Category: Education

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Education Reading

Latest Read: Dark Territory

Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War by Fred Kaplan. Fred is an American author and journalist currently writing at Slate and previously at The Boston Globe and has contributed to The New York Times, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and Scientific American.

Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War by Fred Kaplan

He received a 1982 Pulitzer Prize for his contributions to the Boston Globe Magazine’s “War and Peace in the Nuclear Age” regarding he Soviet arms race. He holds both a Master of Science and Ph.D. in political science from MIT. His weekly “War Stories” column for Slate magazine covers international relations and U.S. foreign policy.

Fred shares that in June 1983, then President Reagan watched the movie War Games. A kid (actor Matthew Broderick) unknowingly playing with his home computer dialed into the Pentagon and controlled military computers. Reagan, a former actor requested from his military Joint Chiefs if this could actually happened. The generals confirmed it was indeed possible. And this may have started the first White House action to protect Hilary computers.

Yet it would be President George H.W. Bush who first leveraged American cyber attacks during the 1991 Gulf War invasion to shut down all military communications used by Saddam Hussein. This is the foundation Fred establishes for all future cyber wars fought by America.

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Education Reading Vietnam War

Latest Read: Fire in the Lake

Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam by Frances FitzGerald. Published in 1972, Fire in the Lake was the first history of Vietnam written by an American. A journalist and historian Frances won the Pulitzer Prize, the Bancroft Prize, and the National Book Award as result of her reporting in Vietnam in 1966.

Fire In The Lake by Frances Fitzgerald

This is certainly a very worthy book to continue my education of the American war that lasted a generation. Approaching this book, 50 years after initial publication may appear ‘ancient’ by today’s internet-connected world. I can even recall assigned chapter readings of this book in college along with Stanley Karnow’s Vietnam: A History, Philip Caputo’s A Rumor of War and Michael Herr’s Dispatches among other powerful writers.

Frances has simply written her outstanding analysis in two parts. First, addressing Vietnam, the Vietnamese people, and their long history of foreign oppression. This includes a Chinese occupation which lasted over 1,000 years and concludes with the era of French colonization of Indochina.

The second part of this book is addressing the American War effort which began during World War II and expanded under French rule until the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. At the time of publication, President Nixon was ramping up strategic bombing while withdrawing American troops. The American effort would end three years after publication in 1975 with the fall of Saigon.

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Blockchain Education Innovation Reading Technology

Latest Read: Tracers in the Dark

Tracers in the Dark: The Global Hunt for the Crime Lords of Cryptocurrency by Andy Greenberg. Andy a senior technology writer at Wired. He previously worked as a staff writer at Forbes magazine and as a contributor to their online website.

Tracers in the Dark: The Global Hunt for the Crime Lords of Cryptocurrency by Andy Greenberg

Indeed, with every great advancement or popular service, criminals manage to insert themselves to commit new types of crime. Cryptocurrency (aka Bitcoin) is the latest example of a digital advancement under exploitation, creating black markets that hide financial transactions.

Yet this powerful technology allows criminals to actually conduct business right out in the open instead of hiding drug transactions, money laundering, and human trafficking in the analog world. In fact, during the pandemic, crypto’s value simply exploded but the damage had already been done.

Internet culture quickly baked the idea on social media sites and technology blogs, especially on the digital underground (Dark web) that this technology was in fact a digital, anonymous, private money source. And more importantly to criminals it was untraceable.

This is attributed to blockchain ledgers which are deployed anonymously. Andy reveals how digital criminal empires are built on crypto. Yet we also learn of their simple mistakes resulting in their takedown. Well….kinda of a takedown.

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Education Innovation Reading Technology

Latest Read: Crypto

Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government—Saving Privacy in the Digital Age by Steven Levy. He is the former chief technology correspondent for Newsweek. Today he is an editor at Wired, and author of eight books. Crypto, won the Frankfurt E-book Award for the best non-fiction book of 2001.

Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government - Saving Privacy in the Digital Age by Steven Levy

If you’ve ever made an e-commerce purchase with your credit card, then you have used cryptography.

Steven guides the reader into learning about the history of cryptography. This book begins with Whitfield Diffie. He authored initial developments of cryptographic keys. He was then joined by Martin Hellman in 1976.

From this point, Steven reveals how Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman, teaching at MIT also furthered cryptography research. Their development led to the formation of their company, RSA.

The National Security Agency (NSA) certainly interpreted these cryptography developments as a threat and began working to thwart their developments.

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Education Reading Technology

Latest Read: The Attention Merchants

The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads by Tim Wu. He holds an undergrad in biophysics from McGill University and a JD from Harvard Law School. He served as Special Assistant to the President for Technology and Competition Policy. Today he teaches at Columbia Law School.

The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads by Tim Wu

So, do you know how Madison avenue hijacked the web? Ever consider a time when you searched online for a product, a lawn mower for example. And before you realize that it was only minutes before your facebook feed started popping lawn mower ads into your feed?

Perhaps a Youtube channel is promoting a certain lawn mower vendor is a link pushed into your social media accounts? How many times have you noticed an online brand working into your internet life? In fact, have you even noticed that family, coworkers and friends are also falling victim to the attention merchants? Look deeper with your social media links to and from family and friends.

Tim is revealing for some the very idea that your internet life is under assault. He believes that American business actually depends on how much attention you pay to their messages. From advertising, branding, and even sponsored social media profiles.

Their focus is to gain your attention and put your eyes and mouse clicks on their internet sites. All to sell you that lawn mower.

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