POTENTIAL SPOILER ALERT (you have been warned)
The Korean Netflix hit series Squid Game is a huge topic of conversation in our office, some of the team have watched the dubbed version, while others have gone for the subtitles, no one speak Korean so I would presume that we don’t have anyone in the office who has watched without subtitles or the tacky dubbed American voice overs.
Yes I have watched it and I thought it was great an emotional roller coaster that is tense, crazy, sad & I would say dam right weird.
Ok so what the hell does this have to do with technology ?
Technology features heavily in the series all starting with the use of Data Analytics to target the people they want to play the game, using credit records they find people with staggering debts and ones who are the perfect fit for the game. Once targeted they are then subjected to a cruel game of luck, the analysis has proven that the targeted people will be more than happy to try and win their selves out of crippling debts.
In game 1, they play red light green light, you might have played a version of it as a kid, although hopefully, it wasn’t like the one in this show. A giant animatronic girl stands at the front of a specially designed arena. When the robot girl isn’t looking at the group, she sings a Red Light, Green Light song, but when she turns her head to the contestants, all must stop instantly, or they will be gunned down and killed immediately, anyone moving is targeted and killed using the girls motion sensing technology. It doesn’t take long for the competitors to realise the extremely real stakes in this game.
In episode 5 while keeping guard the lead actor 456 has a vision of his days during the violent Korean motor industry strikes in the late 90's where workers protested against a law which was to make firing employees easier for employers. During this time the 2nd phase of robotic automation was hitting the motor factories in Korea.
The use of CCTV throughout the series has a big part to play in the story line, tracking peoples movements, facial expressions and activities during the games and during the rest periods.
However the major technology architecture that supports the game is based in the cloud, Which cloud I hear you ask, Microsoft, AWS, Google, Alibaba ?
None of these, it was all delivered via the new Korean cloud giant SQUIDCLOUD…..
Ok so I might have made that bit up but hey great ideas are born from crazy thoughts so who knows.
Anyway throughout the series you see different technologies being used, these include motion sensors, facial recognition software, thermal imaging, IOT, RFID scanning, CCTV & business process automation.
Ok so this blog post isn't very technology focused but I really enjoyed the series and just wanted to write about it !!
Thanks for reading
Next weeks blog post is on how technology is used in the Game of Thrones (don’t worry it isnt really)