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.