Avast Your Content

This last week, a couple of news items knocked me out of the stratosphere of the post-work society and back to reality.  That is because both items hit me where it hurts: in the content I love.

First up, there is the news that HBO has been hacked and someone is trying to blackmail them by threatening to release Game of Thrones episodes ahead of official release.  Plus allegedly damning emails.  After the Sony "The Interview" hack of 2014 which is rumored to have cost Sony around $100 Million, companies have taken threats like this seriously.  Unless the hackers don't actually have what they say they have or think that what they have is more critical than it is (see "Burn After Reading"), as appears to be the case here.  HBO is not reported to be negotiating in any serious manner with the cyber thieves.

Secondly, Disney has announced that they are severing ties with Netflix and will be pulling their content from that service in 2019.  They intend to set up their own streaming service for their content which may include content from ABC and ESPN, both owned by Disney.  Netflix responded by buying a comic book publisher, Millarworld, which is most known for the "Kick-Ass" series.

What do these two news items have in common?  Well, they are both about money.  They are both about control.  And they are both about content piracy.  And content piracy is about breaking free of money and control.

Virtually Polite

I like my virtual assistants, be they "Hey, Google" or Alexa.  (I've not owned an Apple product since long before Siri.  As for Cortana, well she may be fine, but who knows?)  But they are not perfect.  Each has their own set of problems, be it interoperability with the apps I want to use or the trigger words that are used to 'wake' them up.  However, the thing that irks me the most about them is that they are only kind of polite.

By 'kind of', I mean that they follow the intent of polite conversation, but not the forms.  They respond quickly with relevant information (most of the time) if they are address correctly, but they do not handle words like 'please' and 'thank you' and 'you're welcome' with any grace.  Ffor instance, if you say, "Alexa, please tell me about the weather," then Alexa will tell you about the weather, ignoring the word 'please' as irrelevant to the request.  Then, after you have the information, if you say, "Thank you," you get nothing in return.  Instead, you have to say "Alexa, thank you".  Only then will you get a "You're welcome."  It does not fit into a natural conversation.  At least in the style of American English in the beginning of the 21st Century.

Travel App Crap

Recently, I had (and took) the opportunity to go on a big ship cruise.  This is not something that I had ever thought that I would do.  But for an older family member's significant birthday? What the hey, I'll try anything once.  So off we all went for a seven day tour of Alaska's Inland Passage.

The cruise itself was nice.  The Middle School Daughter and I had a few adventures hiking, kayaking and zip-lining.  We saw whales and glaciers from the deck of the cruise liner which was cool (though a bit surreal, what with looking at receding glaciers from the deck of this diesel and hollandaise fueled behemoth).  And we were force-ably unplugged.  Or mostly.

Passing On

A few weeks ago, the Emmy Award nominations were announced.  Normally, this is an event that I ignore with great abandon.  However, it appears that this will be a banner year for Man-Machine interaction.  Two futuristic properties got nods: Westworld and Black Mirror's episode 'San Junipero' both got multiple nominations.

I've watched all of Westworld Season 1 and thought it was some of the best discussion on the nature of consciousness and what it means to have self determination. (Did Maeve get back off the train to find her daughter because she wanted to or because she was programmed to?  Is there a difference?)  However, I had not watched San Junipero, though I have seen a few other Black Mirror episodes.  So, I thought to give it a watch.

[Spoilers after the break]

Artificial Risk

Over the past months, I've written quite a bit about how automation, driven by an Artificial Intelligence (or three), will take our jobs and that it is a good thing.  Then along comes Mr. High-and-Mighty Technocrat Elon Musk saying that AI is an existential threat to humanity and needs to be proactively regulated.

Well, crap.

What is a blogger with an audience of (maybe) dozens supposed to do against the loudest voice for Futurism on the planet?  I don't know what the others are doing, but I'm going to unpack his comments and do some on-page thinking.

Work is What You Make of AI

Last month I got all on a kick about how automation is going to take our jobs and that that is a good thing.  There has been some more press on this topic so I want to continue kicking it around.

The first article for my shouting-into-an-empty-house discussion is from the BBC: How long will it take for your job to be automated.  This is about an Oxford study that asked 352 scientists how long various jobs would take to be automated.  This is a better information than the one that the Will Robots Take My Job site used.  And it offers up a time frame that is more heartening for those that are hip deep in the status quo: 120 year before 50% of all jobs are automated.  Hold on to that thought.

The second article is about Eric Schmidt, Google Founder and Techno Spouter (of course I'm jealous, people ask his opinions instead of me trying to force them down any ear that will listen).  In it, Mr. Schmidt puts forth the idea that A.I. will create more jobs that can't be filled instead of destroying them.  His reasoning is that automation will make workers more efficient, more productive, but that humans will still need to be part of the process.  He cites a McKinsey study that says that 5% of current jobs can be automated with today's technology for his reasoning.  It's a very together-we-are-stronger statement, but it has a few holes.

A Matter of Travel

I saw this article about how autonomous vehicles will change everything a few weeks ago.  I meant to write about it then, but then Amazon distracted me.  But I did not forget.  Not this guy.

The basic gist of the article is that, as both self-driving cars and electrical power systems grow, coupled with the instant-ordering supplied by smart phones, it will change how people choose to get their transportation.  Instead of owning, we will rent on an as-needed basis.  The author goes on to predict that, at the inflection point of long battery life and reliable autonomy, this behavior change will happen very quickly.  "A matter of months" quickly.