company. Their headquarters is in Denmark. I have never lived outside of the United States, so that could be a good experience. At the same time, there are development companies that have cool locations within the United States. I have never lived in a large city in the U.S. and it would be easier to visit family if I stayed in the U.S.

It sounds like a fun environment. There website says that they eat breakfast together, lunch together, and party together. Also, it is very multicultural with employees from 23 different countries. There are apparently a lot of their kids gathered together for Christmas. I don’t like kids much, so that doesn’t sound very appealing.

Though the setting sounds nice, I would expect many tech companies to have a relaxed and fun office environment. Game development companies should especially cater to people’s fun sides. That should attract the best talent and help people stay creative.

I feel unqualified to work at any really cool, small, well-known development company. I feel like working at a game development company would be a good fit for me, but I have no experience and would expect the competition to be people who have wanted to develop games their whole lives and have massive portfolios of artwork or programming work.

Their development history of the Hitman series started in 2000. That has been their biggest success. Since then, they have developed 4 more Hitman games and branched off into some different titles; Freedom FIghters, Kane and Lynch, and Mini Ninjas. As of now, they are solely in charge of the Hitman series. Not being a fan of their other games, I agree with the decision whether theirs or Square Enix’s to have them focus on the HItman series.

According to their website they employ about 200 people. That seems fairly small to me, so I would expect competition for their jobs to be very high.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IO_Interactive

http://www.ioi.dk/jobs/

CIS Blog 11 - Making Meaning: Tubes

Though not as hard to follow as the previous book, “Tubes” was still hard to become interested in, because the topic was not particularly engaging. What the internet has become is very interesting, but how it became that way, not so much. The author and the historical figures that he writes about are all rather dull people. Again, what they contributed to is exciting, but their individual plots are all basically the same as they are all academics.

I am more interested in the non-physical aspects of the internet. So what I don’t like about the book is that its focus is physical and not about how information is relayed or the sociological implications of the internet; how it has transformed communications and made the people of the world more interconnected than ever.

The most interesting aspect to me is how the structure of the internet relates to economics. It’s nice that data hubs can bring job opportunities to cities ranging from physical construction to technical expertise. The infrastructure of the internet has made certain cities richer, which is good for the cities, but also the country’s overall economy.

Another interesting part is how fiber optic tubes are made of glass and that data is transferred through the glass via light. That image of all the cables around the world shooting beams of light back and forth is pretty magical.

Pictures and diagrams would have made the book more engaging. As the author traveled to many locations throughout the book it is somewhat of a travelogue and what travelogue is complete without pictures so that the reader can see what the author saw? I would have liked to have seen the actually damage the squirrel did to his internet. Likewise, diagrams make complex topics more easily understood. I would prefer a concise diagram to lengthy verbiage for any sort of technical explanation.

I don’t think this book would appeal to the average reader, so I wouldn’t recommend it to friends. However, as a textbook it does give a clearer concept of how the internet evolved and what it is, so for classrooms this is an effective book. I think it would also be a good book for someone studying politics or economics as it gives some insight into how the internet is an infrastructure like roads and power lines. It costs money to build it, but like other infrastructure, there is a return on investment.

CIS Blog 10 - Will AI Surpass Human Intelligence?

I do think there will be some form of a singularity, but also think that exactly what it will be cannot be accurately predicted, because there are too many possible variations. Movies often portray a post-singularity world as a dystopia for humans. Movies are made to be dramatic and entertain, so they are biased towards negative predictions. If the singularity causes there to be no distinction between humans and machines, then any sort of rivalry between the two becomes obsolete.

In the wikipedia article, Jaron Lanier makes a good point that embracing the singularity would be “bad politics”. Just because robots could become capable of performing all human jobs, does not mean things will move in that direction. If that would ultimately lead to mass unemployment and economic collapse, what politicians would push that agenda? There is a point at which replacing human resources with artificial intelligence resources would lead to diminishing returns for corporations. There needs to be a lower class or middle class to support the economy. If nobody has any money, who will pay for all the work being done by robots? On the other hand, if robots began to earn wages, a large new market would be created.

As far as when the singularity would occur, I tend to believe the experts, which according to the article has a mean of 2040, but a range of 5 to 100 years. I would not be surprised if it occurred in my lifetime, but with advancements there are often many unforeseen hurdles along the way, so it also wouldn’t surprise me if it doesn’t occur during my lifetime.

As the article suggests, what the future will look like post-singularity may be incomprehensible for current human intelligence. Much greater intelligence may have vastly different goals and desires than humans. As some science fiction suggests, super intelligence may want to wipe out the human race if it sees it as destructive to the planet. At the same time, super intelligence that can re-engineer itself could quickly become capable of surviving in more hostile environments than humans. This means that our concerns for the planet may be of no concern to them. Their energy sources would not come from food and hazards to us, like radiation, may have no effect on their bodies.

Bodies do not even necessarily have to exist. All intelligence could be converted to a digital format. We may choose to put ourselves in the matrix. If that happens, it brings up questions of how we will maintain contact with the world outside of our digital realm and what reality really is. We may already be in a digital world, so putting ourselves into another one just starts to get Inception-y.

CIS Blog 9 - Privacy in an Open Digital World

I personally believe that it is better to have privacy at the expense of security. Though not cyber-security, the TSA is a good example of security going too far. I believe that it is largely a waste of time and money to have the level of security we have prior to boarding a plane. Plane attacks are a very rare occurrence. It seems to me that airport security treats all travelers like criminals. This is a wasted effort. The very few people that actually want to carry out an attack on a plane could still easily find a way to do it. Even if everything is caught during screenings, there can be ample time in the secure zone pre-flight to fashion shivs.

Cameras are everywhere, now. Generally, I think this is a good development and helps with catching criminals. More cameras, less security checkpoints, please.

When we talk about the Internet of Things and the large amounts of data that can be collected about a person, there is an obvious danger to me. That is the IOT in  a state lead by an immoral dictatorship. I mostly trust Google and Amazon with my information. I believe they are companies with good intentions. Yes, they are out to make a profit, but they are also trying to improve individual’s lives. They also are subject to laws which protect consumers. A country like North Korea having the same technological capabilities is another story. Throughout history, tyrannical governments have firmly controlled their citizens with propaganda, threats, and indoctrination. Having the power to minutely control the media that a citizen is exposed to based on data mining is a recipe for suffering. Technology could be used to monitor people 24/7 which could effectively eradicate any hopes of a successful coup against a corrupt government.

For that reason, I am opposed to governments collecting massive information on their citizens without their consent. Personally, I completely agree with what Edward Snowden did and that he did it for the best interest of the American people.

I don’t have the best online security practices. My passwords are not all “password”, but they are all similar to each other and stored together in a location that is only moderately secure. I put my trust in the hands of large companies, like my bank, credit card provider, and Amazon. I assume that they have invested large sums of money into securing their customer databases, but at the same time realize that large companies like Target and Home Depot have had security failures in the past.

There isn’t an instance in which too much security has kept me from doing something online. Things that would require the most security would be illegal. I don’t do illegal things that would require me to pay closer attention to my security.

I think that the worst is still to come in terms of governments violating the privacy and trust of their citizens. Snowden was a warning. It is scary when governments compile huge amounts of data on their citizens. It will be scarier when they figure out what to do with it.

CIS Blog 8 - How Has the Internet Influenced You?

I am 28. The internet was a part of my life for as long as I can remember. It seemed less flashy and more text-based when I think back to when I was a small child.

Pornography has been a large part of the internet for me. I think was about 12 when I discovered porn on the internet and it has certainly evolved. Initially, there were galleries of pictures, then tube sites came along. At first clips were all relatively short, 1 to 5 minutes. Now, of course, there is a virtually unlimited supply of free pornography online, which includes movies that are often 20 minutes to an hour long and are in HD. I have heard that pornography is often the first adopter of new technology and that it has been a part of the success of each successive visual medium from beta, VHS, DVD, to streaming content. I think it may be a big driving force behind the new VR technologies. Porn companies have already started making 3D, virtual reality porn.

At around the same age that I learned about online porn, I self-diagnosed myself with paruresis, which is an inability to pee in public. There are countless variations of this ranging from annoying to debilitating. There is an online support community at paruresis.org and they hold workshops around the country. When I was in middle school, going to one of these workshops seemed like a good idea, but out of the question, because they were usually in large cities and I didn’t have the means for traveling. Eventually, around age 24 I attended a workshop in Chicago. My point is that I think the internet creates niches for people with rare issues or interests. In the past, people probably felt more isolated and unusual, but with the internet it is possible to find like minded people for even the rarest of minds.

The internet has also had a large impact on how I shop. Without the internet I would probably shop a lot less, because going to stores is annoying and I am very irritated by pushy sales people. Malls are one of my least favorite places, because I don’t like crowds. When I was younger and still living with my parents my dad got into Ebay. He bought lots of K-State memorabilia, toy trains, and movies. I took after him in that regard. I buy almost everything, except food and hygiene products, online off of Amazon.

As an introverted person the internet has exposed me to more than I think I would have experienced otherwise, online and offline. Documentaries have shown me unusual cultures that I would never seek out in real life. When the Silkroad was active, that gave me access to drugs that I wouldn’t have access to in any of my real life social encounters. Erowid was also a convenient source for learning about recreational drugs and reading about other’s experiences, good and bad, via the site’s trip reports.

CIS Blog 7 - Topic Research Response

My group to report on was group 4, but I will cover some other groups, as well. They started off strong and entertaining with their first presenter. Asking the difference between cyber security, computer security, and information security was the most memorable to me, because there was no difference. They used Prezi which made their visuals more stimulating. However, many groups used the same Prezi format of transitioning from circle to circle. There was one group which used a different Prezi format, so I appreciated the uniqueness of that. After their first presenter, group 4 fell a few notches in presenter enthusiasm and entertainment value. One thing that they mentioned that I wish they would have gone into greater detail on was that before computers, hackers hacked telephone lines. I would have liked more explanation of how that worked.

Overall, I thought all groups did good, but there were only two that I felt were very professional and polished. For a class of future engineers and future computer scientists I was impressed with everyone’s public speaking given that the personality types associated with those fields don’t lend themselves well to public speaking.

What I found most interesting from the presentations was the work being done with exoskeletons for the disabled and the future of virtual reality. I have a motorcycle and my parents are convinced that it will kill me or paralyze me. It’s nice to see there is progress being made with spinal cord injuries. Just in my life-time, medical technology has gone from no-hope for paralysis victims to the current research that hints that paralysis could one day be a thing of the past. In addition to exoskeletons, repairing damaged spinal cords is becoming more viable with silicon or plastic bridges (source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-01/early-promise-for-neuro-spinal-scaffold-a-new-paralysis-treatment).

I have been following the development of VR closely since I first heard about the Oculus Rift several years ago. I am disappointed that the release date for the consumer version has been repeatedly pushed back and that the original estimated price continues to rise. Having experienced demos with the developer kit, I am very excited for the potential of VR, but also experienced “motion” sickness and lackluster performance of smartphone, Gear-VR style headsets. To me, VR will definitely be the future of gaming and pornography, but it appears to be a rare instance where technology is developing slower than the predicted rate. As Palmer Luckey said recently, “Many people will wait a gen or two to adopt, and that is okay.” (source: http://www.kitguru.net/channel/generaltech/matthew-wilson/palmer-luckey-explains-why-the-oculus-rift-will-be-fairly-expensive/). With Facebook’s backing, VR has a great shot at success, but for now standard gaming and internet browsing seem like the smarter choice to me.

CIS Blog 6 - The Difference between Humans and Computers

I think humans are computers. Considering the standard conception of humans as biological entities and computers as machines, tasks that are easy for one would be hard for the other. Computers have the advantage of not getting bored, but lengthy computational tasks would be boring and exhausting to the majority of humans. If lengthy computational tasks was something people liked doing, they probably wouldn’t have invented computers. Something simple for a human, like walking, can be difficult for a computer, because there are many aspects of walking that are done subconsciously. Humans don’t calculate appropriate stride lengths or appropriate foot positions for uneven terrain. It seems to come natural, but really a lot of subconscious processes are doing these calculations, even if they are calculating an estimate. These subconscious calculations would have to be programmed for a robot/computer to be able to perform them, so walking is more difficult for a robot. It seems likely that the reason it is hard to program is because the instructions are not conscious to humans. They need to consciously reimagine what they naturally do subconsciously.

Yes, I think humans qualify as turing machines under the circumstance that humans lived forever. Just like the simple turing machine that would take very long periods of time to simulate more complex algorithms, humans can also follow any line of logic if given infinite time.

The most obvious instance I can think of where computers have replaced humans is self-checkouts at stores. I am sure there are many more instances where computers have replaced humans, but the much more common theme is computers augmenting humans. This can be seen in nearly every occupation. Desktops are a ubiquitous item in any office environment. Other jobs, like nursing, now use mobile computers, and more and more computers are used in vehicles, so even things like road construction or farming use some form of a computer. I don’t think there is any theoretical instance where a computer could not replace a human at there job, but other social or economic factors may keep this from happening to every job.

Biological systems can be thought of as computers. In my mind there is no point at which something stops being a computer and becomes something else. I think humans and computers function very similarly. It may not seem like it, because the programming for humans is very complex, but I do think it is possible to replicate a human brain.