Printing the Human Upgrade

Evolution is something that humanity has been going through for however many hundred thousand years we've been kicking around this planet on the outer edge of a spiral galaxy.  It's been a long, slow, laborious process.  We've gotten to where we are now, and it may now be the time that evolution picks up speed.  3D printing, the ability to create almost any object that you can imagine in plastic, metal and various other high tech substances is now something that can be done not in a giant factory, but from the comfort of your own desk, to your own 3D printer sitting next to your desk.

What intrigues me is where this goes from here.  To be able to print parts for a car, a machine, a printer, is one thing.  But what about printing parts for the ultimate machine - the human body!

What if we could print, not plastic or metal, but bone, skin and flesh?  Where would that leave us in the short and long term?  A lot of work has been done, is being done and will be done in regard to organ transplant and replacement.  There has been some success in “vat grown” replacements for skin and tissue.  And while it sounds a bit “Dr. Frankenstein” it’s a very important step forward in respect to human evolution.  William Gibson, the “father” of the cyberpunk genre unwittingly chose the japanese city of Chiba as the centre for a large number of vat grown body part replacements, sitting side by side with the more mechanical “cyberware”.  And these vat grown items are now starting to become a reality.

If we go a little further down the rabbit hole, we can see this expanding.  Firstly, if we take the idea of the vat grown parts but instead of growing them from stem cells or the like, we inject that raw material into a printer.  Then, using a pre-determined "plan" we can print the required part.  Let's start simple, something like an ear, or least the outter part of one.  Close proximity scans can be taken of the patients existing ear structure.  This is then fed into the computer, allowing it to generate a 3D mesh of the design.  This mesh is then sent to the printer, and layer by layer it builds the required part.  Once completed, this can then be surgically attached to the patient.  To add to this, if the structure is built using DNA provided by the patient, then there should (theoretically) be no rejection, which means no lifelong drug therapy.  Heart transplants, liver transplants, kidney transplants then become something that while still major, no longer have the added requirement of a compatible donor.

Of course, the drug companies probably won’t be too happy to see their profits disappear, so they’ll have to come up with something to bolster them.  Perhaps, drug therapy that can be applied directly to the printout?  Want stronger bones, just add some additional elements to the print queue.  Want denser muscle fibres for increased strength, pump in the appropriate agents during the print job.  But it doesn’t stop there does it.  Let’s delve a little deeper, to the point where we are able to print some of the more delicate structures in the human body.  Lets say you are unfortunate enough to work in an environment that is full of airborne toxins.  Rather than waste money on external filtration apparatus, gas masks, all that sort of thing, why not have your lungs “upgraded”.  Have a new set printed up that have been modified to stop absorbtion of those toxic particles?  Maybe the company will even pay for them up-front, and you’ll just have a small amount deducted from each pay.  Of course, if you leave then your severance could be more severe than you realise.

And if we go further, that dicky knee that’s been giving you trouble since you got creamed playing street footy can be rebuilt.  Totally rebuilt, better, stronger, and using all your own DNA.  Now, at some point someone is going to want to “improve” what they already have.  Maybe they just want to be able to see better.  Today, we have laser corrective surgery to resolve visual issues, but take that a step further.  Instead of attempting to repair the damage (with the risks inherent in that), just print a new eyeball to replace the faulty one.  Work in low light?  Have low light amplification or thermal vision installed.  And all these replacements have another effect on  us.  We’ll live longer, in theory.  Everytime we replace, update, upgrade an existing body part, we let the body continue to function beyond it’s normal limits.  Vanity could quickly take centre stage as people have complete body overhauls, replacing skin, muscle, bone with new upgraded versions.  So just be aware, that hot guy or girl you’ve just spent the last hour making eyes at across the bar, could be old enough to be one of your great grand grand parents.

DRM - The SimCity Fiasco

Well, it’s been a week since SimCity was released to players in Australia and there was every expectation that there wouldn’t be the same issues that the US players had encountered with servers going up and down more often than a yo-yo.  EA made all sort of apologies.  And then March 7 arrived, those of us that had pre-ordered copies picked them up, got them home and started the install.

Everything went smoothly to begin with.  Origin accounts created if you didn’t have one, patching (a bugbear of mine that will be covered at another time), and then the server selection screen.  At this point, everything promptly fell over.  Select a server that stated it was “Available”, attempt to connect and either you got a message saying it wasn’t available or you got nothing.  Try again, different server, same result.  If you were really unlucky you might actually get connected to a server before everything fell over.  Then you were in for a new form of torture.

If you did connect to a server successfully, the next time you ran the launcher it would try to connect to the same server again - and of course it would fail.  But you couldn’t select another server until it was finally able to connect to the previous one.  So you either had to wait, or as one person found, you could “roll back” by replacing some files which cleared the server setting, but also meant you had to download the patch again.

Now, all of this wouldn’t have been quite so bad if it was only related to authenticating your product.  There are plenty of companies (Valve for example) who have required this.  But EA had gone down the same path that Ubisoft took with Assassins Creed II, and instead required a constant internet connection.  Now, their reasoning I’m sure is because they have implemented a multiplayer component to what has always been a single player product.  And now that it’s playable, it is still to a large extent, a single player product.  The “multiplayer” component could easily have been done in a way that doesn’t require an “online” connection.  

And this is where we come to the DRM, or Digital Rights Management.  Plenty of software companies have implemented this sort of thing in the past, from code wheels, to page/line/word questions where you have to find a specific word in the manual, requiring the CD to be in the computer when you start the game is in my estimate, the most well known form.  Probably the most diabolic though was Sony’s attempt at DRM that installed a rootkit on the users computer without their knowledge.  It was universally recognised as the worst possible blunder any company had made, or would likely ever make in regard to DRM.

Why’s it there?  In theory, it’s there to stop people from illegally downloading copies of the games to play.  Does it stop them?  Not really.  Most DRM is broken fairly soon after release.  And the funniest part of the whole thing is that DRM broken titles usually have less issues with things like server authentication, because these functions have been disabled by the people who broke the DRM.  

It’s a double edged sword for these software companies.  They spend millions of dollars to create these triple-A titles, and as such they want to realise as much profit from them as they can.  So they put in the DRM, or authentication requirements and have massive issues on release as things don’t work.  With SimCity, it got so bad that Amazon pulled the product from sale stating that they couldn’t sell a product they knew didn’t work and didn’t know when it would work.

All up, it took EA and it’s partners about 4 or 5 days to turn around the situation to the point where players could logon successfully, complete tutorials and start to build their cities without fear of servers crashing and wiping out all the work they’d done (which did happen).  Will this, and things like Blizzards “Error 37” have any impact on the sale of products that suffer through these things?  No, in the long term it won’t.  It should, but it won’t.  People will complain about it while it’s happening, and the twitters will be a-flood with complaints and vitriol, and then things will go quiet as those same people can logon and immerse themself in whatever world it is.  It should be a wake up call to the companies as well, but again, it won’t have an impact as they already have your money and that’s the real crux of it.  You paid, you’ll get to play, but it probably won’t be on day 1.

Is privacy the new currency on the internet?

With the advent of “social networks” over the last few years, privacy has become the “buzzword” surrounding them.  What do they do with the information we give them, how securely is it stored, how much do we need to provide in order to get what we want and is it a fair price?  There have been multiple instances of people asking these questions of companies like Facebook, MySpace, Google, Twitter, etc.  This in turn has coined phrases like “big data” to describe what is going on with all that information.

Now of course I’m involved in this “big data” as well, through my Google+ account, this blog, deviant Art and various other social networks dotted around the internet.  In most cases, I don’t pay a monetary fee to use these services (though in the effort of full disclosure I do pay an annual fee for my upgraded deviant Art account).  But just because I don’t pay cash, doesn’t mean I don’t pay in some way.  And that way is with my privacy.

In order to blog on Blogger for example, I need to have a Google account.  Now, I already had one, and I thought long and hard about using this platform over a couple of other well known blog sites.  In the end, I decided that Google already had the information about me through my Gmail account and my Google+ page.  So rather than trade my privacy (even if it’s only a few personal details) to another site, I’d use the one that already had them.  That’s a double edged sword of course.  It means that I can’t anonymously just blather on about a topic or say something inflamatory just for the sake of it, because my name is on this.  Of course, it also means that if I say something insightful, clever or amusing (or possibly all three at once) then people will know that I said it and not some nameless net denizen.

Now this got me thinking, about privacy and personal information in general but specifically how this information has become commoditised, and then down the track monetised by these services we use.  In essence, our privacy, our personal information that for so long was only known by friends and family, has become the currency we use to access services on the internet.  We barter this information about ourselves, about what we like, about where we go on the internet in order to “belong” to a social group.  And we all make decisions on this every time we post a comment, a picture, a status update, etc.

Recently, a new player came into what some might see as an already overcrowded market - App.net.  The big difference between App.net and Facebook was that you paid to join App.net.  There was no “free” offer.  You paid something like $50 per year and you got an ad free social network, where the idea was you could “network” from what I understand.  It was a bit of a surprise that someone would be so bold as to say “Sure, you join, it’s $50 a year” as opposed to “Sure, you join, we’ll just take your personal information, your browsing habits, any other information we can get hold of, distill it and then sell it on to marketing agencies to they can target their advertising at you”.  App.net have now changed their model slightly, there is still the $50 per year model but I believe they have now added a “free” account that has a limited set of features offered in the full one.   

Now in no way am I having a go at the companies that do that.  They are in this to make a buck and they’ve found a way to do it.  Sure, you might say it’s underhanded.  You could call it unethical.  You could rail against it as a perceived invasion of privacy, but in the end, each one of us who uses these services makes a decision on what we feel our privacy, our personal information is worth.  And then we use that as currency with the Facebook’s, Google’s and others to get access to the services we want to use.

Information is knowledge.  Knowledge is power.  In this virtual world we inhabit, the most powerful information is your own.  Know it’s value to you and to others so you can get the best deal you can by spending as little as possible.  

Applying sandbox ideology to MMO architecture

A Casual Gaming Approach to the Power Gaming of MMO “Questing.”

or

Applying sandbox ideology to MMO architecture.

The casual gaming space has exploded over the last few years, in no small part to giants like Facebook, but also with the advent of “browser games” that plug straight into things like Chrome and Firefox.  In some aspects this is a wonderful thing as it brings more and more people into the fold of “gaming” even though they may not consider themselves gamers.  Of course, the MMO scene while not taking a direct hit, has suffered from the number of casual games that are now available.  Why?  Simply because they are very low entry point and you don’t have to invest hours at a time to get anything done.

A big attraction with casual games is that you can play them for 15 minutes, get something done which gives you that feeling of “completion” and then off you go to do something else. Or, you keep playing, completing the next step, or quest, or journal entry, another 15 minutes or so.  There are people out there who play these casual games in a way that would scare the so called hardcore gamers with their dedication and the amount of time the spend in these browser based environments.  I’m sure we’ve all heard the stories of the high flying executives who have to quickly duck out of a meeting to take an important call - only to head back to their office so they can logon to Farmville and harvest their crops in order to plant more so they can get that new shiny limited edition something or other.  And then they head back to the meeting, no one any wiser.

The other big attraction of the casual game is the social aspect.  You jump in, you can see all your friends listed who play (along with a number who don’t which you are prompted to invite).  You get little notes about who has been at your location and helped you out, messages offering you a gift or asking for your assistance with a particular item.  This sort of help costs you nothing, it’s a simple click to accept and then you are into your farm, or city, or kitchen to do your own thing.  The real advantage of this is of course that you don’t have to be active in the game at the time the message is sent in order to receive it.  Hell, you don’t even have to be online!  Of course if you’ve been anywhere near Facebook you are already well aware of this.  But how does this relate to the world of MMO’s, fetch quests, fedex quests and kill 10 rats and I’ll give you this rat fur cap quests?

To address this I think we need to look at some of the core mechanics of MMO’s (in general) and make some changes to that architecture.  

I think we can all agree that the quest system in the majority of MMO’s today is pretty simple.  It’s also pretty dull.  In essence, you find someone with some sort of indicator on them (be it a ? or ! over their head, a glowing ring around their feet or something of that nature) and you interact with them.  They give you some flavour dialogue and then present you with the option to accept their request or deny it.  And that’s it. You may get options to continue the dialogue, but in the end you either accept what they want you to do and do it, or you don’t accept it and you go in search of someone else to give you a job.   In some cases you may encounter something out in the big wide digital world that will start the process, but once started the steps remain the same.  You do this job for an NPC and they reward you with something - money, an item or that rat fur cap I mentioned earlier.

What I’m suggesting is a system that reduces the “linearity” in the MMO quest, and instead replaces it with some sociability.  This proposal would work best I believe in a current day/sci-fi/cyberpunk style MMO though there is no reason why with a bit of tweaking it couldn’t be implemented into your (non)standard fantasy universe.  In essence it is simply this - what if instead of you searching for the NPC’s who would give you your next job, they came to you with a proposal of work.  And so did your fellow players.  Radical I know, but stay with me.  

Picture this...  You are a character living in a dystopian cyberpunk environment, you work and travel in the shadows between the shining lights of the rich and powerful and the cesspit at the bottom of humanity.  You have a very important role to play in this society.  You can do the things that the people in the steel and glass towers cannot - you can deal with the sludge of society to get done the things they need.  You can get the information they want, you can find the goods and provide the services they need, you can break the rules in order for them not to.  Sure, you might not ever get to live in one of those steel and glass towers, but that’s ok, cause the people who do live there pay pretty well for the skills you have or have access to.

You get a message from some guy calling himself Johnson or Johnston or something.  Seems he heard your name from some local fence and a couple of quick financial incentives later said fence passed on your number.  This guy has a job that might interest you.  The pay’s not brilliant, but it’s been a while since you had more than a few Yuan to rub together.  You watch the fuzzy  recording with the obvious voice masking.  It’s a simple job really, go to a local neighbourhood, collect a portable trideo unit that has been stolen and return it.  Of course, your employer has neglected to tell you that the neighbourhood you have to go to is run by one of the wildest “go gangs” in that part of the sprawl.  So you make your way over there and how you get the trideo back is up to you.  Of course, there will probably be a few firefights and some hand to hand combat  - this is an MMO after all.

You get the trideo and return it for your payment.  Unfortunately for your employer, the memory chip that was supposed to be in the trideo has been removed.  Seems they have another job for you.  Go back to the ganger's and find the chip.  And while you are there he’d like you to teach them a lesson - that while stealing is bad, stealing from him is infinitely worse, and far more painful.

Hang on a second though I can hear you saying.  That’s just a cheap fetch quest, followed up by another fetch quest with a rat quest tacked on the back.  You go back to the neighbourhood, get to the chip from the gang leader in whatever way you deem suitable and take it to the drop.  When you get there you are approached by someone who passes on a message from your current employer asking you to destroy the chip as it is “no longer viable” along with your payment.  Now you can destroy the chip and move on, but knowledge is power in the sprawl and obviously this chip must contain something pretty powerful that your employer would send you in twice to get it and now wants it destroyed.  Depending on what archetype you chose at the start, you may be able to slot the chip into your deck and check it out yourself.  If not, then you need to find someone who can - and that’s where the social aspect of casual gaming collides with the MMO world - you can do it all yourself, but you can do it faster if you get help.  

We’ll say that you didn’t choose a tech class and you can’t see what is on the chip yourself, so who are you going to get to help you find out what is on it?  Well, you could do it the hard way, by yourself, slogging through the sprawl until you can find an NPC who’ll talk to you and can, for a price, slot the chip and check out what it contains, of course, the price may be more than you are willing to pay or can afford.  Or, if one or more of your friends has started a tech class, then maybe they could do it for you, all you would need to do is send them a message which they would get next time they logon.  The message could contain a self deleting copy of the chip which they could slot to identify and extract the contents before sending them back to you.  Depending on their skill level, their hardware and the programs they use, this could take only a few seconds for rudimentary encryption or longer if there is high level encryption and ICe (Intrusion Countermeasures).  If you don’t have any friends who are able (or willing) to help you and you can’t find an NPC who will either, your last option may be the UnderNet.  You logon through one of the many shadow servers that are throughout the sprawl and post a message with the job you have, what you need and how much you are willing to pay.  Anyone else who logs into UnderNet can accept that job offer, making you their employer.  Once the job is completed you get your information and they get their money.  Simple, and social.  Offer up enough of the right work and you could start to make a name for yourself in the sprawl.  Of course, sometimes being known could get you the wrong sort of attention from the cops, the corps or someone else who just doesn’t like you.  You could also use UnderNet to take jobs yourself to earn some quick cash.

I believe that a mechanic of this kind would give the MMO genre a significant “social” boost and has the potential to revolutionise how we not only play the games, but what else we do in them
once we log in.