I have been meaning to post my thoughts on the book Inequality.com: Money, Power and the Digital Divide by David Stevens and Kieron O’Hara for a while now. Despite the hokey name, the book is rather thought provoking. Essentially it is an attempt to discuss the social and political impact of information communications technology from top to bottom. It delves deeply into democracy, equality, privacy and several related topics.
One area where the book truly shines is in showing just how much societal change has resulted from technology has been in the last 30 years or so. Understanding the way people did things 30 years ago versus how they are done now is incredibly difficult even for adults who have lived through all the changes. So many things have become tacitly accepted as common place now that were revolutionary when they were first introduced that the scope of the change is hard to understand, but the book does an excellent job explaining everything from the death of all things ephemeral to the applications of Coase’s Theorem.
The book also discusses in great detail some of the various ways that technology could affect democracy. At times it mentioned with urgency many of the same themes mentioned in Avi Rubin’s Brave New Ballot. It also highlighted many of the ways that the problems usually blamed on technology are in some ways simply intrinsic problems that must continually be fought as a part of civic responsibility in any democracy.
Lastly, the book talks about privacy issues. The authors form a convincing argument that knowledge is power and that bureaucracies naturally crave both. They discuss why it is important for citizens of a democracy to maintain a level of privacy where they can discuss new ideas without fear of being monitored. Essentially, they are claiming that the Hawthorne effect not only applies to democratic discussions, but that it irrevocably alters them. (If you are a scientist, think of this as a sort of Heisenberg uncertainty principle as applied to the democratic process.) The authors also show how privacy in many ways is really a modern invention using the argument that it wasn’t long ago that everyone lived in villages where rampant rumor mills ensured everyone knew everything about those whom they lived with.
All in all, I highly recommend the book to anyone interested in any of these concepts.
One of the latest gadgets to hit the market with massive fanfare is the Amazon Kindle. It was on the cover of Newsweek, where it was hailed as the future of reading.
It hit Slashdot twice. The first time was as a part of the initial hype wave. The second time was after it sold out in under 6 hours. There are many good comments on the Slashdot threads. In particular, there are some reviews of users of various electronic book readers and some thoughts on the hype surrounding the Kindle.
Here’s my list of needs from an electronic reader:
Must NOT include DRM crap. This may be the most important criteria for me. I don’t want to find myself in ten years with an entire library of books on a device that is obsolete with no control over what to do with them.
Must allow me to sync with PDFs and other common electronic formats on my computer for free. I can pretty much convert anything I need to read into a PDF, so that’s the key. This is another important criteria for me. As an academic, I spend a lot of time reading academic papers and almost all of them are in an unrestricted (i.e. non-DRM’d) PDF format.
Must have decent battery life. I consider 3 days of normal use to be a minimum and a week to be about the ideal. I’m really not sure about this criteria, but I think that this seems feasible given what I know about the technology
Must have a library of books from which I could purchase and download. I don’t think a lack of an internet connection on the device is a show stopper as long as it wasn’t hard to sync from a computer, but it would certainly be nice. (Note: Bonus points if it can work with something like O’Reilly’s Safari, but that would probably require an active Internet connection.)
Must allow me to sync news sites and RSS feeds for reading. I would strongly prefer if this would not require an active internet connection to read any of these feeds.
Must have an open interface. I really think products like this are best when anyone can build their own applications to interface with them. I would probably prefer an entirely open source product, but I would settle for a decent open interface.
There’s nothing out there yet, but I think the Kindle might be proof that this is simply a matter of time rather than a pie in the sky idea.
It is so good to see Battlestar Galactica again. There’s something very special about this series and it was present in large measure in this movie. For anyone who might have missed it, it will be out on DVD on 4 December, 2007. Also, here’s a teaser preview:
I don’t want to divulge too much about this since there are surprises in the show that don’t deserve to be spoiled. I will say that the show in particular is poignant from the standpoint of reflecting the realities of war in a way that only a fictional setting can.
I’m not sure why it is easier to consider difficult sitations when they are fictionalized and abstracted away, but it certainly seems that way. For example, take two examples from Battlestar Galactica that aren’t spoilers for Battlestar Galacita: Razor. First, the concept and danger of an insider threat is played out beautifully. The cylons that look just like humans prove that ultimately one of the most dangerous things that can happen is for an insider to betray an organization. This is by far the most dangerous computer security threat for most networks and systems for exactly the same reasons that it is so devastating on the show.
Second, the recognition that humans tend to see their enemies as two faced is eloquently displayed by the fact that the Cylons have two basic models: the warlike raider model and the deceptive humanoid model. This gives the humans the chance to view them all as monsters or to see that they have some commonalities. How many wars in human history have played out like that?
In the end, Battlestar Galactica: Razor is an excellent picture at another way that people could have reacted to the surprise attack by the Cylons. It mostly follows the story of a crew member who was new to the Pegasus the day that the Cylons attacked, but it heavily involves the regular cast from the television series. It’s an excellent movie and will do a lot to tide folks over until March for the last season of the series. (It’s hard to believe that the fourth season will start airing nearly an entire year after the third season ended…)
There’s something refreshingly honest about a Christian band that is willing to sing songs that are more than simple praise-alongs. Their previous work has bordered on punk, but this is a little bit lighter. Even if you don’t have a hard-core rocker in you, you will be able to enjoy this album.
Dave Pelsue’s voice shines brighter in this tempo. Basically, this is a personal preference though. Most reviews I’ve seen either love the screaming from their previous albums or find the change up this album represents to be refreshing. Count me in the latter group.
First, RealID is horrible from a privacy and liberty standpoint. This is well-known to anyone who actively concerns themselves with these sorts of issues. It is essentially a national ID card. Depending on how much of a privacy nut you are this seriousness of this could range from a simple invasion of your privacy to something straight out of 1984 or the Book of Revelation. I’m not sure I would take it to that extreme, but I do think the concept of a national ID card is a non-trivial invasion of privacy.
Second, RealID isn’t ecnonomical. The exact details of the security tradeoffs show that RealID is an extremely expensive trade-off. This is very important and subtly hard to understand. Instinct tells us that being able to identify everyone should allow us to determine those people who pose a threat and those who don’t. Unfortunately, reality doesn’t work like that if for no other reason than the simple fact that past behavior doesn’t always accurately predict future actions. Of course, there are many other reasons stated in the link above.
(BTW, This is really the only reason that RealID is dying. It was a massive unfunded mandate for the State governments. If it had been a pork barrel project with horrible security consequences but a nice paycheck for the State governments, then we might have a different story.)
Third, RealID may actually worsen national security. A single national database with the personal information of every citizen in the US is a juicy target for a lot of people with bad intentions. It is the ultimate honeypot, only using real data as opposed to fake data. A single process by which identification can be done is a monoculture with similar problems. I think the easiest analogy for people to understand is that throwing your support behind RealID as the identification card for any American is like putting your entire investment portfolio in one business. It’s just a lot safer to not have all your eggs in one basket.
So if RealID is so bad and it’s also “dying” why have I titled this post “The Non-Death of RealID”? Simply put, this sort of problem is like a bad penny. It keeps coming back because human instincts make it sound good. It keeps coming back because it affects personal liberty, which must always be defended. Security and Liberty aren’t things that you do once and forget about so the threats to these never really die.
Last night I watched Randy Pausch’s Time Management Talk. I stumbled upon a list of his other lectures that were in video format. I figured that he was an excellent presenter in his “Last Lecture” and so he would probably be an excellent presenter in other presentations. He was.
It’s kind of interesting to watch his Time Management lecture for a couple reasons. He gave the presentation in 1998, which was years before he knew that he had cancer. It also interesting to see how things have changed in the intervening decade. The technologies are more mature or different, but the time management techniques are basically the same. In fact, you can see him talking about the Inbox Zero concept way back then.
You can check out the Google video here:
Dr. Pausch was also on Oprah’s show to reprise his “Last Lecture” in a shorter format. I still think that the long version is better, but if you’re interested, here’s the short version:
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