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 world—North 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

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

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]

] 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

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

As network size, link bandwidth, CPU capacity, and the number of users all increase, research will be needed to ensure that the Internet of the future scales to meet these increasing demands.

IAB Concerns Regarding Internet Research and Evolution

] "What we're seeing now is the weaving of electronic
] warfare, psyops and other information warfare through
] every facet of the plan from our peacetime preparations
] through execution," said Maj. Gen. Paul J. Lebras, chief
] of the Joint Information Operations Center, a secretive
] military agency based in Texas that has sent a team of
] experts to join the Central Command info-warfare team for
] the Iraq campaign....

] "We are trying very hard to be empathetic with the Iraqi
] military," said a senior American information warfare
] official. "We understand their situation. The same for
] the Iraqi population. We wish them no harm. We will take
] great pains to make those people understand that they
] should stay away from military equipment."

Firing Memes, US Wages Information War

Stop looking over your shoulder and invent something!

Cypherpunks write code.

Microsoft and the Commoditization of Software

This people browser groups the CHIplace members by the CHI roles specified in their user profiles. It uses the number of roles in common as a similarity measure. After grouping the members into similar clusters, a spring model places the clusters in two dimensions.

People Browser

... Young students readily adapted to a different mode of thinking, a mode that had been a genuine struggle for adults. It made sense for students to think in a nonlinear, interconnected, and dynamic fashion.

The Web of Knowledge: Vision, Design and Practice