Technology
Entries related to technology.
Dystopian Rabbits
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 10/01/2013 - 01:19Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit. We'll here we are, another October. Like other months, when I get time, I start off with a childhood invocation for good luck.
But it's October, thirty-seven years ago, a classmate of mine from high school disappeared. They found her body later in the month, but never found the murderer. Last year, during Hurricane Sandy, towards the end of October, my mother died in a car accident.
Looking back over my career, many of my job changes took place in October. My youngest daughter was born in October, as were some of my closest long time friends.
It's October, and the Government is shut down. This weekend, I sat on the porch, after making a batch of green apple jelly. Yes, I'm connected online. With my Google Glass, I get notifications as they happen. But there is something about sitting on the porch, having just made jelly.
I thought about when my mother was a kid. Yes, she heard, via the radio fairly quickly about the bombing of Pearl Harbor, but most news was much slower then, and even more slow before the radio and telegraph. How much is this always on, instant notification contributing to disfunction in Washington, where people seem more interested in the political theatre of the sound bite than in sound governing?
How much is the medium the message?
I've been reading The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The setting is a utopian community in the mid nineteenth century. The hero is sick and reads books that other members of the community bring to him. Yet I'm reading it as an ebook on my smartphone. What is the mixed message of a nineteenth century novel on a twenty-first century device?
Kim and I have started watching "H+". It is a series about human implants, similar to Google Glass and a mass kill off of people with the implants due to a network virus. The medium is the message, as my wife and I watch it on an old TV hooked up to an old Roku which manages to still get YouTube. I watched an episode on Google Glass, which pushes the medium is the message idea even further.
And here I am, writing a blog post about it.
It is a post-apocalyptical world and I've been thinking about this new millennialism, a resurgence of apocalyptical thinking. No, we didn't have a Mayan apocalypse. We haven't had an apocalypse as a result of people of the same gender who love each other now being able to marry one another.
Now, even though the Federal Government is shutdown, you can go online and purchase health insurance. Like same-sex marriage, for some this looks like the end of the world. For others, the Federal Government shutdown looks like the end of the world.
But as I sat on the porch over the weekend, with a kitchen full of jams and jellies that I've made, and as I sit in my chair now, writing my blog post and listening to the large dog snore on the couch next to me, this is nothing like the end of the world in all the dystopian post-apocalyptical stories.
So I say Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit, bringing back all the simple childhood hopes and memories in this complicated hyper-connected world as I think of dogs and jelly and porches, and trying to get back to sleep.
Players That Suit Ingrees, Update
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 09/14/2013 - 08:52Back in July, I wrote a blog post, Players Who Suit Ingress building off Richard Bartle's 1996 article about types of players in virtual games.
In the article, I suggested that Ingress players may have similar characteristics as players of MUDs back in the 1990s. Key player types include people who build things, people who destroy things, and people who explore.
Ingress just came out with a new update that provides information about a players activity. This information maps nicely to some of these player types.
As an example, the first category Ingress lists is Discovery with the number of Unique Portals Visited. I've currently visited 476 different portals. It is enough to get me a first level badge, which only requires 100 different portals, but not enough for the second level badge of 1000 portals. I suspect some of this depends on where you live. Visiting 1000 different portals may be easier if you live in New York City than if you live in the middle of Kansas.
The second category is building. There are for different statistics provide, Hacks, Resonators Deployed Links Created and Control Fields Created. I am currently at 7,869 hacks, adding over 500 new hacks a week. That is still a first level badge having hit 2,000 hacks, but not yet at the second level badge of 10,000 hacks. However, at my current rate, I should hit the second level in about a month.
I have deployed 10,539 resonators. That gets me the second level badge. The third level is 30,000 resonators, so that will probably be quite a while yet.
I've created 2,721 links, which gets me a second level badge for 1000 links and a little over half way to the third level badge of 5,000 links. I have created 267 control fields, which gets me the first level badge at 100, and half way to the second level badge of 500.
On the Combat side, I've destroyed 4,521 enemy resonators. Again, past level 1, of 2000, but not yet half way to level 2 of 10,000. I've destroyed 500 enemy links and 108 enemy control fields. I don't see badges for those. Perhaps I haven't destroyed enough. On the other hand, it is interesting to see that I've deployed over twice as many resonators as I've destroyed and created over five times as many links as I've destroyed.
I guess I'm more of a builder than destroyer. How about you?
Players Who Suit Ingress
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 07/02/2013 - 21:43In 1996, Richard Bartle wrote and article, Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades: Players Who Suit MUDs in which he explored four basic player types in text based virtual reality games called MUDs or Multi-User Dungeons. He summarizes these types as follows:
So, labelling the four player types abstracted, we get: achievers, explorers, socialisers and killers. An easy way to remember these is to consider suits in a conventional pack of cards: achievers are Diamonds (they're always seeking treasure); explorers are Spades (they dig around for information); socialisers are Hearts (they empathise with other players); killers are Clubs (they hit people with them).
He uses this to explore ideas like game stability and player interactions and recently, I've been wondering how this relates to the Augmented Reality game, Ingress.
In Ingress, players interact with one another, destroying opponents portals, fortifying portals that other faction members have captured, recharging portals, exchanging gear, etc. There is an achievement aspect in terms of what level one is and how much gear one as accumulated.
I suspect that the player styles may change as people level up as well as when an area gets more players of one faction or another, and that each player has a little bit of each style.
For example, I probably started off primarily as an achiever, seeking treasure and trying to level up. Once I reached Level 8 in Ingress, which is currently the highest level possible, my focus on seeking treasure has diminished, but I still seek a basic amount of treasure. Now that I'm Level 8, I tend to move more towards being an explorer or a socializer. I like exploring new areas and I like interacting with players.
I've met some players who fit very nicely in the into the socializer category, always dropping inventory for new players and helping them get started. I've ran into players who remain very focusing on achievement, trying to build up Level 8 farms, and gather as much gear as they can from them. I've run into others that focus mostly on tearing down other people's farms.
Another component of Ingress is establishing links and fields. With this there are several different styles, that I haven't really figured out how they best fit to Bartle's model. Some people rarely link, or create links to support a farm. Others create long wild links, which make it difficult for others to link but don't serve any other apparent purposes. These links are used to establish fields. Some people establish large fields, mostly as an achievement, which the killers take down as soon as possible. Others create lots of small fields, overlapping as much as possible.
Bartle spends a bit of time talking about interactions between different styles of players and it is useful to read through the section, think about what sort of player you are, what sort of players are around you in your faction, and what sort of players are in the opposing faction. It may provide insights that can make the game more fun for players, no matter what style they adopt.
So, do you play Ingress? What style of player are you? What style of players are around you in your faction? What style of players dominate the opposing faction? How do these insights change the way you approach the game? Or, do you think Bartle's ideas don't translate to Ingress? Is there something that better explains player interactions? Let me know your thoughts.
Ingress, Field Trip and Glass
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 06/08/2013 - 20:33In one of the Google+ communities for Ingress players, a friend linked to the article, Deep inside Ingress, the Google-made game that's paving the way for Glass with the comment, "We're not sure how to make money on this."
I don't know who the 'we' he was referring to was. Google? His own business? I started to write a reply in the Google+ community, but it started growing so I decided to turn it into a blog post.
I'm not sure how much Google is looking at this in terms of being an immediate money maker, and a few different things come to mind. First, many technology pundits thought Google was nuts to pay as much as they did for YouTube when they bought it for $1.65 billion. Reports are that in 2012, YouTube had $3.6 billion in revenue.
Google seems to take a long view. They are well known for their twenty percent time. Google employees are allowed to spend twenty percent of their time working on projects that aren't necessarily in the in the employee's job description.
I don't know if Niantic Labs grew out of twenty percent time. I don't know how much Google has a long term plan for Ingress, Field Trip, Glass, etc., but I find all of them fascinating. Let's start off with Ingress. People have noted that there are many Duane Reade's as portals in Ingress. Did Duane Reade pay to have all these portals? Will other companies pay to have their locations host Ingress portals?
Yet Ingress is much more than portals at locations. There is a complicated multimedia backstory. There are YouTube videos, ebooks, and more. Will it lead to a best selling book? A feature length movie? An art exhibit? Will it change the way we relate to media? I must admit, I haven't followed the storyline that closely, but the implications for the future of media are fascinating.
People have linked Ingres to Glass. I expect to pick up my Google Glass next Friday. I had to pay for the Glass with my Google Wallet. Most of the discussions about Glass are taking place in Google+. It is a good way of getting people to use more Google products. The possibilities of Google Glass seem endless and I'll be exploring these more, both in my personal blog and my work blog.
This leads me to Field Trip. I just downloaded Field Trip and at first glance, it looks really interesting. As I've thought about Google Glass, I've been thinking about something along the lines of Field Trip, with a few specific tweaks. For example, I'd love to see a geocoded wiki which could be accessed through an app like Field Trip. Anyone could leave tips about places, links to other information, a sort of friendly twenty first century version of hobo code. Of course, I'd also like to see specialized databases, such as one that provides census data, FBI data, or health data about communities a person is traveling through.
So, how do individuals, not working for Google make money off of this? Well, there are a few different things that come to mind. It used to be that if you wanted to do business with someone, you would grab a bag of golf clubs and walk with that person around a golf course. One day, I got a call from a friend of my brother who is a financial planner. There was family business to discuss. He, my brother and I are all Ingress players, and that's how my brother and he met. Forget the golf clubs, grab a cellphone, maybe a spare battery pack, and head to the nearest collection of portals.
For me, I always try to stay on top of what is emerging. Somethings don't make it. Others do. Will Ingress, Field Trip and/or Glass make it? I can't tell, but I find them all very compelling. So, I'll keep exploring them. Perhaps enhancing my reputation as an early adopter, perhaps leading to opportunities to work with developing something else new and interesting. That may be a little vague, but may fit with Google's strategy.
Anticipating Glass
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 06/05/2013 - 21:36There are times when I don't write a blog post because the idea is still formulating in my mind. There are times when I don't write a blog post because I just don't have time or am too tired. Then, there are times when I have a great blog post, or perhaps a few different ones, that I have to wait to write and post them because of other timing issues.
Today, I received a direct message on Twitter that basically wrote a blog post for me for my job. At the same it sets up potential interesting personal blog posts about Ingress, the arts, and traveling to New York. Friends who have been following closely probably know the background to these pending blog posts, but the posts will have to wait until the right time.
Until a couple final details fall into place, hopefully tomorrow, the blog posts will have to wait, no matter how hard it is for me and for others.
