AI Paranoia

I have a visual impairment, it's caused by a condition known as Nystagmus. The short explanation is that my eyes constantly move involuntarily and because of this it is difficult for me to focus on fine details, the further away they are the harder it becomes. With most things close up I can manage quite well, this is something I have lived my whole life with so as you can imagine it's something I've learned to compensate for or find workarounds.

Computers, and technology in general make my life easier, the fact you can change the resolution of a screen and scale fonts to a comfortable size makes a world of difference for me. Existing in a world without the internet when I was a kid was very difficult, accessibility was always an afterthought, arguably it still is, but the assistive technology that exists today to aid me is designed to work with products and services that didn't add accessibility, but that technology enables it nonetheless - magnifiers, screen readers, audio transcription, larger screens, lower resolutions, adjustable DPI to name a few.

Using the internet when I was younger wasn't so easy before browsers added these abilities as features or before operating systems incorporated accessibility features on a native level that actually functioned. In the days of yore, I relied upon expensive third-party software which thankfully I didn't have to pay for as there were government grants you could access at the time here in the UK to gain access to the technology.

Will AI make everyone unemployed?

What is a revolution? You might be tempted to define it as the disruption of the status quo, to say that revolutions break down or destroy something that exists paving the way for something new to take its place. The problem with that definition is that it doesn't hold true when you actually look at human history. Innovation leads to new destinations, new orders, and new paradigms, revolutions do not. A revolution both in the sociological sense and in the geometric sense is basically the traversal of a circle from one point back to itself.

Revolutions throughout history have taken order in society, disrupted it, and rather than replacing it or reforming it, they ultimately return society back to that point of order - in other words revolutions, far from changing society, actually reinforce the behavioural patterns that have become entrenched.

Time is running out

The television as we know it today was invented in 1923 by John Logie Baird, his invention iterated and combined elements of existing technology and augmented them with novel elements. After a series of demonstrations and refinements to the technology, growing public adoption, and regulatory disputes, The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) was established - the exact date varies depending on where you begin counting, technically the organisation was founded in 1922 as a company rather than a corporation and covered other forms of broadcasting namely radio, but it eventually became a public body in 1927, the first public television broadcaster, now the oldest in the world.

Fast forward 98 years and we are approaching the centennial of the BBC, there are only a few thousand people still alive in the UK today who are older than the BBC - this is important to note because time is running out.

Your Favourite Game Of All Time

I've touched on Stardew Valley many times throughout this challenge but it's hard to avoid when it is my favourite game of all time, and after idle games whose playtime is skewed, Stardew Valley is the most played game in my Steam library coming in at just under 800 hours of gameplay, that's quite an achievement consider there are over 150 games in my Steam library at this point.

A Game You Thought You Wouldn't Like, But Ended Up Loving

There have been several games over the years where the only reason I own them is because they came with the console when I bought it, or when my parents bought them for me. The original Halo game is one of those games. When I first got an Xbox it was a few years after release, it came with Halo, Midtown Madness 3, and Simpsons Hit and Run. I wasn't expecting to like Halo, in fact it sat to one side for about a week before I actually played it.

Your Favourite Game Developer

Spoiler alert, the last entry in a few days in this challenge is going to be Stardew Valley, I'll explain why in greater detail when that post rolls around. It's necessary to give that spoiler now though because Stardew Valley was developed by Eric Barone also known as ConcernedApe and he is my favourite game developer.

Most Epic Scene Ever in a Game

When it comes to games there's quite a few interpretations of the word 'epic' that I could use as a definition for this post. I'm choosing to interpret this as the scene from a game that stunned me most and left me sitting entranced wondering what did I just see and there's only one option for me, the ending sequence from Manifold Garden.