Friendly IoT or Daemon of WarGames

Is the Internet dangerous? Well, yes, we know all the hazards of spending all the work hours behind monitor screens, browsing the web at home, doing social networking, playing online games, watching YouTube, staring at smartphone little displays, or for whatever reasons we sit above our keyboards most of the time every day. That's indeed what we first think of—all the negative aspects of the mighty global network—but today I am not referring to all the potential medical issues inherited from sitting too long on the chair or looking every day into the LCD screen. I also don't mean the obvious social and/or physiological outcomes from letting the virtual world take over the real one for more and more people every day. No, I mean the real danger. Did the Internet overcome the pure network system and become a tool for mass destruction or a background tool for criminal activities? Can someone use the internet to hurt somebody or to perform a murder? Either directly or indirectly? Can some organization, country, or corporation use it to start a war? I mean, wars in the past began by more trivial things than by one global network. There was one war in the year 1969 between El Salvador and Honduras, initiated by a football game. True story. Google it.

You can relax. The Internet is still far from being a player. Or a rifle. It is getting sophisticated by the day, but currently it is still lacking two things to become something more than just a network. Two things are in development as we speak. And yes. You can stop relaxing now. The Internet IS going to be potentially capable and very dangerous when these two things become reality in the future. Very near future, if you ask me. And one of those two doesn't even have to be perfect. Like any other internet thingies, they have cool acronyms. AI and IoT. The first one will provide internet to be self-aware... or... in simple words, to start thinking. It means 'Artificial Intelligence', of course, and even though current development is far away from creating a real replacement for a human mind, some sort of NAI (near AI) will be sufficient to act independently on many occasions. NAI is not real AI. It is rather a complex logic that emulates thinking behavior in some spatial scenarios with predefined and predicted all or most of all directions and events. For example, the current two operational robotic rovers on Mars, Curiosity and Opportunity, are capable of driving on their own with their operating software. Or here on Earth, many metro systems in large cities are operated by complex control and are fully automated, without humans behind train controls. Something like in this embedded video was unthinkable only a couple of decades ago.

To be honest, true AI is not really a real threat. Even if science and technology build an AI entity tomorrow with certain doses of emotions and reason, it will be just another child in the neighborhood. True danger in the background of the global worldwide web is only the programmer's anticipation and powerful IF-THEN-ELSE command. And we have both today. AI being a mad mastermind of the future is not needed. The only thing preventing the Internet from being dangerous today is the still-early phase of IoT. "Internet of Things". Think of it like this: if you have brains and no body or senses, you are as good as a conductor without an orchestra. This is the inevitable part of the future Internet. It will get a body and a wide variety of sensing abilities. Basically, until now, IP addresses were reserved for devices with brains, or CPU units if you will. Home computers, business servers, phones, tablets, smart TVs, and microcontrollers are happy units today with internet access and proud owners of IP addresses. The trend is for tomorrow that all technology-based devices get online too. Remote controllers, motion sensors and any type of sensing converters, home and kitchen appliances, cars and any type of vehicle, industry tools, medical sensors, 3D printers, clothing items, and literally anything at all will be able to get a 'smart patch' and be allowed to be monitored or controlled over the internet. Think of this futuristic network from today's Google and Android smartphone perspective.

If you are a user of Google networks and devices (like I am, and this is just an example; the same goes for other providers and internet giants), from their databases (and I am not saying that they are doing it), it's possible to know what you are browsing to the simplest detail by your usage data in searching the net and the history of your browser, who you are following on social networks by which timeline or wall pages you are opening the most, what you like and dislike, what your watching habits are by your YouTube statistics, how your life looks in writing by your usage of Blogger, and all your whereabouts of your Android smartphone by Google Timeline. Not to mention that they have access to all of your online photos, videos, and files through your usage of all of their services and cloud storage. Oh, yes, and they have all your passwords you typed on various websites. Google is not even on the top of potential 'smart' providers with access to your, well, everything. If you are a user of, for example, Microsoft or Apple and their operating systems, then they are able (and again, I am not saying they are doing it) to know and have access to your localized data that is not clouded online. The story continues into the business environment further. If you are the proud owner of a rack of servers in some cool data storage building and you didn't write all the software and used so-called 'third party' code, the simple fact is that you are not the only one with potential access to all of your racks. And you are not the only one capable of monitoring all the network traffic. Those who manufactured network cards can do it too. Again, I am not saying that big internet corporations are doing all those spying and sniffing of people and other entities online, just that if they wanted to, it would be technologically possible.

Anyhow, all the worries of today's digital world end with privacy concerns. If you are a villainous criminal or a mad hacker, all you can do is steal somebody's identity data and log into other people's accounts for whatever malicious reasons you would do that, but you can't physically and directly harm somebody. In the past I have had these encounters with online thieves, and one of them cracked my password, logged into my dial-up account, and used free internet for a while until I went physically to the internet provider and overrode him for good. After that experience, I am creating complex passwords, and on a couple of occasions, they are so complex that even I forget them after a few weeks. I guess now is as good a time as any to thank all those "Forgot your password?" links standing timidly next to login forms.

However, the Internet of Things will have the power to end all of those 'benignities' of today's online world. Smartphones will not be the only systems with a 'smart' prefix. I am imagining all the varieties of SmartHomes, SmartCars, SmartShips, SmartRoads, SmartOffices, SmartFields, SmartTraffic, SmartEnergy, SmartPolitics... Ok, let's not push it. Some things will never happen. Nevertheless, and seriously speaking, even though this post looks like I am against the future breakthrough in the Internet size and means, many of the IoT-based gadgets will be extremely helpful. Think of the future SmartForest with many embedded fire sensors and intelligent surveillance cameras or SmartHealth gadgets actively monitoring your health signs and alarming anything potentially hazardous, either from within your body or by sensing bad food or air or any type of toxin in your near proximity. Surely every bright medal has the opposite side, and with the possibility of accessing all the gadgets online and controlling them from a distance, I am more than positive that we will be facing SmartViruses as well, and still, just people's passwords to access their mailboxes or bank accounts will be completely dwarfed by the online crime of entering somebody's house system and starting to leak gas while everybody is sleeping.

I am not quite sure that the Internet of Things will exactly be "The Fourth Industrial Revolution", but in one way or another, after a decade or so of transition years, it will be our everyday reality, and the next generations will embrace it and take it for granted just like we do with our current technological surroundings. Or our fathers and grandfathers and their lives within old-fashioned telegraphs, radios, and CRT television sets. Or their fathers and grandfathers with newspapers and books.

Anyways, we will be dealing with IoT when it happens, and I am sure I will be writing about it in general or in specifics on this blog or elsewhere in the future, but today I only want to end this story with a recommendation of one great related novel. About thirty years ago, I was watching WarGames on one of my first VCRs, and it instantly became one of my favorite films. I was more or less the same age as Matthew Broderick back then, in the middle 80s, when he played the lead role in the movie, and needless to say, I spent numerous hours watching it again and again and even read David Bischoff's book based on the original screenplay and enjoyed it all the same. At least for me, it was definitely an influential book of the decade. Every now and again in the previous thirty years, after WarGames, I was wondering why no decent book or movie was made to represent the real successor of the original story only in the realm of nowadays' Internet instead of WarGames' military background. And after three decades, finally, last week, on a friend's recommendation, I purchased Daniel Suarez's "Daemon". In the 'book' thread of the blog, I reviewed many titles without much of a spoiler, and to continue in the same fashion, all I can say is that it's one of those books you hate to leave, and as I am very close to the end, I don't see what would happen to force me to not give it a full five stars. "Daemon" is exactly what I was expecting after WarGames. I read that Walter F. Parkes, co-writer of the original WarGames screenplay and producer of the Man in Black movies, was interested in producing the movie "Daemon" and its sequel, "Freedom" (or "Darknet" in some editions), but this is still in "the clouds", probably due to the extremely technical plot and twists. Perhaps "Daemon" is more suitable for a mini-series or sci-fi TV show... Time will tell.

As for me, my time in the near future is locked and reserved for "Freedom", eagerly waiting in my Kindle's memory. With the same enthusiasm, I am embracing a not-so-near future full of "Internet Things" and what they will bring to our technocracy.

Image refs:
http://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/iot-brings-potential-security-threats
http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/WarGames-Blu-ray/47282/
http://www.amazon.com/War-Games-David-Bischoff/dp/0440193877
http://www.amazon.ca/Freedom-TM-Daemon-Daniel-Suarez-ebook/dp/B002VUFKDY
https://3dprint.com/113502/iot-2015-person-of-the-year/

Refs:
https://re-work.co/blog/embrace-the-iot
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automated_urban_metro_subway_systems
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobmorgan/2014/05/13/IoT
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_of_Things
http://www.amazon.com/War-Games-David-Bischoff/dp/0440193877
http://www.amazon.ca/Daemon-Daniel-Suarez-ebook/dp/B003QP4NPE/

Is Life a Zero-Player Game?

Think about it. If life really is some sort of game and we are just characters in one giant artificial intelligence play, then... Well, let's just say that we can safely recognize not very enjoyable rules we unconscionably must obey. They are simple. We must play the game. We can't quit the game. We can't win. Oh, and yes, if life really is a game, then we are only either slaves in one master-puppeteer god-like performance, or we could be just a bunch of units interacting with each other in a sort of limited free will world or a world where free will is just an illusion. Now, if life really WAS a game, what would you prefer?

Olivia Wilde & Garrett Hedlund in 'Tron: Legacy'*

It is obvious that the first option is what we easily recognize as a religious world. If you ask me, this is a simple marionette type of world in which we, being game units, have little or no influence in the game, and we must obey divine rules and please the puppeteer. From my point of view, let's just hope this is not the case. However, the second scenario is something worthwhile to give further thought to. If life is something like one large simulation with characters playing the game independently without creator influence during the game, then we are just participating in one giant zero-player environment that started eons ago in the point of history where evolution began with a predefined start pattern. And evolution is nothing more than just a set of rules in the complex game algorithm, and time is just an iteration flow in patterns changing from one state into another by following the rules.

Confused?

Ok, let's simplify the scope and check one famous zero-player game that might help understanding the basic principle. The inventor is perhaps one of the great minds in the world, John Horton Conway, a mathematician from Princeton University, who tried to simplify the original John von Neumann idea to explain evolution with the creation of a mathematical model without explosive growth over time, using just small initial patterns with unstoppable and unpredictable outcomes with a set of rules as simple as possible, which would drive the entire system forward in time. Conway came up with a brilliant two-dimensional matrix where one dot represents one living cell. Cells obey four simple rules:

1. Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbors dies (death by underpopulation).
2. Any live cell with more than three live neighbors dies (death by overpopulation).
3. Any live cell with two or three live neighbors continues to the next generation (survival).
4. Any dead cells of exactly three live neighbors will come back to life (birth).

Conway's matrix is, just like life, infinite in size, but for demonstration purposes the following example is finite matrix that. Just FYI, as a single cell is clickable, I couldn't make it mobile or any small display friendly. To try it out, you would really need to use an old-fashioned computer screen and mouse pointer. Please feel free to play and create your own pattern and see what happens. This is, of course, a zero-player game, so your godlike intervention in this game is only to create the initial organism. The Conway's game of life then operates on its own, and you can only watch.

Conway's brilliant experiment is only a two-dimensional game with a small number of simple rules, yet it opens endless fun and endless variations in the evolution of different patterns and their interactions. Now, is it possible to create, hypothetically speaking, a very complicated game on a molecular level with complicated rules within the realm of chemistry? And instead of an endless matrix, use the three-dimensional surface of a planet? Is that what the Earth is? One giant playground with molecules in endless interactions with each other, and we are today just a snapshot in the game's current evolution stage?

It surely fits the world surrounding us and the one in the past. In this game, the world before was less complex than it is today, and the world today is less complex than the one from the future. Living units in the game are evolving due to infinite interactions, and if we go to the very beginning, to the first pattern of living cells, some 3.8 billion years ago, approximately 750 million years after Earth was formed, it is clear that we indeed might be living in a complex biological game. The game is without players and puppeteers and only with living organisms with developed conscious minds. In order to neatly describe the current stage of the game, I will just quote Stephen Hawking: "We humans are highly complex biological machines behaving in accordance with the laws of nature. Our brains create and sustain our conscious minds through an extraordinary network of interacting neurons. That consciousness creates a three-dimensional model of the outside world: a best-fit model that we call reality."

Red Pill or Blue Pill?***

You might be asking now where free will fits in the game. If we are not players per se, then do we even possess such things? Are we able, being units in the game, just by following the rules, no matter how complex they are, to choose our own course of action without constraints and fate? If the game model like this one is correct, then I am pretty sure we can stop thinking about free will. There is no such thing, at least in the raw meaning of the word. Yes, we are able to control our actions and to choose certain paths, which gives us the illusion of free will, but even if we choose one path in favor of another, we are not really capable of calculating where this chosen path really leads to or where it ends. There are simply too many unknown variables on the way. Not to mention that we are completely incapable of knowing who or what we will stumble on on the chosen path and how this new interaction will play out in the game.

But the beautiful thing in this mind experiment called "Game of Life" is that even though we only have limited free will, as it seems, there is no fate as well. And even though the rules are definite and inexorable, due to the enormous size of the game level and complexity of the rules and the infinite number of organisms and molecules, it is really impossible to calculate the outcome of the game or any of the game's parts separated either in space or in time. At least from the inside of the game. And as it appears, there is no outside of the game as well. If there was, then, like in Conway's game embedded in this post above, there could be a "reset" button somewhere. "The button" that has perhaps been pressed about five times so far.****

But, like in any game, there might be glitches, lags, and bugs (like fabulously portrayed in Tron movies and series*). And I definitely had that in mind when last summer Viktor and I filmed a short movie with the same name** that exploits this very scientific thought. It's our first and only movie so far, so it's full of imperfection, but to sum it up, its plot tells a story about a young boy who's following a glitch in the system, presented in real life as a firefly, through numerous portals to the place where he meets a man with the final orb, the artifact that seems to be a way in for full understanding of life itself, its origin, and the rules it is built on. The entire movie is embedded above, and for more about all the filming and production, please find the referenced link within.

Image refs:
* http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1104001/,
** http://www.milanzivic.com/2016/08/game-of-life.html
*** Cornell Math Explorers' Club

Code ref:
** https://codepen.io/RBSpatz/pen/rLyNLb

Refs:
**** http://www.milanzivic.com/2015/06/the-sixth-great-dying.html
http://www.bitstorm.org/gameoflife/lexicon/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway_Game_of_Life
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-player_game
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Horton_Conway
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann
http://www.hawking.org.uk/videos.html
http://www.physicsoftheuniverse.com/topics_life.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK9841/
http://www.iep.utm.edu/freewill/