I'm getting old. Next week I will turn 29, and while I don't consider that to be "old" as such, I can't deny that I am growing older. As much as I like to think of myself as still being young, there are many things that serve as reminders that I am not. I have spoken before about the fact that this is 2017 and there are 17 year olds alive now who weren't even born in the same millennium as me, and the coming year when 2018 finally arrives there will be 18 year olds too. However despite that being in the back of my mind, there was something else that made me come face to face with my youth, or lack of it.
From time to time I like to watch videos on youtube of people playing games. Playthroughs and "Let's Play" series as some youtubers call them let you live vicariously through others, they let you see other people experience something for the first time and see how they react and in the case of puzzle and strategy games that interest me the most, it lets me see how other people think. Every now and then however I like to revisit games from my youth, and there is one game in particular that I was quite fond of and which most people still regard in high esteem - Super Mario World for the SNES.
I was about 5 when I first played it as I was born in 1988 and it wasn't until around 1993 that I actually got an SNES. Super Mario World itself was released in 1990 which makes it 27 years old this year. What served as a reminder of my age however was an off the cuff comment this youtuber made about the game - "I wasn't even born when this was released" which they said in passing as reason why they had never played it and that stayed with me longer than it should. It stayed with me because it served as a reminder that there are people who are adults, in their 20s, who have lived their entire lives without experiencing things which formed such a big part of my life when I was younger. That serves to remind you that despite the fact there may only be 5 or 6 years between you and them, you're part of a different generation.
That word is hard to define, "generation" - in the 90s it was used quite a bit with the term "Generation X" and later to a lesser extent "Generation Y" which would imply Millennials would be Generation Z, the last generation, which says a lot about the world and the way it is today. The question is which do you fit into? The definition I see most widely used for Millennials is anyone who turned 18 on or after the year 2000, which includes everyone born in this millennium, but as this millennium approaches its 18th year next year there does seem to be need for a new term, or to revise what counts as being part of it.
I was born in the 80s which would make me an 80s kid, yet being born in 88 means I didn't experience anything in relation to pop culture from the 80s as a child, it was the 90s that formed the bulk of my chilhood from age 2 to 12. I realise this is putting a lot of emphasis into labelling your childhood which is not the intention, rather the intention is to get a better understanding of who I would be most likely to have things in common with. I'm from that middle generation that experienced both dialup internet and broadband when growing up, that experienced analogue satellite and digital satellite and the jump between the two. Going from 56kbps internet to 2mbps at the time, and going from 30 something channels on Sky Analogue to 300+ on Sky Digital back when it was actually called Sky Digital.
I still remember the first mobile phone I had, a black Phillips BT Cellnet phone that was like a brick and had a screen with a 2 line LCD screen like a calculator. I remember each handset I had over the years up until today having a smartphone that has more power than the first computer I ever owned. Even with computers I've gone from an Amstrad CPC-464 with a green monochromatic display with a command line operating system, through the many computers I've had over the years up until my current desktop.
I do feel anyone around my age may suffer from an identity crisis of sorts as technology and society and culture moved so fast in such a short period of time there haven't been many things that have remained constant that you can anchor yourself down to. I guess this could also be fuelled by the fact the world right now seems to be going through an upheaval and there is a lot of change happening, and throughout my life everything has been about progress and moving forward and for the first time there seems to be an actual desire being expressed sincerely by others to go back and to regress. I don't want to do that.
As much as I look back on things with nostalgia, I value the advances that I have experienced. I value fast internet, I value having a world of choice which admittedly can be overwhelming but I would rather be overwhelmed than be left unsatisfied. I'd rather be given so much choice that I don't know what to pick, because it means I can pick anything, than be put in a position where I have no choice at all, because that's no way to live a life, if anything you're actively removing the spirit of life itself and forcing someone into monotony by doing that.
What is life worth if all you do is sleep, wake, wash, eat, work, eat, wash, sleep, and repeat? What is the difference between you and a robot on an assembly line if you can't use the one thing that makes you different - the freedom to make choices - why would you want to give that up?
Pointedly to thee...
Pointedly to thee I put the question that dawns on me, for why art thou here in this play? This play in which thou acts, with its never-ending scene of a dream? A dream of thine own making, whether it be fair or foul is of no concern to me, for mine own play has a story of which it tells. Yet be here in this scene a moment where two paths meet and strangers as we do, dance through airs and graces beneath our masks that hide our faces. We share the ritual and fall in line, playing our parts in perfect time, a story we tell for others to read, as we deny ourselves what we truly need. Truly in truth for all to see there in lies true honesty, a virtue long lost by many it seems, banished only to our thoughts and dreams, in those corners of our darkened mind, we find the people we think so kind.
A vision of thee is for what I search, and why I walk this dreaded Earth. This world was once a dream so bright, and in that dream there was hope and light, yet here in this day and this hour I find, nothing but darkness that shrouds my mind. Still of all you sit there and read, what you see in search of some great need, in hope that my words will seep into you, and in those words you'll find something true. If truth in truth is what you seek, a quest that is bestowed on the meek, if that be true and that's why you are here, then perhaps your truth may indeed be near.
For me alone this is still unknown, for what I seek I can not say, for I do not know in this hour or day, for what I search eludes even my mind, and thus hope dwindles that it I may find. If truth in truth is what I too seek, then perhaps I can say that I am also meek, it is said the Earth is ours to inherit, but of that charge I question the merit, no-one said where, when, or how this is met, and better still in what state it is beget. If truth in truth will let itself be known, perhaps in wisdom the path is unshown, an end to be met by a journey so rough, that the thought alone is enough, what is to come can not be shared, perhaps because we would be scared. If fear is rational in times of woe, and this is a time of this we know, then fear in this moment can be justified, if we fend it off with hope inside. A path unfurls even now at our feet, the strength to walk is what we need, as mountains rise high above land and sea, our paths cross again between you and me.
We stand together in this moment in time, and play our parts line after line, but soon the curtain will fall to the ground, and in that moment there will be no sound, only a vision of the last path we have left, and in that moment we must be deft, the decision we will make in the blink of an eye, whether to stop or whether to try, in that moment the masks shall fall and our faces we shall bare to one and all, truth in truth is what we shall confront at last, we shall look to the future and forget the past.
A vision of thee is for what I search, and why I walk this dreaded Earth. This world was once a dream so bright, and in that dream there was hope and light, yet here in this day and this hour I find, nothing but darkness that shrouds my mind. Still of all you sit there and read, what you see in search of some great need, in hope that my words will seep into you, and in those words you'll find something true. If truth in truth is what you seek, a quest that is bestowed on the meek, if that be true and that's why you are here, then perhaps your truth may indeed be near.
For me alone this is still unknown, for what I seek I can not say, for I do not know in this hour or day, for what I search eludes even my mind, and thus hope dwindles that it I may find. If truth in truth is what I too seek, then perhaps I can say that I am also meek, it is said the Earth is ours to inherit, but of that charge I question the merit, no-one said where, when, or how this is met, and better still in what state it is beget. If truth in truth will let itself be known, perhaps in wisdom the path is unshown, an end to be met by a journey so rough, that the thought alone is enough, what is to come can not be shared, perhaps because we would be scared. If fear is rational in times of woe, and this is a time of this we know, then fear in this moment can be justified, if we fend it off with hope inside. A path unfurls even now at our feet, the strength to walk is what we need, as mountains rise high above land and sea, our paths cross again between you and me.
We stand together in this moment in time, and play our parts line after line, but soon the curtain will fall to the ground, and in that moment there will be no sound, only a vision of the last path we have left, and in that moment we must be deft, the decision we will make in the blink of an eye, whether to stop or whether to try, in that moment the masks shall fall and our faces we shall bare to one and all, truth in truth is what we shall confront at last, we shall look to the future and forget the past.
The Lark
Sweet song of a Lark you break the day
Filling the air as verdant branches sway
So sweet and innocent your voice does chime
With peak and trough in perfect time
A song unknown to human ears
Void of sorrow, angst, and fears
Pure and joyous to be so carefree
Amicable is your sweet serenade to me
I close my eyes and listen to your song
And for a moment forget what is wrong
For all we have done, life still persists
So long as it does, hope still exists
Filling the air as verdant branches sway
So sweet and innocent your voice does chime
With peak and trough in perfect time
A song unknown to human ears
Void of sorrow, angst, and fears
Pure and joyous to be so carefree
Amicable is your sweet serenade to me
I close my eyes and listen to your song
And for a moment forget what is wrong
For all we have done, life still persists
So long as it does, hope still exists
Could a machine take your job?
When we speak about the possibility of robots taking our jobs, and the idea of machines working more efficiently than us, historically we focused on manual labour. That is to say we spoke about factory jobs, production lines, things where we as people carried out repetitive tasks with little variation. These roles were relatively easy to replace with machines. We have now lived with an automotive industry that for decades has used automated assembly lines.
There was an argument at the time that these steps forward would mean the loss of jobs for people, and that was true. There was also an argument that said the machines would still need to be maintained and while jobs would be lost there would also be jobs created to maintain the automated assembly lines, and again this was true. Ever since that time however there have been competing views, those who hold on to the first, and those who hold on to the second. In my view I have considered both points of view and I see the first as valid, the second as not. The reason I see it this way is because I have studied Artificial Intelligence, and developed Agents, and one thing remains true throughout everything I studied - if you can teach it, they can learn it. Almost everything you do as a human being you were taught how to do.
The barrier to machines taking the majority of people's jobs remains the same as it did back then - teaching. Or to be more specific, machine learning. It wasn't possible at the time for a machine to maintain itself and to accurately diagnose the wealth of problems that could go wrong many of which would be unforseen, and in that vein they could not be programmed to respond to the unforeseen. Today however this isn't true. Advances in machine learning and the way we program have allowed us to create Agents which can adapt over time. This barrier is however crumbling, and as it crumbles it is being replaced by other more traditional barriers, such as cost, resources, and politics.
In London the Docklands Light Railway [DLR] has been operating since 1987. The DLR is a driverless train system. While some staff are still required primarily for security and in the event of failure, the trains for the most part run on their own. In more recent times we have seen driverless cars enter into the mainstream. The question of job security is once again coming to the forefront, and the question of whether a machine could one day take your job is something many people now ask themselves. You still get people who defend the viewpoint that their jobs could never be replaced. You get people who think that their job requires a human touch, and that a machine could never learn the intricacies of their work. You still get people that work in places like call centres and think that people won't talk to machines they want to talk to people.
People won't want to talk to machines - are you sure about that? I would argue the only reason that was ever the case was the lack of engagement machines provided in the past. I would argue it had nothing to do with the fact it was a machine and would go so far as to say the fact that people so openly embrace Siri, Cortana, Alexa, and OK Google so freely and are perfectly comfortable talking to their machines that this really is not the case. The question then turns to whether a machine can learn how to do your job. Well as far as call centres are concerned the answer to that is yes as far as I am concerned and the reason why is one basic fact:
Basic Fact #1 about call centres: All calls are recorded.
You're used to being told "Your call may be recorded for training and monitoring purposes" but what you probably don't know unless you have worked in a call centre is long before you hear that message, your call is already being recorded. I have worked in a call centre and I can tell you quite simply, every single call is recorded, and we can hear you before you can hear us.
Every call is recorded for quality assurance, for legal disputes, and yes for training and monitoring purposes. The call centre I worked in dealt with financial services and there were around 200 people on the floor. Each one handles about 50 calls per hour, we can say 40 for lenience sake and imagine the majority never met their KPI targets. On the floor there would be around 200 staff at any given time, working on rotation some would leave and others would replace them at the end of their shifts. The centre handled calls from 8am to 8pm. They handled calls 52 weeks of the year with reduced service on 28 days of holiday which included bank holidays.
With 52 weeks in the year, each 5 days long Monday to Friday, that is 260 days, minus 28 for holidays makes it 232 days worked per person on average per year. Let's drop it to say 220 to allow for sickness and absence. So we have 220 days worth of calls per call handler, that's for one year. For 12 hours per day, 40 calls per hour, 200 staff on the floor, 220 days of the year, that makes 21.1 million calls. The centre keeps all calls for 6 years in accordance with the financial regulations so they have about 126.7 million calls on file. If you say each call lasts about 1 minute, then divide by 60, they have 2.1 million hours of phone calls on file.
With 2.1 million hours of recording, a machine learning algorithm could digest the lot and learn very quickly how to do your job. There is no practical barrier to this technologically today, the only barrier to this is now cost.
Could a machine take your job? Yes quite easily.
There was an argument at the time that these steps forward would mean the loss of jobs for people, and that was true. There was also an argument that said the machines would still need to be maintained and while jobs would be lost there would also be jobs created to maintain the automated assembly lines, and again this was true. Ever since that time however there have been competing views, those who hold on to the first, and those who hold on to the second. In my view I have considered both points of view and I see the first as valid, the second as not. The reason I see it this way is because I have studied Artificial Intelligence, and developed Agents, and one thing remains true throughout everything I studied - if you can teach it, they can learn it. Almost everything you do as a human being you were taught how to do.
The barrier to machines taking the majority of people's jobs remains the same as it did back then - teaching. Or to be more specific, machine learning. It wasn't possible at the time for a machine to maintain itself and to accurately diagnose the wealth of problems that could go wrong many of which would be unforseen, and in that vein they could not be programmed to respond to the unforeseen. Today however this isn't true. Advances in machine learning and the way we program have allowed us to create Agents which can adapt over time. This barrier is however crumbling, and as it crumbles it is being replaced by other more traditional barriers, such as cost, resources, and politics.
In London the Docklands Light Railway [DLR] has been operating since 1987. The DLR is a driverless train system. While some staff are still required primarily for security and in the event of failure, the trains for the most part run on their own. In more recent times we have seen driverless cars enter into the mainstream. The question of job security is once again coming to the forefront, and the question of whether a machine could one day take your job is something many people now ask themselves. You still get people who defend the viewpoint that their jobs could never be replaced. You get people who think that their job requires a human touch, and that a machine could never learn the intricacies of their work. You still get people that work in places like call centres and think that people won't talk to machines they want to talk to people.
People won't want to talk to machines - are you sure about that? I would argue the only reason that was ever the case was the lack of engagement machines provided in the past. I would argue it had nothing to do with the fact it was a machine and would go so far as to say the fact that people so openly embrace Siri, Cortana, Alexa, and OK Google so freely and are perfectly comfortable talking to their machines that this really is not the case. The question then turns to whether a machine can learn how to do your job. Well as far as call centres are concerned the answer to that is yes as far as I am concerned and the reason why is one basic fact:
Basic Fact #1 about call centres: All calls are recorded.
You're used to being told "Your call may be recorded for training and monitoring purposes" but what you probably don't know unless you have worked in a call centre is long before you hear that message, your call is already being recorded. I have worked in a call centre and I can tell you quite simply, every single call is recorded, and we can hear you before you can hear us.
Every call is recorded for quality assurance, for legal disputes, and yes for training and monitoring purposes. The call centre I worked in dealt with financial services and there were around 200 people on the floor. Each one handles about 50 calls per hour, we can say 40 for lenience sake and imagine the majority never met their KPI targets. On the floor there would be around 200 staff at any given time, working on rotation some would leave and others would replace them at the end of their shifts. The centre handled calls from 8am to 8pm. They handled calls 52 weeks of the year with reduced service on 28 days of holiday which included bank holidays.
With 52 weeks in the year, each 5 days long Monday to Friday, that is 260 days, minus 28 for holidays makes it 232 days worked per person on average per year. Let's drop it to say 220 to allow for sickness and absence. So we have 220 days worth of calls per call handler, that's for one year. For 12 hours per day, 40 calls per hour, 200 staff on the floor, 220 days of the year, that makes 21.1 million calls. The centre keeps all calls for 6 years in accordance with the financial regulations so they have about 126.7 million calls on file. If you say each call lasts about 1 minute, then divide by 60, they have 2.1 million hours of phone calls on file.
With 2.1 million hours of recording, a machine learning algorithm could digest the lot and learn very quickly how to do your job. There is no practical barrier to this technologically today, the only barrier to this is now cost.
Could a machine take your job? Yes quite easily.
Poignancy
Some people watch movies to see happiness, others watch them to see moments of sheer terror or horror in a way that is safe to experience. There are many different genres of film that grace our screens, none more than at any point in history for the simple fact that cinema is a cumulative industry. That which came before does not cease to exist as the industry advances, much like that of the music industry. One industry I find intriguing however is the gaming industry.
I have a degree in Computer Science with Games Technology, which I spent 3 years at University to achieve. For the most part I have not ventured very far into the games industry as a whole mainly because of a disillusionment that gripped me when I studied it at University. I've written about this before, of how the fourth wall was broken when I studied the mechanics of game design, and how the magic of the games themselves was lost. It's taken some time for me to move beyond that and find myself in a position where I can once again enjoy games without thinking about the technology and the technicalities of their design to a level that destroys the experience. One way that I have been able to recover this love of gaming is to go beyond the traditional nature of gaming and explore the innovative side, where intrigue and mystery still exists, where "I wonder how that is done" isn't a question that is easily answered.
To go beyond tradition is to go beyond the usual and the repetitive and search for the things you would not expect to be gripping. The greatest example I have of achieving this is to go beyond the obviously evocative emotions of happiness and terror or horror, and venture into the emotions that are harder to trigger. It's harder to make people feel sad, in a constructive way. It's easy to do in a destructive way, but there's no enjoyment to be found there. Sadness for the sake of being sad often ends up producing contrived content. This is where poignancy comes into play. Poignancy is essentially constructive sadness; a sadness that evokes an empathic response. Games like The Beginner's Guide do this very well. The Beginner's Guide was developed by Davey Wreden, who also developed The Stanley Parable another game which employs similar themes of evoking an empathy within the player for the person they play in the game. Worthy of note here is the fact that in both cases you "play" as a character within the games but no character actually exists, instead you take on a role and engage in the story as the main character. Also worthy of note is that both games are driven by a narrator, and employ storytelling as their main mechanic.
I have a love of writing, which I have made no secret of here on this blog. I have also written quite a few stories and a few books that I have self-published and one that is in print. What I would like to achieve at some point is to take a story I create and make a game out of it, but not in the traditional sense. What I would seek to do is to capture poignancy through the art form rather than get bogged down in the technicality. This isn't something I devote a lot of my time to however as I feel it's one of those things that would be nice to do but probably won't happen in reality. That in and of itself is rather sad.
I have a degree in Computer Science with Games Technology, which I spent 3 years at University to achieve. For the most part I have not ventured very far into the games industry as a whole mainly because of a disillusionment that gripped me when I studied it at University. I've written about this before, of how the fourth wall was broken when I studied the mechanics of game design, and how the magic of the games themselves was lost. It's taken some time for me to move beyond that and find myself in a position where I can once again enjoy games without thinking about the technology and the technicalities of their design to a level that destroys the experience. One way that I have been able to recover this love of gaming is to go beyond the traditional nature of gaming and explore the innovative side, where intrigue and mystery still exists, where "I wonder how that is done" isn't a question that is easily answered.
To go beyond tradition is to go beyond the usual and the repetitive and search for the things you would not expect to be gripping. The greatest example I have of achieving this is to go beyond the obviously evocative emotions of happiness and terror or horror, and venture into the emotions that are harder to trigger. It's harder to make people feel sad, in a constructive way. It's easy to do in a destructive way, but there's no enjoyment to be found there. Sadness for the sake of being sad often ends up producing contrived content. This is where poignancy comes into play. Poignancy is essentially constructive sadness; a sadness that evokes an empathic response. Games like The Beginner's Guide do this very well. The Beginner's Guide was developed by Davey Wreden, who also developed The Stanley Parable another game which employs similar themes of evoking an empathy within the player for the person they play in the game. Worthy of note here is the fact that in both cases you "play" as a character within the games but no character actually exists, instead you take on a role and engage in the story as the main character. Also worthy of note is that both games are driven by a narrator, and employ storytelling as their main mechanic.
I have a love of writing, which I have made no secret of here on this blog. I have also written quite a few stories and a few books that I have self-published and one that is in print. What I would like to achieve at some point is to take a story I create and make a game out of it, but not in the traditional sense. What I would seek to do is to capture poignancy through the art form rather than get bogged down in the technicality. This isn't something I devote a lot of my time to however as I feel it's one of those things that would be nice to do but probably won't happen in reality. That in and of itself is rather sad.
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