I have recently been reading an excellent book by Andrew Pickering entitled ‘the cybernetic brain’. The first half of the book gives an incredibly rich and fascinating history of early British cybernetics and although I have not yet finished the book I am really enjoying the stories behind early cybernetic thinkers and the extraordinary range of backgrounds from which they come from. From the history in the book and by recognising the common themes between the approaches to different fields I have come to understand cybernetics takes a ‘steering’ approach to achieve its goals; presumed knowledge takes a backseat while understanding and reacting to a unpredictable and complex changing environment moves to the front.

I have started to think back to some of the work I have done previously and how I might have approached it. In University a big interest of mine was network security and I had spent plenty of time on assignments using products such as Snort and writing code to detect predetermined malicious patterns in network packets. These tools would detect malicious activity based on rule sets. The tool would spot something defined within the rules and report it back to the user.

The methods I used required the system to have an indefinite amount of knowledge to constitute as intelligence. To create the rules we must already have an understanding of what is going to happen within our environment, which we do not and will not have. Would an approach derived from shared agreement on what network activity is eventually teach itself to be secure? How would we move from a rule-based system to a self steering one.

I think I am starting to understand why the early cybernetic thinker came from such a wide array of areas…. and also why they were all mad!

Every year I pay £40 to microsoft for the privilage to play my Xbox Live games online. I dont mind paying the money too much considering live is far ahead of PSN (although I think sony are closing the gap) . When I spend £40 on a game that says I can play it on Xbox Live I expect to be able to play the game I have purchased for quite a while; I understand that eventualy I won’t be able to:

A) The popularity of the game will dwindle; meaning I can no longer play whacked simply because there is nobody to play it with.

B) Not enough people play to justify server support and it is pulled, sometimes I am ok with this (as with PSO, which I played for free for yonks on Sega servers) and sometimes it pisses me off (EA decide you have to buy the 2009 version).

Quite often games will give you the option to enhance your online gaming experience via micro purchases, map packs, skins, weapons; and this is fine, sometimes I buy the upgrades (although don’t get me started on recent Live and PSN content price increases), I own all the Guild Wars packs, and I will certainly be getting anything Valve release for Left 4 Dead. These are two of my favorite games which I will choose to upgrade; however having payed £40 for the original game if I choose not to upgrade then I should be robbed of nothing, gameplay should carry on as normal- just without the optional extras. I repeat THE OPTIONAL EXTRAS!

Yesterday I decided to play Halo 3; a game I don’t really like on multiplayer, but I did want to have a laugh with some old friends playing it. Having already paid £40 for the game and my £40 subscription fee, that shouldn’t be a problem. Right?

After making my way through the menu with that god awful music I am told I can’t play it anymore because I haven’t paid for the optional extras. That’s right, the OPTIONAL ones. I’m all for additional content for games, but not when I have to carry on buying them to keep the original functionality. A quick Google search just returns fanboys telling me to shut up and buy it, since its only 600 points.(although you cant even buy ms points by the 600s).

This isn’t the point. I shouldn’t have to carry on buying content to keep original functionality; I don’t mind additional content if its optional and is a reasonable price. Take LBP for example, I don’t own the costumes that cost £1.49, and what do I lose? Nothing.

Shame on you Bungie and Microsoft. Shame Shame Shame and more Shame; all with capital letters.

They should take a leaf out of ArenaNet’s book who have been releasing episodic Guild Wars content which funds online servers which keep their mmorpg free; it doesn’t matter which episodes you do or don’t own, no original functionality lost. Additional money was made by optional ‘real’ purchases such as cardboard cut outs of the characters/tshirts/badges. All of which do not harm the game if you don’t own them!

Another example I would champion is Siren: New Translation. Sony who I would normally put into the Bungie/Microsoft camp of Shame did a brilliant job of chopping a game into episodes, hooking you in and making you hungry for more by releasing them for cheap.

During a discussion about the merits of the app store at work a colleague of mine asked a question somewhere along the lines of…

‘Do you think all application distribution will follow a similar path?’

and the thought that shot through my mind was something like:

‘People still think there is a future in physical media?’

I guess in my mind physical media is on the way out, and it has been since I first installed Steam back in 2003. Valve have done an amazing job with steam and whenever I hear debates about how future distribution systems will crush physical content I can’t help but think gaming distribution systems such as Steam, Live Arcade, PSN Store, GamersGate etc have been there done that and got the tshirt.

My first thoughts was that gaming was clearly leading the way, pushed by both the huge amounts of money and the fact there are very few popular open source gaming projects, leading the big game publishers to do whatever the hell they want- their way or the high way. On reflection this was far from the truth, as I had been using the APT packaging tool that did a (kind of?) similar thing on Linux for years. Apt and its friends let me install and configure free software with a few bashes on the keyboard.

It still seems strange to me that the big software development houses don’t have the cutting edge distribution channels to overhaul physical media, whereas games and open source channels do. Is it simply because users don’t want it, or we just simply aren’t ready? Have Apple might cracked the thing wide open with iTunes/ iTunes U/Appstore and the integration of these with the operating system and portable devices.

Yes Yes, we can simply go to the website and download whatever we wish in a few clicks, but 6 years ago that was my argument against Steam…

Thats it, I’ve had enough. The age of these new networking platforms being exciting has come and gone, even your 4 month old tweets when she wants feeding. I’m not alone, even the most technology savvy of us can’t take it any more.

Am I just part of a small subset of 20-something techies complaining because we can’t get our voices heard over anguished tweenagers or have the latest social networking concepts really lost their direction.

Twitters approach to journalism is is currently under heavy debate, the response is instant and global, news has never been so fast. Yet I still can’t stand it. I add a friend to my list and suddenly my RSS feed is useless because my new friend is a twog (twitter hog – I even hate the new social networking lingo) and has decided they have to tweet every single time they move. Why do I care what you have every morning for breakfast? For every informative tweet describing the situation in Gaza I have 50 tweets describing a quaver that looks like a penis. Twitters openness may promote conversation but its lack of structure makes the whole thing muddled and dominated by the loudest.

What to do? :(