praxis22

Two years has it been that long? Still, on with it.

Two things occupy me this day, the first is this:



Which is both a virtuoso bit or marketing, and a video that has amassed 1.9 Million views in 1 day.

To talk about why that is important I need to recount the following:

I was walking from the main meal counter to the sweets counter when I was struck with both the absurdity and the life saving nature of hope. At the time I was in despair over my first marriage, there seemed no way out, then in the internal back and forth known as "self talk" I was in engaged in some gallows humour, when part of me said "there is hope in that, at least" and within the space of a step, both the absurdity and the possibility of hope struck me. Literally it was like I was caught in a beam of light. By the time I reached the checkout counter I had decided to get a divorce, because a choice between hope and despair is no choice at all.

The Bethesda Game Studios Community is odd. Both because it is a true community, and because recent events have not been kind to it. I said in a recent tweet that the community is "saturated in disappointment" at present. Which is a truism, and a great cause of sadness for all involved, including your humble scribe. The proximate cause of this is simple to understand. It's called Fallout 76. If you type that into Google, you will get a protean wail of anguish and invective back.

Fallout is not really my franchise, I own Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas, simply because of the latter's reputation as the "best" Fallout game. I have them as I too plan to integrate them into the allegedly epic Tale of Two Wastelands in itself a multi year fan made mod, and testament, like the Beyond Skyrim project, (a plan to integrate the rest of Tamriel into Skyrim) to the tenacity and dedication of the community itself. To reintegrate my economics geek for a moment, it is a true Gift Economy.

So with the less than stellar reputation of the the last true Fallout game, Fallout 4. as well as the current Fallout game, Fallout 76. It gives us an insight into the state of the studio. The Elephant in the room however, is The Elder Scrolls VI, if you skip to the middle of this next video you will see the fan reaction to a few seconds of video and what was a pretty lackluster presentation until that point:



Their next new adventure, Starfield can be thought of as a land grab, for the other badly burned community this year, that of Mass Effect. So for Fallout 76 to show the studio in such disarray is cause of much angst.

Of which, this is a fine example. Keep in mind that is a friendly review from an active player, and it has 1.4+ Million views:



You only have to watch 30 seconds or so to get a feel for it. So it is that into this febrile environment, that Obsidian, (recently bought, and infused with cash by Microsoft) Creative independence intact by all accounts, because Microsoft need good games and are clueless as to what that means, in the face of the overwhelming success of Sony this generation. But I digress...

Obsidian have form, they are truly old school RPG makers. They made Fallout New Vegas, and many other well regarded games. So to a community desperately in need of hope, the Obsidian video is like that beam of light, the word hope is actually written on the back of the Player Character's outfit.

Finally, for this part of the ramble, there is this video from a man called Micheal, a stalwart of the community, and the defacto source for in-depth tutorials on how to mod the games themselves:



The closing music is significant IMO, because in many ways, what the games feel like is home.

The rest of this will be about tumblr, the first thing I look at when I wake up in the morning, Mostly supplanting twitter for me. Largely because it manages to combine Skyrim, the infosec crowd and sundry other weirdness into one cohesive whole. It's not without it's issues like rampant porn spambots in addition to the many other bugs of the platform that have never been addressed.

Essentially tumblr will begin blocking porn on December 17th, why? a kneejerk reaction to being blackballed from the Apple App store because a porn bot surfaced Child Porn on tumblr, and tumblr we're not able to filter it out. Child Porn is bad, no question. But gutting a platform, and removing and silencing marginalised communities, in a safe place most of them though as home, is as regressive as it is disruptive. The Irony in this Verge article which argues this is a bad idea for the platform because of what happened to LiveJournal, is not lost on me.

So yeah, some good, some bad, hopefully the community experience that is tumblr doesn't change too much. Otherwise I'll have to read Reddit in the morning.

So Prince has left us, bereft, but with an awful lot of music, and if the rumours are true, a whole archive more yet to see the light of day. He will be missed. R.I.P

As an offshoot of the Mrs getting a new phone, (Samsung Galaxy S6 edge) It dawned on me that having read the reviews, that I actually had a legitimate reason to buy a Gear VR, the reviews of which have been generally positive. More, here,
here, and here. Should you be interested.

I've yet to buy any software, mostly because of concerns about entering my credit card details on a phone, but I've recently acquired a prepaid one, largely get around the online banking restriction of my "real" card, so I imagine it's only a matter of time. This is a link to what you should should play first. While this link is about what it feels like to use. They're all worth a read.

I've only had a mild bit of discomfort in one demo, which was like a roller coaster in your brain, zapping bad synapses with a glance. At one point the car appeared to rapidly pick up speed, my brain noticed, and promptly put my stomach into the back of the couch. Apart from that and a mild sense of vertigo in the Oculus lobby when looking down, I've not really had any issues. Though the advice to sit in a swivel chair is probably a good one as the software isn't that good at working out spacial orientation just yet, so staring forward and moving your body is probably the wisest course of action for some experiences.

Where it really shines is a bit counterintuitive, in that it's video playback, specifically the OculusVideo app, which really nails it. Especially the curated Vimeo films. Mostly I chose the full cinema experience, and what that does is put you on a big empty cinema hall, with a honking big screen at optimal distance. It's almost revelatory. The difference to watching on a TV is astounding, I'd even go so far as to say that it, and not gaming, is VR's (surprising) "Killer App." With the right content it is that good.

However one area that was quite touching was the new world of VR Storytelling, in this case a curiously small, low res, short story called Colosse. The link contains a stereoscopic YouTube video of the story itself, but if you're ever going to buy a Gear VR, (and if you own one of the 4 supported phones, it's a no-brainer) then I would urge you not to watch it. It's a strange experience to be in the story, but able to look around. Quite unlike cinema with it's eternally fixed view point.

Of the Stock experiences, the Cirque du Soleil spot was small, and to my mind, tried too hard. The stand-out experience of the lot IMO, is actually the guy playing the piano in his studio. That is a little contrived, but the effect, including turning around and seeing his dog, is actually quite remarkable, and feels very intimate.

There are good and bad reads across to the Oculus Rift launching in 2016, in that the screen resolution, (1440 x 2560) is going to be the same, and the panels are likely to be sourced from Samsung too, this means that the Rift is not going to be noticeably different screen wise. Though I understand they will have the screens on gimbals, so they can track your eyes better, they may also have better optics. Though as it stands, the screens are quite pixelated that close to your eyes, and much of the content can be quite grainy. It's certainly not at "real world" resolution, and may not be for a while. That said though, the PC spec required is steep with a full link to Oculus' press release, here. My current PC will make the cut, especially with my new GFX card, an AMD R390 as will most enthusiast gaming PC's. Most laptops and entry level PC's, (where they still exist) will have no chance however. The Rift is essentially an early adopters device, and if nothing else a reason to be hopeful about the future of real computers. Even though my son may have to wait until he's 13 to try it, on current reckoning.

So is the Gear VR, worth buying? At $99, €99, (free next day DHL delivery in Germany) hell yes! As I said, if you own a supported phone (and many future Samsung phones are expected to be supported to) it's worth it just to see a small slice of the future. As well as for the everyday thrill that is watching Video on the "BIG" screen. There is no YouTube support yet, but I've no doubt the available channels will grow.

Is the experience any good? Again yes. It's credibly immersive, and I had moments of real presence.

"The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed"

[Comments locked as this entry is just attracting porn links for some reason]

[in which the baton is passed]

My father died this morning, as I was walking to buy green onions and milk. Given that the voice on the phone said, "he's very poorly, can you come in" not 15 minutes earlier, this was somewhat of a shock, but not entirely unexpected. Could I come in? Given I was in Germany and he was in England, not without a functional teleport. Now he has suffled off this mortal coil, what of the sling and arrows?

He is survived by two ex wives and two sons. When I asked my brother how he was feeling, he said, "relieved" and his is the opinion that counts, as my father was his parent, not mine. Myself, I'm not sure what to feel. I loved the old man, and I will miss him, but there is a reason why my twitter bio say "fatherless man" (the whole strap-line is from the last letter I got from my, now dead, step-father.) So exeunt both fathers.

I don't think my dad was very interested in being a father, to be honest. Whenever I did things with my dad as a kid it was always because my mother had organised them, even going to the only football game I ever saw as a young boy. Being the quiet and devious kid that I was, I guess I played up to the one thing that my dad was interested in doing, (answering questions) if only as I got to spend time with him that way. But knowlegde is a drug, once you get answers, new questions appear. If he couldn't answer we would venture forth to the kitchen window sill, which was home to "the dunlop book of facts" and if that failed to the encylopedias and reference books. In a house full of books there was always something to read.

Practically this meant two things, 1) there were answers. 2) you didn't have to be stupid. Which I codified as "everything you want to know is written down somewhere, all you have to know is how to read" part of an evolving belief system. Well, before the knowledge event horizon anyway. Ally that to the nascent information age, and he is the reason, in almost all ways that count, that I am the man I am, a debt is owed.

He was a dificult man, an auto-didact, proud, stubbourn, and with a chip on his shoulder. He was an intelligent bloke. But the class system of the time was never going to let a man like him advance over his "betters". He served his apprenticeship on Fleet Street, a man possesed of communist/anarchist ideology, (visited Russia with a Kier Hardie study tour.) As such he fit right into the union culture, loved Jazz, Classical music and reading, but would rather be out with the lads than home with his young wife. To get him away from London and it's temptations was much of the reason why we grew up in the North. Or so my mother tells me. My mother sent me and my brother to Sunday School once, (my father was an avowed athiest) and we were asked not to return. Mostly because I asked questions. Lots of questions, and one of the things you're not supposed to do in Sunday School is ask why? Aparently. You would think that adult clergy would know how to deal with questions of faith, especially from small boys, but not in this man's army.

My son, to whom the debt is owed, is not the quiet studious kid I was, he's loud and boistrous and his batteries go on forever. He's also learning three languages simultaneously, so his thinking is all over the place, though kindergarten seems to agree with him. Objectively, at least from feedback, I'm a better father, though I'm more in the camp that says you measure outcomes:



"if she's so smart why is she sitting in our neighbours car?"
Another belief system is more a metaphor than anything else. That all you really need is few seconds notice so you get out of the way of the irresistable force, it ruffles your hair on the way past, and creams the guy behind you.

I've spent the past 15 years learning to see a few seconds ahead, because my son's future will not look like the past. It's the undiscovered country, terra incognita. I have some ideas about what's important, but will that be enough?

Above all of that I guess is this:


Implied if not spoken. Still, there is space for doubt, at least tonight.

The king is dead, long live the king!

I read this: Microsoft is now irrelevant with growing distaste. Partly because of the arrogant & gloating tone, but mostly because I think the causes are little understood, and IMO most of his facts are wrong. That said the byline is "Roving engine of chaos and snide remarks at SemiAccurate" and the site is called semiaccurate.com which should, I suppose, give me pause.

I was going to post this in the forums, as you can't reply to the article, but that has been closed because of partisan infighting between Windows & Linux users. Which is par for the course, and which I've covered in past posts, here & here. However, what I really want to do here is offer my thoughts/thesis on the real reason MSFT are irrelevant, and correct what I consider to be unsubstantiated assertions & unfair bias, in the above article.

I suppose my primary problem with the article is where I got it from, (Finance Pros) so I was expecting research and/or informed comment, rather then an anti-MSFT screed. I don't differ with the title, or even a lot of the prognosis, but the whole notion of "cave-ins" is problematic, at least given the change that MSFT is currently going through, post Ballmer. Sure it works as a cartoon depiction of a failing power, but if fails in almost every other respect, once we get past the lead-in to this:

If you doubt the seriousness of this stagnation, ask yourself what the last innovation Microsoft came up with was, not evolution but true innovation. I can’t think of any either.

I can, the Xbox, the original, built for men with big hands, ugly black box. The only problem is that in the ten years or so they've run the franchise, they've only broken even. They may have even turned a small profit, but while many people made money off the ecosystem, the company that created it wasn't one of them. It wasn't a failure, it was, until recently, the market leader, a successful brand in its own right. It just didn't make any money. That fact however was obscured by the rent they were making off Windows & Office.

Thereafter however the tone is increasingly strident & hostile. I don't actually think the management were stupid, I think they were simply myopic. They were number one, they could dictate terms, and engage only on their own. Then of course, there is the legendary corporate infighting, divisions not talking to each other, internecine warfare, and management taking a year off to research their new plane, etc. I don't think management were stupid, or that they didn't care, just that they though internal matters and personal rivalries were more important than external events. 'twas ever thus.

It's when the article moves to talk about Windows 8 & surface that it really loses the plot, it may not be important given the outcome, but I think the real problem with Surface is that it's a product that Microsoft needed to exist, and nobody else was going to create it. A far better narrative as to what's wrong with surface can be found here though the bit of the above article that really irked me was this:

A funny thing happened though, an entire generation of users didn't want to give up their beloved iPhones or Android devices for an inferior, slower, more expensive, app-free Microsoft device. Microsoft repeated their threat loudly, “Use our mobile OS or you won’t get Office or Exchange on your phone!” To their abject horror the response was almost universally, “OK, bye”.

What actually happened is that a generation of users didn't want to give up the start button, and didn't want to re-learn how to use a computer just because Microsoft needed them to. More than that, with Windows RT they actually gave away Office for free, but again, late to the party, they found to their cost that people have different expectations of what a tablet is and does in the Post PC era. Not that it's all bad, With the new Surface Pro you can see them striving to make a better mousetrap, but as the review says, to buy it you need to like Microsoft, and be prepared to drop a $1k+ on the device, which strikes me as a bridge too far.

The broader issue of Windows 8 is IMO that it didn't know what it wanted to be, and even its friends didn't like it. One of the windows admins at work tried to put it on a Media PC at home, and hated it, couldn't use it. All else aside, that is the problem with Windows 8.

Back to the article:

The XP debacle was simple, XP ended support in April, no more patches even though there were still hundreds of millions of active users out there. XP users were not upgrading and thus not giving Microsoft more revenue. Microsoft made an insecurable OS with XP, and all subsequent OSes, on purpose. Insecurity generates revenue, security doesn't.

Again with a far better narrative on computer security we have: Everything Is Broken which details why this is so. This happens to everything & everyone; Microsoft, Apple, Linux, your bank, household utilities, cars, fridges & cochlea implants. It's all vulnerable, so to single out Microsoft, and especially XP, is IMO partisan & unfair. Not only that, XP was a bloody good OS at the end of it's life, I'd be running it still if it would install on modern hardware. It was also a lot more "securable" than Windows 7 is, provided you knew what you were doing. Now granted most people do not know what they're doing, but most technology pieces are written with an audience of non "normals" in mind. Not only that, MSFT doesn't actually offer security as a "value ad" either, as far as I'm aware they don't actually profit from writing bad software on purpose.

I have no problem with the prognosis that Microsoft flubbed the Xbox One launch. That much was evident from the start, with the whole "always on/always listening" one box to rule your living room, TV, TV, TV! Shtick. Their real problem IMO was that games were seemingly an afterthought. In one move they annoyed or at least sowed doubt in their core gaming demographic, and put a $500 price tag on a product Microsoft needed to sell, more than normals needed to buy. Subsequent row-backs didn't nothing to assuage the doubt, if they rowed back on this would they row back again if it suited them? Xbox One's are plentiful on the high street, PS4's by contrast are nowhere to be seen, I've never found one for sale at retail, and not for lack of looking. They're sold out everywhere.

I think the most damning thing in the whole article is said early on, and it's this: there was no plan B In truth there never has been, they've always bet the farm. Nor is this news, Gruber nailed this as long ago as 2009. The tragicomic thing about all this, if you can liken a corporation to a person, is the notion of self recognition, or lack thereof. You've only to look at Nokia, (run by an ex MSFT exec, and now wholly owned too) for another fallen giant that used to own it's market, and dictate terms. I remember going to a security conference, and the last guy to speak on the last day was a Nokia exec, and he told a good tale, of where the technology was going, (and in many cases, has yet to arrive) but they were blindsided by "mobile" and the iPhone too. Now their corporate HQ is up for sale, all the talent has jumped ship to Sailfish and they're left making feature phones, Windows phones nobody wants to buy, and of late have got into Android.

The real question for me then, becomes one of "when does Microsoft run out of road?" When does income and cash in the bank, shrink to the point that it can no longer sustain the losses the rest of the grand folly's are making? The irony being that when this happened to Apple & Nokia, Microsoft were there to bail them out. Who will be there for Microsoft come the day? Will Apple return the favour? There is also the greater question of can a former dominant player, monopolist, and 800lb Gorilla in the space, ever recover the mindset and drive of the underdog? Can it actually innovate and compete outside of its comfort zone, outside of the Wintel duopoly? Say what you like about Apple, and Wired's Pray cover, but historically Apple was never the number one player in the space. Not only that, Jobs was ruthless when he came back to Apple.

My take on it for what it's worth is that Microsoft will retrench in the face of the "Post PC" world, back to the one place they can't be replaced for now, the corporate desktop. Where the issue is more that workers don't know anything else, and computer literacy is a byword for the Windows desktop, and the Office application suite. Though even there they are being replaced and/or virtualised into "the cloud." We just got a couple of these at work, the (unlimited) licensing of Windows & RedHat Linux is thrown in. In light of that and the need to make Windows ubiquitous, can the "Mobile first, Cloud first" strategy actually work, and in light of "no plan B" what happens if it doesn't? If They are forced to give away the crown jewels, (the rentier income) to spur adoption, where do they get the revenue to support the rest of the behemoth?

Apple & Google can claim to have legitimate & competing ecosystems, Microsoft by contrast has to pay people to write apps for them. Except when it buys the company, (Skype) it can't even claim it has clients for all the major social apps.

The only metaphor I really have for this is that of the gambler, trying to make up at the track what they're losing at the tables. And this:

I'm crap at shopping so my wife tells me, I have a pained expression on my face throughout, that makes shopping "torture", though my saving grace is that I am silent, unlike my step father, who's quarrelsome with his wife, and refuses to buy anything :) All married men are alike in this regardless of culture or generation, or so it seems.

Why do I mention this? Because on Friday I read this: Rethinking manhood Towards a more fallible father with which I sympathised to an extent, that extent being I also have a two year who likes to fight. Thereafter however we come to a parting of the ways.

Don't get me wrong, I tried to be the sensitive new man, I gave away my power, I was deferential, I cried. I did this for 7 years, it didn't work. I was not thanked for this, and the more power I tried to give away, the more my ex-wife wanted, I spoke to her about this, and she admitted that it was never enough, I could have been subservient and she would have wanted more. It stemmed in my opinion from a belief on her part that control was not only desirable, but possible, and the belief on my part that control was an illusion. I asked for a divorce.

Then, still wanting kids, but being 7 years down the road, I did what any data hungry geek would do, I went to the OK Cupid blog and look at what the stats nerds had to say about what I could get, and that was borderline chromosomal birth defects, that you get with "older" women. So I went the high risk route, of looking for a younger one. However, once you've imbibed of economics you come across lots of risk management, the heuristic biases that people are prey to, and the things that historically have worked. Table stakes.

Then I though a bit about the kind of woman I wanted, and the kind I knew best, and thus I ended up looking for a woman like my mother. (Go ahead, take the shot, I heard it before.) What I wanted was a woman of my mothers generation, only they're not making them anymore. As much as I have learned about modern women so far can be summarised thus. There are two kinds of women, the ones that are bright but brittle, and the ordinary ones that are needy and beset by self doubt. It has also been my experience that bright ones are belittled by the men they are with as it makes the men feel better if they feel superior. I wasn't happy with either choice. Thus I ended up in the former Soviet Union, and "through luck and craft" I became one of the 1% that ended up bringing a wife home.

The really strange thing about marrying a "Russian" woman is what it requires you to be a man. I don't mean the soft and gentle new man, I mean unreconstructed old man, without "bad habits" (Drinking and wife beating.) Not only that, she was born and has lived amongst men like this, the sort of man your grandfather was, this is the air she breathes. This is weird on several levels, from strange things like actually having to have an opinion, and the necessity of giving "black & white" answers when asked for advice. The carefully layered shades of meaning new men has learned to dispense, are despised. You can't be weak, you have to be the strong man, so she can feel safe enough to be a weak feminine woman. This has all kinds of strange implications, like looking at pictures of female hair styles, because "I'm doing this for you, what do you want me to look like?" In this I find the following to be of great use: Ten Virtues For The Modern Age. Especially Part one:

RESILIENCE. Keeping going even when things are looking dark; accepting that reversals are normal; remembering that human nature is, in the end, tough. Not frightening others with your fears.

But also parts 3, 6 & 10.

Being new at being a dad, and not even dad, but "Papa" I tried to be egalitarian about it at first, to fight, but to let him win. It quickly became apparent that when I let him win he just became more aggressive and more boisterous, because this is midnight in the garden of good & evil, there is no room for kind and gentle, this is about domination. Thus, if your child is the "Alpha Male" you're doing it wrong. My experience is that of you want your son to behave and know where the boundaries are, you fight and he looses. This is not the wishy washy celebration of mediocrity, this is about power, who's in charge, and what the rules are. Your son will sleep sounder at night knowing there are limits, you're stronger, and "in charge." If you have problems with this you need to learn to wrestle, and how to take a kick, slap and bite. He's going to play rough, and if your boy is anything like mine, the rougher you get the more he'll like it. This is a song as old as time, and it's not a fairy tale.

You can't show weakness, you can't be tired, you can't be fallible, you have to run him ragged and keep him on his toes, you're not dealing with new age mythos here, this is nature in the raw. He can control and sense his mothers mood as if it was second nature. With you all he's got to go on is whether when he hits you you feign injury, (or not) and pounce on him, or whether you withdraw in real pain, and start being crabby. Sure there are times when I wonder if this is not the way bullies are made, and far from teaching him to stand up for himself, I'll be trying to keep him from beating people up, but this is manhood, like it or loathe it, you have to roll with the punches and come out fighting. This is vulnerability, this is shame, this is the man in the arena, daring greatly.

So like I said, I have some sympathy, but I'm going in the other direction, my son is going to have to learn what it means to be a "Russian man" from a man who isn't Russian. YMMV.

This is in reply to this blog post but I can't post more than 4096 characters to blogger apparently, hence posting here. It's not going to make a lot of sense unless you read back :)

She? Her?

I can assure you I am biologically male, I make that rather peculiar and specific statement, just so you know I harbour no militant feminist attitudes, not even of the academic kind, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde :)

Rambling and incoherent. Why thank you :) I had written something much bigger, but I couldn't get the narrative to work, so with time pressing I cut and paste.

As you will have found by searching I'm the same person everywhere, I don't have alts, I don't believe in them. I try to make my point in a single narrative, I see no point in having one persona make one argument then have another argue with it, certain people may find a use in that, the same way others think that asking people for their real names will make them more civil, but you've only to look at Facebook to see that lie disproved.

The reason I posted here as praxis22 is because to post on Gamasutra I'd have to jump through the registration hoops, (as I stated at the outset) while here I simply login through Google. Out there in the wasteland of the real, the people who I met online all call me praxis, even though they know me real name, as it's on my business card. Well, all except one journalist, who calls me John, but he is rather old school.

I realise that will not suffice for somebody who is presumed to be hiding something, and people with the real name religion will not go happily into that good night with anything but a "certified" stamp but so it goes. Opinions rarely change.

Have I met anyone moved by Othello recently? Odd question, but yes. He's called Dave, he worked for 35 years for a large international firm of solicitors, who he enjoyed telling us, used to post him far and wide where he took advantage of the perks that few clients bother with, namely tickets to the Arts, Opera, Plays, Gallery openings, society evenings, etc. Most clients preferred to be taken to dinner or out to get laid so he told us, which meant there were always tickets going. So he would pack his Tux and black tie, and go enjoy the best seats. He was somewhat of militant socialist, so he enjoyed rubbing people up the wrong way at the interval, or by the canapes. Such is the life of an itinerant AS400 engineer :) But I digress.

What is my problem with your orange trousers, nothing, I used to have a pair of fluorescent pink swimming shorts myself. I was also told I was a bad customer, and had BSE once for asking if a suit shop had a bright green suit, and refusing to buy the first one they foisted on me :)

I own a few suits, got remarried in a bespoke one. I'm still a scruff. A lot of my friends are/were in the games industry, they were scruffs to a man. Having watched many developer video blogs, I see that broadly this has not changed.

I've never heard you speak, I'm not a Tory. Where I work the language is English, but the tribes gather for lunch by nationality. Besides, as an English person you get used to how others speak English, wherever I go people are always anxious to improve their English. Lucky us eh?

As for your game, I've never played it. With "staccato gunfire, man bites dog" I was looking for a phrase to describe the experience of shooting aliens & zombies, etc. The experience I was thinking of when I wrote that was actually the original Halo. I remember playing it with mate late into the night, then I went out to the nearby 24hr garage to get munchies. When I came back and got into the lift I could hear something odd, it wasn't until I arrived on my floor that I thought, "sounds like... gunfire?" The key point to understand was that I lived in an old converted bank, it had blast doors in the corridors, so I rushed back into my flat to turn the sound down. Hence "staccato gunfire." Halo is still the best game I've ever played, I actually took 3 days off to play it on launch day. I still think of it as craft/commerce rather than art. Artisan may be a better description. Hence "game as art" to me means something more than technically excellent. But again, these are my opinions, yours may differ.

You seem to believe that I have have insulted you personally, when no such thing was intended, I simply disagreed with your opinions. To understand where I'm coming from in this Google the phrase "come off it!" It is peculiarly English.

In trying to explain this to my wife, ("what are you typing for so long?") I suppose my base argument is that while Othello and Of Mice & Men were the popular entertainment of the day, equally reviled, I think that games are a different category of entertainment. (One of these things is not like the others.) They are often qualitatively different in the experiences they offer. You are not a passive spectator, but an active participant. This I believe is why there are such outcries over things like Mass Effect 3's ending, or Sim City 2013. People feel cheated. I understand that whether gamers should have such opinions or be allowed to sway the nature of the tale the developers wished to tell is one of great debate within the industry.

As for beating people down, again this was not my intent, but if you believe I am doing this out of malice then may I recommend you stop feeding the troll you obviously feel I am.

This was written on the 23rd May, and updated since in light of both starting to read Schmidt & Cohen's "The New Digital Age" and some sections of the blogosphere catching the clue train, post IO, with a few from the mainstream press catching a ride, or at least trawling for link bait, depending on your opinion of what was written.

Much has been written about the death of privacy, (the book takes for granted that privacy is dead) especially for those that shared too early, too often and indiscriminately, yet nothing I've seen really gets to the core of this IMO, so this is a rough cut, then I'll move to discussing IO.

It is possible to aggregate across a group of people those who fit in and those who don't, this is how Google hires people,you may ace the extended interview process, but then they stick you in front of a three hundred question computer based test. They have administered this test to the existing employees, and thus they "know" within a fine tolerance, what a Googler looks like personality wise, the length of the test is important, it's the scope that allows them to cross check if you're faking it or not. It shows the true you. If you don't fit, then even if you aced the interview process, you don't get in.

The real danger, if you want to think of it like that, of all the data that people willingly expose about themselves, is that eventually people will be to come up with tests like Google's that show you for who you are. Already we have the famous marshmallow test, which predicts even at an early age, life outcomes based on whether at age 3-5 you have the self control to delay gratification. Now imagine trying to get health insurance when your status updates about your breakfast and drinking habits are taken into consideration. How about your credit score when they find out how often you go shopping. Or how best to manipulate you based on your socioeconomic type and your revealed prejudices, from the way you write about any given subject. This is the world of "big data" in the not too far distant future, your online life, will be scanned and a prospective employer will learn what kind of a risk you are, etc. This is only a matter of time. One thing the book says that I do agree with, (because it's mostly banal to anyone who's been paying attention) is the notion of having "the talk" with your kids, about data security and what, and what not, to share. Some people may think that Orwellian, but like many things, it's already here, this is the world we live in, all that's missing is the research & algorithms that will strip the real you from your data. Like it or not this will be a factor of your child's life, or yours, if you're a teenager now.

Personally I don't view this as a bad thing provided you get to challenge your record, the real question is what use the information is put to, being an immigrant in this situation is going to a lot easier/difficult, for good and bad. They won't need complicated interviews and tests ultimately, "just answer these 300 questions" and they will know all they need. This is what the end of privacy looks like.

So, with that out of the way, onto my take on IO, and matters arising:

I, like other tech obsessives, and those paid to attend, watched the recent 3.5 hour Google IO keynote with interest. Though I imagine I was one of the few that were disappointed that there wasn't a second keynote the following day as there was in years past.

Thinking about what was said, and what was and wasn't presented it strikes me that jokes about "Google island" aside, the mainstream press seems to have no idea what's going on. Not that they should have, but I would have expected the tech press to have done better. So, for anyone interested, and so I can get it out of my head, and into long term storage, this is my take on what IO13 meant, and what it implies for the future of computing, etc.

I suppose I should state up front that I am not affiliated with Google, nor am I an apologist for them. But as a geek in good standing I do see them as kindred spirits, and I think they have a rather radical view of the future of technology, some may even say Utopian, but whatever it is, it's not incremental, or done piece meal. At least IMO, they have a plan, and they plan long term.

For the record I don't think that doing what Apple, and most other large companies do as regards tax avoidance makes Google "evil", or in any way means that they have given up on their doubtless lofty goals, or their own view of themselves. As far as this geek is concerned they are still the magic kingdom. You may argue that it's unethical, and makes them look bad, but these are "for profit" companies, and nobody is suggesting what they are doing is actually illegal.

That said, you may want to check out this page "on Google" for a deeper view of what is going on out there, he's quite anti in many respects.

That said, let's cut to the chase, what just happened?

Reading around there seem to be three areas of discontent/misunderstanding, namely:

The twin focus on chrome and android.
The lack of new hardware, or a new release of Android.
The lack of gimmicks or big set pieces.

For which I have three answers and/or observations:

Google has already won.

The need for a full fat, big screen web experience has not gone away, though the days of the mass market general purpose computer may be numbered.

The "fact" (which is self evident to me at least) that the smartphone, regardless of how obsessed we are with it currently, was always just a transitory platform, a data gathering exercise. Or, if you like, a very large scale usability test, "a means to an end."

So what is that end? allow me to digress...

A man walks into a Vodafone shop looking for a new phone. What's important to you? Says the salesman, what do you do most on your old phone that you wish it did better? I take pictures, said the man, and thus he is shown a Lumia 920, which, subsidies and sales incentives aside, does have a very good camera.

You probably read that without a thought, (except if you have strong views about Vodafone) this is after all, a common experience. I experienced the above in a Vodafone shop as an interested onlooker, But consider it this way.

A man walks into a phone shop to be sold a computer for the express purpose of taking pictures, he may also use the computer to listen to music and stay in touch with people, occasionally by phone. In all likelihood he will pay very little, or pay monthly, for his new computer. The exact circumstance of the payment will likely depend a great deal on his credit score.

It's fair to say, I think, that very few people think of the transaction that way.

Now think of what many if not most ordinary people do with their, (legacy) computers in the privacy of their own homes, namely:

Consume, curate & edit media, (audio/video & photos)
Buy products & services
Communicate with others
"Surf" for want of a better word :-) (consume information)

Now ponder the overlap with what Google, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft offer.

For my money, the only real competitor is Facebook, Apple is primarily selling products and Microsoft is mostly selling things that other people give away for free.

You may argue about Apple, but in terms of dominance Google has already won. A telling stat I saw recently, (from memory) was in relation to Windows mobile. Apparently it has moved into third place. The telling bit was the percentages involved. Microsoft were at 3% of global shipments with Google at 75% and Apple at 17% and palm at 2%

There is of course the fact that Apple used to account for 55% or so of the US smartphone market. This year that went into decline with Google eclipsing Apple at 51% vs 43% or so. But the US market is more or less at saturation point, hence the need for new markets. In China & India, etc. In those markets, Apple's high margin luxury products have a fraction of the smartphone market, that is dominated primarily by cheap Android handsets.

The dominance by Google of both the handset and search business, is doubtless the main reason, for all the regulatory interest of late. So far it seems to mostly be a stern talking to and the occasional wagging of fingers. No doubt the minnows Google "competes" with feel aggrieved about that.

In short, I don't think Google needed to put on a show, they just needed to make the ecosystem better and more attractive, and continue to offer compelling products & services. Speaking of products, the Pixel, makes so much more sense as a demonstration platform for what Chrome is capable of, than it does as a consumer product I guess us pundits will have to eat crow on that score.

Now we move to the guts of my argument. Which is basically that everyone else is in a different market to Google. Everyone else is is selling products, and looking to make money from them. This isn't the business Google is in. They're dominating markets by giving most of their "products" away for free. The exception to this appears to be markets for products which don't currently exist, at least in a consumer version. By which I mean, Google Glass, fiber to the last mile, and self driving cars.

The flipside of this is that Google doesn't need to worry about the people in the hardware business, or I would venture to suggest, Facebook, who only really make sense, (& money) on the desktop. I've seen anecdotal evidence for instance, that Facebook's mobile app accounts for less than 1% of traffic driven to large websites by Facebook.com If I were an investor, that would worry me, not to mention the fickle beast that is teenage interest in any given social platform. According to the FT they are decamping from Facebook to Twitter, etc. Largely to stay a step ahead of their parents. The average age of a Facebook user is now 40+

This brings us to a fairly simple equation:

What Google needs is more eyeballs, what almost everyone else needs is more revenue, more sales of products & services. All Google needs to do in this instance is make their ecosystem more compelling, then people have a choice of hardware but the same service.

Where I think everyone else will lose is because of the products Google does/doesn't sell, (yet) and one that is nascent, but with huge potential.

As I said above, it seems obvious to me that the hardware I've typed most of this on, (phone & tablet mainly) is largely going away, what will it be replaced by? "The cloud" (a nebulous buzzword meaning storage and compute power somewhere on the open internet) and Speech. They are already offering speech input on my phone and tablet, they announced (& demonstrated live) at IO this year, that they will offer speech search on Chrome on the desktop. And of course they offer speech input with Google Glass. For video and pictures we will continue to have the TV, and possibly projection from/to the headset. What we will need less of going forward is powerful local processors, with extended local storage.

Much of what follows are things I have long thought about as relates to "computing" in general, though much of it was brought into sharp focus by what I saw and read, both at IO and subsequently.

The most telling part of the "how to hack Glass" session at IO, at least to me, was that they were not exposing the speech recognition API. It also brings into harsh focus, the utility of the Chromebook, and one solution to the paradigm of near & far. Near being things you hold or operate with your hands, phones, tablets, computer keyboards & mice, (and by association the computer itself) and objects that are far, that are accessed passively & remotely, (like the TV) Things you sit back from. The interface paradigms, and how you interact with such devices are very different.

Many pixels were spilled afterwards talking about the fact that Google TV got no love, and not a single mention at IO this year, meh. They don't need it IMO for the simple reason they have already won there too. "But they haven't sold many units, nobody has ever heard of it" you rightly say. Meh. Samsung make "smart" TV's, what that means is they run Android, Skype, etc. You have access to Google Play, you can download games & apps, Angry Birds on the big screen anyone? All the cheap USB stick devices out of China, the ones that plug into TV's, etc. They all run Android too. As do many games/media player devices, My Ouya, which I backed on kickstarter is in the mail, will get here this week. The killer app for most of these things is XBMC, which is something no corporate entity who had to worry about lawyers would ever write. Consequently, it's simply the best Media Center out there, bar none. Nothing does what this thing can do, It really is the second coming. Chrome ships by default on most of these devices, based as they are on Android 4.x The beta version of which now does auto-translation of any web page. All Google needs to do is offer the Google TV apps on such devices and it doesn't need to partner with anyone to achieve penetration and mass market adoption.

My point about Apple would be this, they sell very desirable products, but ultimately IMO, your data travels with you, you have minimal compute power with you, and a small screen, but you could display to a larger independently powered screen if one is available. The screen itself, becomes a commodity, like a plate, or a TV, it serves a purpose. There may be a market for a high margin luxury business making such screens in future, but a screen is not a smartphone, or a tablet as we currently know them.

To my way of thinking, Glass may be a geek product at first, but once it gets better at doing what ordinary people need, then it will go mainstream. At that point you have knowledge at your beck and call, along with directions, music, books, all narrated to you, with all the camera and video functionality you would expect from a "phone" and all you need to do is be able to speak. Imagine being in a foreign country and having glass translate from your language into the language of the natives back and forth in real time. How much would you pay to rent that, even if you didn't want to buy?

The fiber to the last mile could kill the cable industry, or shake it up the same way that Napster did to the recording industry. But the real impact of self driving cars, especially the lower accident rate, and the freeing up of commuting time, has yet to be encountered. Have a car you don't own drive you to work, or on holiday, or out to the pub only to drive you back again once you've had a skinful. The disruptive potential for this is vast, and I think beyond any pundit.

Similarly, think of the utility of being able to speak to your computer, to ask it to find photos, of a particular kind, or with a particular person/place on a particular holiday. Of not having to understand how the computer works, but having the computer understand you and then display the output to the best screen available at your current location, why would you limit yourself to the small screen you have in your hand, or even on a laptop that limits your mobility.
Google's answer seems to be that out in the real world you want to get the computer out of the way, while at home, why not immerse yourself in it? For that how about the return of VR and the Oculus Rift or even just a smart TV, or an Android box/USB stick attached to it

Very soon, you will have to face a choice of "going Google", or weaning yourself off of Google completely and onto mostly inferior products. I can't see anyone but the most ardent anti-Google zealots making that trade.

Tl;dr? Google have already won, and the future for most of your computing needs is going to be speech driven. Google don't need an island, they have the Western, (and increasingly the whole) world to experiment in.

"The future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed."

Just occasionally you find something made of whole cloth, stuff that chimes with experience. Much like the work & words of Brene Brown you will find scattered in posts below. This is one of those things:

"At the heart of resilience is a belief in oneself—yet also a belief in something larger than oneself.

Resilient people do not let adversity define them. They find resilience by moving towards a goal beyond themselves, transcending pain and grief by perceiving bad times as a temporary state of affairs… It's possible to strengthen your inner self and your belief in yourself, to define yourself as capable and competent. It's possible to fortify your psyche. It's possible to develop a sense of mastery."

The 10 traits I can take or leave, but that sentence is spot on.

You may also find this enlightening, though I would argue that it's a different kind of outcome, with more toys and less capacity for personal growth.

Just occasionally Psychology Today gives you all manner of good stuff.

Standing in front of the mirror pre shower, pondering imminent changes, I was forced to ask again, the only question worth the time, "do you know what you're doing?" to which the answer is "no" this is always a healthy sign in my opinion, because it's only when you think you know all the answers that you get overconfident and something jumps up and bites you. At that point you panic, then you try to make reality look like the plan...

What they don't tell you in school, is that the benefit of age is experience, which will get you through a dark night or a server failure in one piece provided you remember your Socrates you aren't afraid to fail/learn, and you don't take short cuts.

Consider the following parable:

You set out on your journey, you see interesting things, meet interesting people, then you come across the dragon, you're going to need to improvise to get around it. Had you known about the dragon before hand then what you'd want is a suit of armour a large shield and a magic sword. Yet a suit of armour is heavy, the helmet is stifling and restricts your vision, the shield throws you off balance, and nobody is going to say "hi" to a tooled up madman. You still have to deal with the dragon, and a suit of armour limits your options.

I am working on a much larger blog post that goes into more detail, (probably the largest thing I have ever written online) but this part of it recurs again and again.