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Education Innovation Reading Technology

Latest Read: When

When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing by Daniel Pink. This was a very enjoyable read. So enjoyable that I restarted chapter one immediately after finishing the book. And then again, a third read. Maybe this is no surprise. I read in 2007 his book A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future and it was also very enjoyable.

In this book Pink provides a lot of scientific data (big data) that provides insights to our lives. This is so broadly appealing that everyone should read this book. Basically Pink shares that we all have a unique hidden patterns. This really impacts our work performance, studies, exercise and even our mood throughout the day.

Pink breaks our day into three periods: Peak, Trough, and Recovery. A morning Peak is when we apply thinking tasks. A Trough sees a decline in the mid-afternoon. This is best for simple tasks. Finally Recovery reenergizes us in the early evening to be creative.

At the same time Pink acknowledges our personality fits into one of three buckets. These circadian rhythms are Lark (morning person), an Owl (evening person), or a middle Third Bird. These rhythms will change over time. While in college I was definitely an owl, programming into the wee hours of the morning. Owls have their rhythms in reverse: recovery, trough and peak.

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Cyberinfrastructure Education Globalization Google Network Reading Technology

Latest Read: The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff rocked Silicon Valley and beyond. Shoshana is Professor Emerita at Harvard Business School and a former Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School.

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff

Shoshana has delivered a critically important book not to be missed. This is a “once in a decade book” that digs deep into digital surveillance by Google and Facebook.

So, before you ask about recent US Senate votes to continue warrantless access to your internet search and browser history, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft are harvesting just about all of your personal data.

So, the term ‘surveillance capitalism’ is new for many who only recently see this term added to our societal lexicon. The ability for Google and Facebook to simply take your data, mash it up, and sell it (without your knowledge) may indeed surprise many. But the depth of their reach Shoshana reveals may shock you.

You may not yet realize how Google and Facebook have already tuned their artificial intelligence platforms to data mining you even deeper than you may realize. Actually, think you with nothing to hide? Think again.

Google and Facebook lead in data harvesting

There is a common understanding that ‘free’ is just that. A ‘free’ email account and ‘free’ social media platforms? Nothing short of a lie. And the misdirection that ‘you become the product’ is no longer accurate. Shoshana refocuses this misdirection to convey Google and Facebook have so much of your private data, they now simply harvest your daily input toward their behavioral capitalism.

For Google this data mining includes all products and services including the acquired Nest thermostat. This is not new by the way. The LA Times reported back in May 2008 a plan by Charter to track customer web habits. These messages remind me of 2009’s The Future of the Internet by Jonathan Zittrain.

How Google Maps harvested your personal data

Today the question is not how, but rather how much you use and rely upon Google Maps. When Google’s StreetView cars drove past your house (and mine) taking photographs — their cars had surveillance tools that downloaded your home’s WiFi payload data.

Wait, what? Oh yes, they did.
As a result, Attorneys General from 38 states sued Google. 12 other countries, mainly from Europe also sued.

So, just how sensitive was the data collected by Maps? Technical experts in Canada, France, and the Netherlands discovered that StreetView’s data harvesting included:

names
telephone numbers
credit card information
passwords (Yes Google harvested your passwords)
e-mails (full text)
chat transcripts
dating site data
pornography site data
browsing behavior
medical data
location data

In addition, Shoshana reveals how Google, forced to concede that it had intercepted and stored “payload data” the personal information grabbed from unencrypted Wi-Fi transmissions. In some instances your entire email message, URLs and passwords were harvested.

John Hanke, Vice President for Google Maps previously directed Keyhole, a CIA-satellite mapping company. After Google purchased Keyhole, Hanke directed the upgrade of Google Earth. The full 25 page legal filing for your reading pleasure: In the Matter of Google, Inc.: Notice of Apparent Liability for Forfeiture, File No.: EB-10-IH-4055, NAL/Acct. No.: 201232080020, FRNs: 0010119691, 0014720239, Federal Communications Commission, April 13, 2012, 12–13.

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Cloud Cyberinfrastructure Education Flat World Globalization Google Innovation Internet2 Network Reading Technology WiscNet

Latest Read: Scorecasting

Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports Are Played and Games Are Won by Tobias J. Moskowitz and L. Jon Wertheim may be the closest thing to a sports version of Freakonomics.

Moskowitz was a Booth Professor of Finance at time of publication. Today he teaches at the Yale School of Management. Jon Wertheim holds a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania and is Executive Editor at Sports Illustrated

Scorecasting: The Hidden Influences Behind How Sports Are Played and Games Are Won by L. Jon Wertheim and Tobias Moskowitz

As we headed into the Easter weekend, the NFL virtual draft was the only sports headline. Coronavirus shut down all sports recently.

Scorecasting it’s worth noting, reveals the recent NFL draft number one picks, turn out equal to a number ten pick regarding rookie performance.

Yet the money NFL teams waste on top picks should change. Scorecasting reviewed the signing bonuses of Ryan Leaf and Sam Bradford, top busts from the NFL draft. Actually the Leaf vs. Payton Manning draft reversal remains popular with sports fans even today.

For all the cable sports hype regarding player performance leading up to the draft, Moskowitz and Wertheim separate the signal to noise ratio very efficiently.

The hours (upon hours) of endless player and coaching interviews, season hi-lights showcasing how each team should draft the data reveals is only good for … selling commercials. Actually fans should wise up and gain some hours back in their lives.

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Education Innovation Reading Technology

Latest Read: How Not to Be Wrong

How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking by Jordan Ellenberg is a really fun read. Let’s re-think mathematics today.

Bill Gates gave the book quite a boost when he blogged How Math Secretly Affects Your Life. Ellenberg won the 2016 Euler Book Prize, awarded annually for an outstanding book about mathematics. Jordan is a math professor at UWMadison.

how not to be wrong

Look beyond the title. Math holds special psyche on many of us.

Yet it is critical now in the age of covid-19 to consider how math allows us to think profoundly to answer today’s challenges.

Jordan demonstrates how math empowers us. Many readers will ask “When Am I Going To Use This?”

Well how about now as we confront the covid-19 pandemic?

Or consider chapter four: How Much Is That In Dead Americans. Jordan addresses widespread miscalculations assessing war dead. Times may change but standards must remain.

Reading How Not to Be Wrong as covid-19 is devastating major cities across our country seems the exact right time to think mathematically.

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Cyberinfrastructure Education Globalization Innovation Network Reading Technology

Latest Read: The Perfect Weapon

The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age by David E. Sanger is an amazing read. To be frank this book is very quite unnerving, yet should be certainly mandatory reading. We have been at war for a couple of years on an electronic battlefield. This seems to be acting as a deterrent to actual war on a global scale.

Above all, we live today in a more complex world now regarding COVID-19. Recent cyber attacks and the flattening of attack tools is unquestionably changing the world right in-front of our eyes.

Sanger’s book will help you see it even more clearly: today a perfect storm is forming across the internet.

Therefore, The Perfect Weapon reveals so much in the opening chapters regarding successful Russian attacks upon US military and government networks.

On the contrary, the previous generation was driven by nuclear mutually assured destruction. In contrast, cyberwar or ‘cyber conflict’ is very different.

Russia’s penetration of the Pentagon’s secret network in 2008 in fact, is very upsetting reading. Sanger recalls how NSA’s Debora Plunkett discovered rogue USB sticks, left scattered across a US military base parking lot in the Middle East provided Moscow’s entry into the Pentagon networks.

WannaCry ransomware

North Korea is the boldest example of this book’s theme: A backwards third world country hacking Sony? Yes. In addition, North Korea launched the devastating WannaCry ransomware attack. On the other hand, their ransomware was unleashed across global hospitals and schools. Can you imagine WannaCry 3.0 locking down hospitals in the mist of stopping coronavirus?