Category: Technology

Latest Read: Crypto

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date May 20, 2023

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.

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 Diffi e. He authored initial developments of cryptographic key s. 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.

Tags Clipper Chip, Crypto, Cryptography, culture, privacy, Steven Levy

Education Reading Technology

Latest Read: The Attention Merchants

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date May 13, 2023

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.

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.

Tags advertising, culture, data brokers, Tim Wu, trends

Education Reading Technology

Latest Read: We See It All

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date April 16, 2023

We See It All: Liberty and Justice in an Age of Perpetual Surveillance by Jon Fasman. Jon is a senior reporter at The Economist for 15 years. He holds a Master of Philosophy from Oxford. His writing has appeared in The Times Literary Supplement, Slate, and The Washington Post.

Jon is revealing how current laws and policies are too far behind the times regarding next generation technologies. Ultimately, Jon asks for the public to hold government at the federal, state, and local levels accountable to protect privacy rights and liberty of their citizens.

In fact, this book’s investigation into the legal, political, and moral issues surrounding how law enforcement, including courts utilize surveillance systems confronts the citizen of any country reveals that citizens may live in a free country in the name of safety.

This has certainly escalated rapidly since 9/11. Issues of next generation system already deployed impact privacy and the rights of citizens.

Jon is addressing such topics as moral, legal, and political that are now generating data by advanced tools. For example scanning technologies including facial recognition, license-plate readers are triggering activity by law enforcement.

This certainly book draws similar outcomes to The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff, and Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet by Yasha Levine. Law enforcement use of technologies results in higher ticket and arrest data in unique zip codes across major metropolitan areas.

Tags data harvesting, Jon Fasman, surveillance, We See It All

Education Reading Technology

Latest Read: Permanent Record

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date June 27, 2022

Permanent Record by Edward Snowden. Ed’s story moves from his early childhood to his military service post 9/11, to his role implementing technology surveillance for the CIA and NSA.

After sustaining stress fractures in both legs during special forces training he left the military. In fact, Edward then joined the NSA as a contractor in 2006. The following year he was stationed at the CIA office in Geneva Switzerland with diplomatic cover.

Yet, after six years of work within our country’s intelligence communities Edward became a whistleblower by leaking files revealing a global surveillance network was being conducted not only against America’s enemies in the new war on terror, but also against American citizen.

However, his real message is in fact, the most advanced technologies leveraged by the government are used against America’s enemies AND against our fellow citizens. Edward certainly documents how the United States government was able to collect every single phone call, text message, and email from every US Citizen. This results in a new, unprecedented (and certainly mind boggling) mass surveillance across the entire globe.

Tags Edward Snowden, Permanent Record, surveillance, Whistleblower

Education Globalization Innovation Reading Technology

Latest Read: How Markets Fail

Post author By Don Kasprzak
Post date June 21, 2022

How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities by John Cassidy. John is a staff writer at The New Yorker and teaches at the Institute for New Economic Thinking. This book was a 2010 Pulitzer Prize Finalist in General Nonfiction.

John has certainly written a very well structured book on economic markets divided into three parts: Utopian Economics, Reality-Based Economics, and The Great Crunch. This provides necessary insights to the very long history of economics. In addition, John shows how they have repeatedly failed from the 1700s to the the 2008 economic crisis.

I certainly enjoyed John sharing multiple points of historic economic failures via the insights of all economic experts at the time.

Utopian Economics

John places part one into a Utopian view. He reveals how attempts to link the macro and micro divisions of the economic model result in errors. At the same time it may not really apply across today’s COVID, gig economy.

Repeatedly the economic experts in the 1800s were very wrong. This view really cannot translate today across the globalized world. He also views the economic crisis of 2008 as a drastic market failure. The development and repair were excluded by the systems of the dominant economic paradigm of the past three decades.” John certainly illustrates how utopians believed in the infallible invisible hand of the market via Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and John Stuart Mill.

Tags economics, gig economy, How Markets Fail, John Cassidy