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| "I don't think the report is true, but these crises work for those who want to make fights between people." Kulam Dastagir, 28, a bird seller in Afghanistan
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The Global Course of the Information Revolution | RAND |
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| Topic: Technology |
1:31 pm EDT, Jul 19, 2003 |
Advances in information technology are heavily influencing ways in which business, society, and government work and function throughout the globe, bringing many changes to everyday life, in a process commonly termed the "information revolution." This book paints a picture of the state of the information revolution today and how it will likely progress in the near- to mid-term future (10 to 15 years), focusing separately on different regions of the worldNorth America, Europe, the Asia-Pacific region, Latin America, the Middle East and North Africa, and sub-Saharan Africa. The Global Course of the Information Revolution | RAND |
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Where Have All the Lisas Gone? |
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| Topic: Society |
11:55 am EDT, Jul 11, 2003 |
It seems perched at a precarious point from which it could, without warning, rocket into overuse. I am not so smug as to think myself immune to first-name zeitgeist. Girls' names are both more interesting to track and more vulnerable to sounding passe. Even pros are occasionally blindsided by a name, as when Trinity leapfrogged to 74 after the release of "The Matrix." A closer look finds that Trinity was already on the upswing, from 951 in 1993 to 555 five years later. Madison? No. 2? How in the name of good taste did that happen? The next big trend will be word names. Colors, for example. The tipping point came when Christie Brinkley named her daughter Sailor. Where Have All the Lisas Gone? |
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Policy Says AES OK for National Security Info |
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| Topic: Technology |
10:55 pm EDT, Jun 21, 2003 |
The design and strength of all key lengths of the AES algorithm (i.e., 128, 192 and 256) are sufficient to protect classified information up to the SECRET level. TOP SECRET information will require use of either the 192 or 256 key lengths. This essentially means that AES as at least as good as the algorithms the NSA develops for this purpose. Very impressive. Policy Says AES OK for National Security Info |
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Reputation in P2P Anonymity Systems [PDF] |
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| Topic: Technology |
11:08 pm EDT, May 4, 2003 |
Decentralized anonymity systems tend to be unreliable, because users must choose paths through the network without knowing the entire state of the network. Reputation systems can improve reliability by predicting the state of the network. In this paper we focus on anonymous remailers and anonymous publishing, explain why the systems can benefit from reputation, and describe our experiences designing reputation systems for them while still ensuring anonymity. We find that in each example we first must redesign the underlying anonymity system to support verifiable transactions. Reputation in P2P Anonymity Systems [PDF] |
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Akamai Cancels a Contract for Al Jazeera's Site |
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| Topic: Technology |
11:38 am EST, Apr 4, 2003 |
] Employees at Al Jazeera headquarters in Doha, Qatar, said
] they were frustrated by the decision, though not entirely
] surprised. "It has nothing to do with technical issues,"
] said Joanne Tucker, the managing editor of the
] English-language site. "It's nonstop political pressure
] on these companies not to deal with us." Its not clear to me how much actions like this are driven by irrational thinking. Both the NYSE and Akamai took personal losses in 911. If for any reason they preceive Al'J as an enemy they are going to cut them out. If its really external political pressure then thats something else, and in that case I oppose it. They are an ARAB news network. Their perspective is going to be different then yours (duh). If all you can do in response to that is to try to prevent people from having access to their content then this is almost PROOF that you are in the WRONG. The righeous don't NEED censorship. Akamai Cancels a Contract for Al Jazeera's Site |
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The Philosopher of Islamic Terror |
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| Topic: Society |
10:31 am EST, Mar 28, 2003 |
Paul Berman writes for the New York Times Magazine on Sayyid Qutb. This is an absolute must read. The Philosopher of Islamic Terror |
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| Topic: Current Events |
10:08 pm EST, Mar 19, 2003 |
Get Your War On; It's a go. Catch the president at 10:15 ET. U: OK, so NOW they are talking about how this might take longer then expected??? You've got ... War. |
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Email as Spectroscopy [PDF] |
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| Topic: Society |
3:33 pm EST, Mar 16, 2003 |
We describe a methodology for the automatic identification of communities of practice from email logs within an organization. We use a betweeness centrality algorithm that can rapidly find communities within a graph representing information flows. We apply this algorithm to an email corpus of nearly one million messages collected over a two-month span, and show that the method is effective at identifying true communities, both formal and informal, within these scale-free graphs. This approach also enables the identification of leadership roles within the communities. Email as Spectroscopy [PDF] |
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Transformation Trends - 17 February 2003 |
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| Topic: Technology |
3:17 pm EST, Mar 2, 2003 |
Power is moving to the larger system level, while violence is moving downwards to the individual level ... Networking is about human behavior. Remember that to network is a verb. If you want to increase the richness of your information you get that by sharing it. The power of information comes in the ability to share it as opposed to the ability to hoard it. The soldier on the front line needs a network structure and he has to be shown that power comes out of that network structure. He have to institutionalize peer-to-peer and power-to-the-edge. ... If we do that well we find that we step out of the information domain of merely networking and into the cognitive domain where battles are truly won or lost. One of the most gut wrenching things that occured during the raid in Somalia depicted in Black Hawk Down was the direction of the caravan through the city through two levels of higharchy. It was obviously stupid. You had someone in a command center looking at a video of the caravan, making a decision, relaying that decision to someone in an airplane, who relayed that decision to the driver. By the time the driver got the decision the circumstances had totally changed. Thats it in a nutshelll. In the past the people at the top made decisions because they were the only ones with the perspective to make them. This is an extremely inefficient way to operate. The people on the frontlines need to be making the decisions, and the people in the offices are simply there to give them the perspective they need to make those decisions. These changes will mirror the changes you'll see in every kind of organization that exists. Transformation Trends - 17 February 2003 |
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Radebaugh: The Future We Were Promised |
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| Topic: Arts |
1:27 pm EST, Mar 2, 2003 |
Welcome to the exhibition of rediscovered works by the mid 20th century illustrator A.C. Radebaugh. A very cool exhibit, soon to open in Philadelphia, displaying lots of futuristic graphic artwork from the 1950s. Flying cars, urban airships docked at skyscrapers, and more. This stuff is almost propagandist in its technological optimism. Radebaugh: The Future We Were Promised |
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