Friday Afternoon

My Dad is sick.  He started coughing last night, and today at lunch he had trouble swallowing (admittedly large) pieces of sausage and broccoli.  We got a big up of chicken broth into him, then he went down to rest for the afternoon.

I'm guessing (hoping?) it's just a cold.  His vaccination was last Saturday.  He's convinced he's having a reaction to it, I really doubt it.

We're keeping an eye of things.

Meanwhile, here's an insanely addictive write up (if you're 46 like me) of 50 all-text games (mostly) from the 1980's.

The write-up of 1985's A Mind Forever Voyaging is fantastic.

To The Stars!

Life aboard the International Space Station must be a futuristic dream!  Actually, no -- it's noisy, stinky, and kind of gross, but vital nonetheless --

"The ISS is smelly, noisy, messy, and awash in shed skin cells and crumbs. It’s like a terrible share house, except you can’t leave, you have to work all the time and no one gets a good night’s sleep.

There are some perks, however. The Cupola module offers perhaps the best view available to humans anywhere: a 180-degree panorama of Earth passing by below."

Sure, but still beats Earth ca. 2020. 

Prosecute The Scooter Looter Freebooters

Last month  I was complaining about waves of rental scooters showing up and basically choking the street corners of Daegu.  Turns out I'm not alone in my distaste for these things:

"The number of complaints relating to the use of electric scooters this year reached 1,951 as of end of July, according to data from the Anti-Corruption & Civil Rights Commission. For full-year 2019, the number was 1,927, and in 2018, it was 511.

'We receive at least 10 complaints a day about electric scooters parked on sidewalks or at subway station exits where lots of people pass by,' an employee from Gangdong District Office’s transportation policy department said. 'When we actually visit the location, the electric scooter is no longer there as it has already been taken by another user. It’s really difficult for us to regulate them.'

Operators of scooter-sharing services are making efforts to tackle the backlash. Olulo, operator of Kickgoing, and PUMP, operator of Xing xing, established 24-hour-a-day hotlines for local district offices so that company employees can clear their scooters within two hours of a complaint.  

 Some critics argue that foreign companies have recklessly increased the number of scooters in pursuit of revenue, to the point that it has become nearly impossible for them to respond to problems."

If they are left on public streets or sidewalks, they are literally pieces of trash.  Treat them as such.

"to reward honor and courage, and to penalize players for casual depravity"

Allow me to simultaneously age myself and pull out my nerd credentials by heartily recommending this article about the early video game Ultima IV, which turns 35 this year:

"It was the fan mail that set Garriott on a path toward reimagining what a computer role-playing game (C.R.P.G.) could do. In these letters, people described how they played the first three Ultimas, which were open-world games that did not require a linear path to complete, giving players the freedom to steal from shops or kill townsfolk. The letter writers explained, according to Garriott, that 'the easiest way to gain power was not to play as a good guy.' He was despondent. 'I inadvertently made games that drove the players to act dishonorably, as this was the path of least resistance.' What if, he wondered, there were a game in which your moral choices had consequences? He wanted the next installment of Ultima to reward honor and courage, and to penalize players for casual depravity. Garriott’s family and colleagues warned him that players might feel as if they were being punished for having admitted to enjoying robbing and murdering, but Garriott ignored them. 'This was the art I was compelled to make,' he said.

Where would these moral ideas come from? Garriott studied Christian theology, Greek philosophy, and Arthurian codes of conduct, but none felt applicable enough for all people. He was attracted to Buddhist and Hindu thought, but these traditions didn’t seem to offer a framework for a game. The plan for Ultima IV coalesced for Garriott after repeatedly watching his favorite movie, 'The Wizard of Oz.' Garriott had been ruminating on the essential ideals of truth, love, and courage and realized that the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion, respectively, embodied these concepts. With these three ideals, Garriott created a schema of relational virtues through which a player would develop a hero."

First off, Ultima IV is the first game I remember where you could "talk" to anyone and everyone.  Sure, a lot of the people in the game had little to say beyond "Hello" but no small number of them actually played key roles in your adventure.  You had to interact with them in ways beyond combat or stealing if you wanted to progress within the narrative frame.

Even as an 11 year-old I realized something special was happening here.

Second, I had a friend in high school who wrote an English class paper on the game.  (Or maybe it was the sequel, Ultima V, which covered similar ground?  Or both?)  The English teacher wasn't too thrilled but then again, video games were not taken seriously by anybody back then.  Pac-Man and Space Invaders were what people thought of when you mentioned gaming, not narrative driven quests for spiritual purity and enlightenment.

Third, my mom didn't let me play alone in my room.  We set up "the computer table" near her own work-space.  (At the time she had a typewriter, but not long after she had her own IBM.)  I spent hours there laboring over a Commodore 64, constantly jotting down clues and hints and notes and map locations on a legal yellow pad.  I'd ask my mom for help with turgid Tolkienisms, or run over to the phone to call a friend who was also working on finishing the game and who might have figured out one of its many daunting secrets before I had.

As something resembling "maturity" set in during high school she let it slip that she'd set things up like that on purpose.  She got a kick out of watching me play that damn game, and if it taught me that there's more to life than murdering bad guys and taking their stuff that's secondary to the rest, to her covert tutelage and tacit support of my love for strange adventures.

Of Landlines and Family Cohesion

Julia Cho makes some strong arguments for how the rise of the mobile phone has "diminished" the closeness of families:

"Over the course of the 20th century, phones grew smaller, easier to use, and therefore less mystical and remarkable in their household presence. And with the spread of cordless phones in the 1980s, calls became more private. But even then, when making a call to another household’s landline, you never knew who would pick up. For those of us who grew up with a shared family phone, calling friends usually meant first speaking with their parents, and answering calls meant speaking with any number of our parents’ acquaintances on a regular basis. With practice, I was capable of addressing everyone from a telemarketer to my mother's boss to my older brother's friend—not to mention any relative who happened to call. Beyond developing conversational skills, the family phone asked its users to be patient and participate in one another’s lives.

Cellphones, which came on the market in the ’80s and gained popularity in the ’90s, rendered all of this obsolete as they displaced landlines. When kids today call 'home,' they may actually be calling one parent and bypassing the other; friends and bosses and telemarketers (if they get through) usually reach exactly the person they are hoping to speak with. Who will be on the other end of the line is no longer a mystery."

So basically, the rise of cell phones has even diminished our social skills in general.  I can't say I disagree.

"When you’re waiting for a bus to your second job. . . ."

Amanda Mull on how "Social Media Made America Tired of Rich People," and why that's a Very Good Thing:

"At first, people responded to these kinds of social-media boasts with a mix of fascination and revulsion—plenty of clicks, likes, and guillotine jokes. But the trend persisted, and was even adopted by plenty of adults, as wealth inequality, student debt, and housing costs all soared. Such constant proof of how rich people really live made young people resent them. In a recent poll by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, a majority of people under 30 said that rich people amassed their fortunes by taking advantage of others; the poll also found that the same age group was the only one in which favorable attitudes toward socialism edged out those toward capitalism. When you’re waiting for a bus to your second job while looking at photos of teenagers taking a helicopter to the Hamptons, it might be hard to hold on to the old idea of American meritocracy, or believe that the wealthy really are better than you.

Indeed, the Democratic presidential candidates who stand furthest to the left—Warren and Senator Bernie Sanders—enjoy the largest proportion of youth support, which they gained through promises to do things such as tax the wealthy and pursue universal health care. Buttigieg and his defenders have either failed to fully detect the cultural anger toward the upper class or simply made a calculation and decided that the money is worth it, and that the power they’re tapping into isn’t going anywhere. Either way, the country’s elite will have to figure out how to address those who demand answers. The internet lifted the veil, and now everyone knows what’s behind it."

Say what you will about Marie Antoinette, but even she at least proposed an alternative, however outlandish, for bread.  With our current Silicon Valley overlords, or more traditional fail-spawn of the rich, no such luck.

The Future Is Here, And It's Buggy As Hell

The first fully automated convenience store has opened up near Seoul.  The article refers to it as an "A.I." store, which is a popular term in Korea but also over-used.  (The store can have a Turing-level conversation with me?)  Anyhow, it's going about as well as you'd expect:

"AI is changing the landscape of the retail industry and consumer behavior, but the technology is not perfect. To enter this store in the first place, a customer must sync a credit card or a debit card to the SSG Pay app and get a QR code.

However, on the day of the visit, a QR code couldn’t be generated on the reporter’s iPhone for an unknown reason. We could finally enter the store using the Shinsegae I&C PR manager’s QR code on her smartphone.

According to Shinsegae I&C, these limitations will be overcome after AI sharpens its technology over time through deep learning.

The AI failed a number of stress tests. It was unable to conduct a proper checkout twice when it was given eight unusual checkout situations. In one case, the reporter took a sip of water from a bottle and left it in the store. No charge was registered."

Obviously the bugs will be worked out, and in a country with many avid early adopters this is probably what the future looks like -- no cashier, no cash stores where angry machines will beep at you and then lock you in just because fuck you.

Good times.

(Is it clear I'm really not a fan of any of this dehumanizing, anti-labor bullshit?)

Entering The 21st Century

I've had my new (owned) smartphone for about four days now and still haven't dropped it in the toilet.#lifegoals#winning

— Winterfell Barista James (@wetcasements) July 2, 2019

Luddite

My first honest-to-jeebus smartphone arrived in the mail today (Sasmung 5S, used of course).  I have to walk over to my local SK (Korean telecom) shop and get them to put a data plan onto my current phone-and-text only plan.

In my defense, I do own an iPad so when I go out I generally use that if I need Google Maps or information or what have you.

I've just been quite content with my (ahem) 2G flip-phone for so long (also used) that I've resisted moving into the 21 century like the rest of you.

I guess the only thing left to do is send my first dick pick.

Settle down, settle down.  I'm only going to send it to Santa.

Our Glorious (Killer-Robot Filled) Future

At KAIST (Koran Advanced Institute of Science and Technology), one of South Korea's premier universities, a lab is working with defense contractors to develop "autonomous weapons."  An international boycott has ensued:

"More than 50 leading academics signed the letter calling for a boycott of Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and its partner, defence manufacturer Hanwha Systems. The researchers said they would not collaborate with the university or host visitors from KAIST over fears it sought to 'accelerate the arms race to develop' autonomous weapons.

'There are plenty of great things you can do with AI that save lives, including in a military context, but to openly declare the goal is to develop autonomous weapons and have a partner like this sparks huge concern,' said Toby Walsh, the organiser of the boycott and a professor at the University of New South Wales. 'This is a very respected university partnering with a very ethically dubious partner that continues to violate international norms.'”

In South Korea's defense, they do happen to share one of the largest militarized border in the world.  Also, it's hard to believe Western contractors aren't working on the very same technologies, albeit less openly.

Hack Back

South Korea has had enough with North Korean cyber-attacks, so they've opened up a "Best of the Best" academy for so-called "White-Hat Hackers":

"With the North’s economy increasingly strangled by international sanctions, the country has almost no tax base and an expensive nuclear weapons program, meaning it has to seek alternative, often illegal, ways of generating income. North Korean hackers were linked to the theft of $81m from Bangladesh’s central bank in March 2016, and in December the US Trump administration identified North Korea as the culprit behind the WannaCry cyber-attack, which in May caused millions in losses. North Korea has denied involvement.

North Korean hackers have been linked to leaks of credit card information and illegal ATM withdrawals in South Korea. 'There are thousands of cyber-attacks in South Korea every day and most of them never get reported on the news,' Kim said. 'Information security is the basis of economic development.'”

For such a technologically advanced country, it does seem overdue for South Korea to finally take cyber-security more seriously.  They probably never expected a "backwards" North Korea to pull off the type of shenanigans that they've gotten up to lately.

Here's a free hint for starters: maybe don't make all your universities and banks and government agencies so heavily reliant on Internet Explorer?

(Possibly Quite Boring) Research Paper Update

It's near the end of week four of the semester, and my research project continues apace.  Me and my two foreigner co-workers have collected data on foreign language anxiety (F.L.A.) in the form of a peer-reviewed survey, and we also collected less formal voice and video recordings of our students telling us what they like or don't like about studying and using English.

The real fun begins next week when we bring in sample students for longer interviews.  Half of them have been studying in classes which have employed Socratic-style seminars, and half of them have been in control groups without the seminars.

The seminars themselves were 30-45 minute exchanges where we arranged the desks into concentric circles and we sat down with the students rather than standing at the classroom podium / computer stand.  The goal was to immerse them into a much more peer-oriented, less teacher-oriented environment than they're used to.

We won't have all our data collected for another two weeks but so far it seems as if we're going to confirm what might have been obvious all along -- the students really seemed to enjoy engaging with us in a more level, egalitarian manner, but given their status as limited English proficient learners (L.E.P.) there was only so far a purely Socratic style, question-based lesson could go.

Still, it'll be interesting to see if the students who did the seminars have more confidence or a more positive take on their own English learning than the ones who didn't.  We shall see!

Sympathy But No Sympathy

Speaking as an Official Old (42!), I tend to defend Millennials at all times.  They catch a lot of shit for having been basically born into a terrible economy with elders who decided about 20 years ago that while benefits like free college and actual pensions were good enough for them, they'd have to slashed for their children and grand-children because Neoliberalism.

That said, with the decision by Youtube (i.e., Google) to stop "monetizing" videos they feel are too controversial or political and the resulting backlash, I think we're seeing a potential blind spot for those under 35.

If you grew up on a media-consuming environment of Youtube and Vimeo and Twitter and tumblr, it's possible you take these entities for granted as "free" or "natural" or "impartial."  They're just simply kind of out there and always have been, and the people who created them wanted nothing more than for you to have the ability to make stuff and put it online and, sometimes, make money off of it!

And even when the CEO of Twitter himself admits they're doing a terrible job of fighting online hate speech, your sympathies for social media outlets to remain as "neutral" as possible when dealing with the content generated by individual users are probably quite high.  I mean, for a while now these companies have created a network for you to upload stuff at will that might make you internet famous, or even rich.  Win-win!

But the most important cliche of the 21st century so far goes like this -- if you aren't the customer, you're the product.  Youtubers might feel like they're suffering censorship now, but it's basically the long hand of the market.  Your freedom of expression was never really the issue.  It was actually completely orthogonal to Youtube's monetary interests (and by extension, literally, Google's.)

I mean, at least Facebook has always been honest about how its advertisers come first and your freedom of expression doesn't mean spit.  (And it's no surprise that they continue to make money hands over fists.)

To think that the Apples and Googles and Twitters of today's meda-rich world are somehow better or more enlightened than the salt mines and widget factories of the pre-2000's isn't just wrong, it's dangerous.  It's part of a humanistic spin that's been added to the world of "creative" work and living.  It's ignoring what us Olds have known for a while -- major companies are not your friend.  They never were.  They never will be.

However, they do tend to have excellent P.R. (Which is kind of the ultimate killer app.)

Now, get your selfie-stick off of my lawn.