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Why Cyberpunk: Edgerunners has shaken everybody to their core?

!! Contains spoilers for the entirety of the Netflix show Cyberpunk: Edgerunners.!!

-- David and Lucy sharing a moment together. source: netflixlife.com --

The misadventures of David Martinez has taken the world by storm - the currently one season series Cyberpunk: Edgerunners has already joined the likes of Queen’s Gambit and Squid Game in terms of hype. Not only the show internationally started to trend short after its introduction, it even revived the game that the show is based on, which was considered one of the greatest launch failures of video games. From people trying builds in the game from the show to rampant memeing, what is the reason that this show affected all of us? Let’s see...

-- Everybody’s thought after watching the show. source: 9gag.com --

In his review of the movie The Social Network, The Royal Ocean Film Society talks about why this movie feels very relevant as it felt in 2010, transcending even its source material, Facebook. He states the reason as “Ultimately, it’s not a movie about technology. It’s Shakespeare, it’s Greek Tragedy, it’s the American Dream. Stories as old as time itself”. 

Sophocles, one of the greatest Greek tragedians, lived in 4th century BC. His famous work, Oedipus Rex, follows the tragic hero Oedipus (the same character used as the Oedipus Complex by Sigmund Freud). He is the king of Thebes, which is ravaged by a plague because the killer of the previous king was not identified, neither was brought to justice. 

Oedipus, who claimed the vacant king seat and married his widowed queen by merit years ago, swears to find the killer - “I will do everything to find his killers, as if he was my own father”. His investigation first brings him forth as the prime suspect, then reveals that he is not the children of who he thought, and finally it concludes with the most damning information of all: he killed his father and laid with her mother. Just as prophesized.

-- Bénigne Gagneraux: The Blind Oedipus Commending his Children to the Gods. source: wikipedia.org --

I didn’t watch Oedipus Rex on stage and I can only imagine what the original audience thought when they saw it on the amphitheater for the first time. How it felt to the audience when a prophet accuses Oedipus for the murder of the king; when Oedipus feels relieved to learn that his (supposed) father passed away, so he couldn’t fulfill the cursed prophecy; when it’s revealed that he’s not the son of that guy or when the queen figures out that the prophecy was actually fulfilled. From the first act, they probably understood that this story will not end well, they are just accompanying this character to his end. Every detail, every revelation must have felt like there’s something you don’t know, that you can only see out of the corner of your eyes - but it is coming. This, I cannot know for sure, again, I didn’t watch Oedipus Rex on a Greek amphitheater. But... I did watch Cyberpunk: Edgerunners.

What’s the first thing you see? David Martinez, our tragic teenage hero, experiencing the death (through braindance) of a guy who is the original owner of the implant that he will get to own. Hints are constantly dropped. First, they are more subtle like this. Comments about how David should be careful using that implant, which comes to define him, otherwise he would turn psycho, etc etc. All of this is met by a quirky “I’m special, don’t worry”. Then, the dark signs become a bit harder to ignore. 

-- David Martinez: The Tragic Hero. source: gamerant.com --

Episode 5 “All Eyez on Me” is an interesting one. Turn of events brings David’s gang in conflict with a guy called Jimmy Kurosaki, who also happens to be the favorite braindance director of David. Fortunately, they manage to convince him to set a trap to unsuspecting Tanaka, their target. This is like a idol-fan reunion, the whole episode has a lighthearted fun feel. Fortunately, however, is not a word to describe this story. A needle to the throat, Kurosaki breaths his last, as his eyes rest on David & David’s on his.

The parallels do not end there. The inglorious deaths of several gang members: as frightening as it gets when a homeless psycho headshots Becca’s brother, becomes an insignificant occurrence when the new recruit is blown to pieces. But the biggest parallel is of course, how Maine reaches his end. In a half conscious-half unconscious manner, he kills everybody that stands in his way, then what is most valuable to him, and finally; himself. Maine: the leader of the gang, which David replaces. 

-- End of the line for Maine, but not for David. Not yet. source: youtube.com --

It was clear from the beginning that this story won’t have a happy ending. We have a limited time with David: a very short lifetime we’re accompanying him. But that’s not all - David’s tragedy has a second layer. When Oedipus was born, his fate was already sealed. When David’s mother dies, we learn that she was working around the clock and sometimes on the edge of legality - so that his son doesn’t have to. Consequently, the only thing she can leave David is a neural enhancement implant, which, can only be used illegally. This, like Oedipus, seals David’s fate. And it’s all more damning to see David come to die at top of the Arasaka tower: the exact place her mother would dream for him (to work). It is much more damning to see him say “look mom, I am here, the very top of Arasaka tower”. This is him at the point where Oedipus realized that he fulfilled the prophecy: the point of no return.

-- David at the point of no return. source: youtube.com --

I can’t remember where I read it, but there, it referred soap operas as modern tragedies. Well, let’s say I’m not a huge fan of soap operas. So, I’m eternally grateful to Studio Trigger for this modern tragedy that shook me to my core: one with amazing atmosphere, soundtrack and memorable characters. What is very exciting is that David’s story feels like one of many happening in the Cyberpunk Universe. As we’re done with his one, I hope we’ll start with another, soon enough...

-- A familiar name in the local bar. --

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What does Hades teaches us about conversation?

-- Zagreus, the Prince of the Underworld, with trusted companion Cerberus and his mighty father Hades on his sides. source: supergiantgames.com --

Hades is indeed an extraordinary game. It has an amazing setting true to the ancient Greek mythology, a banger of a soundtrack, interesting characters and a story, and above all, an addicting gameplay. However, one thing that can slip through the cracks about the game is, how good the conversations are written. But to appreciate them fully, we must first understand what Hades is all about.

Hades is a rogue-like videogame. A rogue-like game differs from a usual action/adventure game, with its construction of a gaming run. A usual game has a singular story and progression, which presents itself as you play the game. As a consequence, for most cases, it doesn’t make much sense to play the game again, as the player is presented with a very similar, if not identical, gaming experience. In rogue-likes, named after the 80s game Rogue, does not rely on a linear gaming run. In a single run, the player attempts to finish the game, by battling any foe that are thrown against them. Any relevant elements, such as these enemies, arenas, and occasional power-ups, are procedural - meaning (simply for our purposes) randomized. If a player dies during the run, they return straight back to the starting point, which is a very unique property to rogue-likes.

Normally, stories are in the background of rogue-likes. For instance, in another amazing rogue-like called Risk of Rain 2, the only story elements is a computer alerting a faceless astronaut-like character to the presence of a distress signal from a nearby planet system. In Hades however, the story is everything. You play as Prince Zagreus - the son of Hades. You want to leave the Underworld, which is of course designed to make it impossible to do so - not just for you, but also for the dead. Your regular escape attempts bring you face to face with many foes, as you make your way up from various levels of Hell. If - or when - you die, you’re sent back to the pool of Styx, in the House of Hades - where you started.

-- Prince Zagreus, at the start of another escape attempt. source: supergiantgames.com --

Each trip back to house on the other hand brings you face to face with an array of characters, rather than foes. These include the great hero Achilles, mighty Hades, and the goddess of the night Nyx. Your interactions with them, albeit very basic, bit by bit reveals the story of you: who are you, why are you here and why try to escape, over and over. All of this happens of course while your interaction with them shapes over time. This way of storytelling through conversation, is very interesting to me. So, let’s delve deeper into this aspect.

-- Achilles, the ‘Forgotten Hero’, talking to his pupil Zagreus. source: jstationx.com --

We can break down each character interaction you can enter into three: directly talking to them, giving them gifts (in some form of an nectar juice), or listening to their conversations with somebody. The first and the third are important elements to understand the story, while the first two are important for conversation. As we’re investigating the conversational aspect, we can ignore the third - listening other people’s conversations.

From now on, I will be careful in limiting the amount of spoilers. However, if you want to explore every element by yourself, do not continue reading. That said - the following chart classifies your relationship with various characters.

The table shows the standing/relationship of each character to Zagreus in the beginning of the story, alongside where you can find them in the realm of the game. Here, standing to cause is whether they support your escape attempts. This element in the realm of conversation, is rapport.  The relationship on the other hand, states the confines of your interactions with them, and thus, it corresponds to frame in a conversation.

So, what is rapport and frame in a conversation? Rapport is the harmony between two conversing people. If two people are in rapport, they are on the same page, or simply, understand each other. This understanding can be positive, neutral, or negative; indicated on the table with ‘for’, ‘neutral’, and ‘against’. As long as two people are in rapport, they will build a relationship on the indicated direction. For example, the Fury sister Alecto (who you occasionally meet during your escape attempts from Tartarus) is against you escaping the Underworld. Thus, your interactions with her are in line with interactions of two rivals. Each time you meet, you exchange words on how you hate each other, and try to stop one another. This is a good example on how people can be on the same page and continue their interactions, even though the nature of the interactions are negative.

-- Sample dialogue with Alecto. source: youtube.com (user: Ciarlo2006) --

The second element, frame, basically means the context of the conversation. This is determined by your relationship with that character, and consequently determines the nature of your conversations. Basically, if you are friends with someone, you talk friendly to them. The frame can be positive (as friends or lovers), neutral, or negative (like rivals or enemies). Notice that this is not exactly aligned with rapport. For instance, the Olympian Gods have a neutral relationship with you - they are not particularly your friends or enemies. In most cases, they offer you gifts to aid your escape attempts. However, they do this mostly out of a sense of duty, as they feel compelled to aid a member of their family. Why they are not your friends is evident in so called ‘Trial of the Gods’, where you select one gift from two gods. As in the Iliad (or more precisely, in the mythological stories that surrounds it), the not selected god becomes furious and tries to destroy you. As a result, your conversations with them are rather goal oriented and slightly distant, rather than deep or friendly.

-- Sample dialogue with your uncle Zeus. source: scientificgamer.com --

So what do we observe from the game concerning these two elements of rapport and frame? To understand this, we need to note another thing: your relationship with some characters evolve and progress. In the game, this is tracked by codex entries (basically a character guide) that update as you have more and more conversations with individual characters. Based on how your relationship progresses, you go into deeper topics, in turn learning more about your past with them (I’ll return to this point later on). The important observations about rapport and frame comes from how they affect this evolution of relationship. We can name these observations as follows:

Non-neutral rapport can progress the relation in the direction of itself, where;

Rapport and frame cannot remain in opposition. If so, there are either hidden/unknown elements or other forces in place.

Let’s examine two examples.

In the beginning of the game, Goddess Artemis is just one of the Olympian Gods that help you in your escape attempt. So initially, you have positive rapport and a neutral relationship. However through your conversations, she starts to open up about her secluded life. This eventually results in her clearly mentioning her desire for you to join her activities in her otherwise secluded life. Therefore in this case, positive rapport results in a positive relationship/frame.

A very interesting relationship is the one with Megaera. As an obstacle in your escape attempts, she has negative rapport and has a negative relationship with you, as your rival. As a result, up to a point, your rivalry deepens. However, interestingly at some point, you slowly start talking as if friends or even potential lovers (like a rapport-break), while still highlighting that you should fight each other. This becomes very evident when Megaera says “I only try to stop you because I have to, nothing more”. This is an example of establishing negative rapport and positive frame, which only survives because of the external pressure that it’s Megaera’s job to stop Zagreus.

This brings us to my last point: gradual revealing of information. The Hades game does an excellent job in its exposure to create mystery and curiosity. Continuing from the last examples, Goddess Artemis does not immediately reveal what her life looks like to you. She only does so when she has enough exposure to you, and developed a trust. Likewise, we don’t immediately learn about the shaky romantic relationship between Megaera and Zagreus. We only learn it when these two develop a rivalry that is so contradicting to their past, they have to address it. This is a great storytelling (as well as a conversational) technique and the most important feat in tying you to play the game for hours.

-- “Megaera when she finds out you died stepping on lava after you send her to the house of Hades”. source: reddit.com (user: diegoiio) --

This was my (non-academical) interpretation of the conversational elements and their reflections on rapport and frame. Needless to say, I highly recommend the Hades game for anybody interested in the rogue-like genre or the Greek mythology. It definitely has its flaws; but its unique take, great story, deep conversations/relationships, authentic take on diversity, great soundtrack, and action packed gameplay definitely makes up for any of them. Furthermore, I highly recommend the book Pragmatics of Human Communication by Paul Watzlawick (et al.), which extensively talks about the importance of the context in a conversation.

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Did anyone say ‘gorgeous portraits of Max and Chloe’? 

If so, you’re in luck with this weeks special double #LifeIsStrange #FanArtFriday by Angel Moon!

(IG: @angel_moonlightart)

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Why we should be excited about Elon Musk’s Neuralink?

--Elon Musk next to the surgical robot, Neuralink presentation. Source: thesun.co.uk--

The presentation of Elon Musk’s new venture Neuralink has come and gone a couple of weeks ago, but perhaps it didn’t create the fuss it deserved. Of course comparing a project recruiting presentation to an actual rocket launch is not fair, though brain-chip integration is not a topic to overlook.

Before I go too ahead of myself, let’s look at the main points of the presentation to see what’s this all about:

Neuralink is a coin-sized chip that is to be integrated to the brain. The integration requires a brain surgery, where a part of the skull is removed and the electrodes of the chip are sewed into the neural connections of the brain.

--Neuralink chip location on the brain, which replaces a piece of skull. Source: cnet.com--

Appropriately, the project consists of two parts: the chip and the surgical robot. Elon stressed that the aim is to make the complete operation mechanical, removing the element of human error. At its apex, a Neuralink insertion operation will take an hour, won’t require general anesthesia, and the patient (or the customer in this case) can leave the facility in a couple of hours.

A day with the Neuralink chip will look like this: you charge the chip contactless overnight, which provides enough battery for 24 hours. During the day, the chip both reads your thoughts and does what you want, in addition to providing information seamlessly. To learn about the weather, you just think about it, the chip searches it through the web and - with lack of a better term - whispers you the result.

They also demonstrated the effects of the chip on pigs: one that doesn’t have, one does, and one that used to have. All the pigs seemed fine (of course I’m no veterinarian), and the one with the chip sent live signals whenever it smelled stuff. Plus, they showed a video demonstration, where a pig is walking on the treadmill, and they are able to accurately predict the joint locations based on the data that the chip sends.

--Live demonstration on pigs. Source: theverge.com--

The presentation ended with a Q&A. The highlights of this part for me were;

The promise that this chip can solve brain related or neural problems like depression, eyesight loss, parkinsons etc.

After it’s settled, the whole procedure (surgery + the chip) will be available for a couple of thousand dollars.

The things you can do with this will wary: from fetching your car (they said Tesla of course) to playing a video game or driving a car without any physical action.

They also mentioned ‘saving memories’ at some point. I don’t know how I felt about this (frightened probably), but it immediately reminded me of the Braindance concept of Cyberpunk 2077 (this video explains this concept in the lore of the game. But quickly, Braindance enables other people to live captured memories of another: sense, hear, see).

Now let’s examine further what does this all mean. But first of all, we must understand that this project has two main challenges: the procedure and the technology. The hardware challenge consists of the task of inserting a chip, which is a foreign object to the body, into the brain. And this is much harder than it seems. Not only such a delicate electronic device should stay perfectly operational inside the body, but also it should cause no harm to the carrier over the years. The technology on the other hand, seems like a nightmare. The requirements it brings are enormous. First, the elephant in the room, it must solve some of the everlasting mysteries of the human brain and the neural system. Second, it must be able to do it with a piece of hardware that is as big as a coin. Last, as the data in the question is the most sensitive of all - literally one’s thoughts - it must bring the state-of-the-art privacy applications alongside. 

The issues of hardware size and privacy are easier to discuss, and go hand in hand. Due to size limitations, the chip is apparently designed as simple as possible, just capable about collecting neural data and sending it to a cloud. This means you should always be around wireless internet connection for this device to run. One thing that the chip must certainly do though, is the encryption of the neural data before sending it to the cloud, and decryption of the incoming data from the cloud (for an illustration of what encryption/decryption is, see the following figure).

--A basic encryption/decryption procedure, where both sides (it would be the chip and the cloud in the case of Neuralink) share a secret key. This key can be used to scramble the data when sending, and to unscramble when received. That way, anybody listening to the channel in between cannot understand what the data means. Source: cheapsslshop.com--

Now the neural aspect - I should say what I think about this up front: Neuralink at this stage didn’t show anything new. I can understand that the smelling experiment and the joint prediction can appear out of this world to some, though this is general knowledge today. For long, people have been examining brain scans to understand how particular movements or thoughts map to regions of the brain (see this video for such an experiment). You can then use this signal to understand when the smell receptors are at play, or, with the help of machine learning, you can predict the body positions. Going even further - a colleague of mine once told me about their bachelor’s graduation project: neural prediction of when a person is happy or sad. And they did it by using external electrodes to the head, and some kitten pictures. And this was years ago. One credit of amazement however I can give is: the same chip, from a singular position and limited number of neural connections, can be used to process both things - though it wasn’t explained whether the same chip and the same animal was used for both experiments.

This brings the question of “Is Neuralink selling a dream” for me. And my answer is “Definitely yes!”. What they described to be possible, such as the chip ‘writing an answer directly to your brain’ or ‘recording your thoughts/memories’ is by no means a capability of today’s science. These tasks are fundamentally different than searching some correlations between neural activity, as they require the complete deciphering of the neural activity. Today, we have very limited idea how a neuron, or a group of neurons store information. Thus, we cannot convert their activity to what we see, hear, or think externally. That’s also why we cannot write information to somebody’s brain - the best we can do is to hit somebody in back of their head, to make them see a flash in their sight (this is a bit exaggerated, but you get the point).

But then why should we be excited about Neuralink, if it is just selling dreams? Because there are categories of doing that. I mean, if your sailor friend during the high Middle Ages started talking about ‘going beyond the sky’, just because you can sail in the oceans now, there would be no reason to take this seriously. But if your engineer friend started talking about the same thing, after the jet engine was invented in the later stages of the Second World War, there would be indeed reasons to be excited about it. What we saw in this presentation has told to me that we are in the second scenario. Integrating a chip to a brain without any damage, and then successfully extracting neural information is a great first step. And this has always held true: “Sic parvis magna”.

--“Sic parvis magna”. Literally the Latin for ‘small, just as big’. Usually it’s meaning is translated as ‘greatness from small beginnings’. Source: pinterest.com--

So finally, would I get this chip for my brain? No - not as soon as it’s available at least. The following are my considerations - when they are satisfied, only then I can consider having a brain surgery to get an implant:

It does much more than being a version of Siri. It enables me to control the electronic environment around me. Plus it creates some sort of augmented reality - for instance it can highlight the objects that I’m searching for.

It does not transfer any data out of my head, except a command or a internet related search. No matter how secure, I’m not ok with my thoughts exiting my head (literally). It should do all the processing locally, and contact the cloud when I ask for a question, or make a command to the external world.

Many people use it for some time and experience no side-effects.

Let me finish with a disclaimer, as this is my first post: I do write about subjects that I’m interested in, in an informed but not in an academic manner. Therefore, consider this and future content as such.

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Şapka Devrimi ilanı sonrası, Kastamonu’dan Ankara’ya dönen Atatürk, yolda verilen bir mola sırasında gazetesini okurken sigara içiyor (1925). 

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Crumbling in the face of mounting obligations, the grad student takes an undeserved stress nap.