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Latest Read: Algorithms To Live By

Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths. Brian is the author of The Most Human Human, a Wall Street Journal bestseller, New York Times editors’ choice, and New Yorker favorite book of the year. Tom is a professor of psychology and cognitive science at Princeton University. In addition, he directs the Institute of Cognitive and Brain Sciences.

Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions by Brian Christian, Tom Griffiths

At first glance the idea of brining algorithms into our daily lives seems a bit too much, even for a budding computer nerd. At the same time, Brian and Tom prove that most of us are already doing this daily.

I recall spending many hours programming SQL while living in Chicago and realizing how much more efficient my grocery shopping would be if I actually transformed my shopping list into a SQL table:

SELECT * FROM FoodGroup
ORDER BY GroceryStoreIsle;

So I can certainly agree. Yet this idea still may seem daunting. If you begin thinking about repeating tasks you perform, even laundry should certainly make you believe there is a better way.

Algorithms will certainly make this possible. Therefore, you may be spending too much time repeating tasks. This is where the book reveals how you can become efficient, by sharing the history and development of many common algorithms. You will certainly discover a few frameworks.

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Artificial Intelligence Education Innovation Network Reading Technology

Latest Read: What Algorithms Want

What Algorithms Want: Imagination in the Age of Computing by Ed Finn. Ed is an associate professor at Arizona State University’s School for the Future of Innovation in Society and the School of Arts, Media and Engineering. He also serves as the academic director of Future Tense, a partnership between ASU, New America, and Slate Magazine.

What Algorithms Want: Imagination in the Age of Computing by Ed Finn

I really appreciate reading this book as a follow up to The AI Delusion. What Algorithms Want takes a liberal arts approach. This is very appealing and brings a valued perspective.

Ed is communicating that society innocently believes magical algorithms as a tool to a better life. For this purpose, Ed shares that Eric Schmidt indicated that people do not want Google to just provide search results. Rather, they “want Google to tell them what they should be doing next.” I find this difficult to believe.

However, Ed also is viewing this from a practical perspective. His view is that algorithms are not only for mathematical logic, but rather for philosophy, cybernetics, and creative thinking.

Accordingly, there is a gap that Ed identifies between theoretical ideas and pragmatic instructions. This is a view outside of traditional computer science books.

Clearly, most users are not aware of how Facebook’s timeline and Google search queries are executions that benefit their data collection and profits. Many would not even consider the impact of Facebook’s timeline as nothing more than the latest news from friends, when in reality it is far from that idea.

Machine Learning

What Algorithms Want takes a deeper dive on Google’s efforts to drive profits from the data mining services across every service they deploy. What is also emphasized is the automatic assumptions by society that Google has their own interests protected because of a flimsy “do no evil” pledge.

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Education Flat World Globalization Innovation Reading Technology

Latest Read: The Premonition

The Premonition: A Pandemic Story by Michael Lewis. A tough, certainly insightful look at men and women who understood and directly confronted the pandemic at the beginning. At the same time, they ran into bureaucratic roadblocks. Their efforts to save the country is the story of this book.

the premonition a pandemic story

For instance, as early as January 2020, Dr. Charity Dean, the assistant director of the California Department of Public Health in 2020. She certainly understood the coming pandemic and began warning California State officials. Surprisingly, Charity Dean was even prohibited from publishing the word “pandemic” in her research reports. Furthermore, as stunning as it may seem, her boss and the state locker her out of planning meetings.

Dr. Carter Mecher, senior medical advisor to the Veterans Administration initially helped craft the Bush Administration’s pandemic response plan. As a result, at the very beginning stages in January 2020, he observed similarities to the 1918 Influenza flu. Indeed, Carter was the early advocate to shut down schools to reduce spread. Tragically, he lost his own mother to COVID.

At the same time, Joe DeRisi PhD, a biochemist at UC San Francisco was involved in the development of the ViroChip. This is used to rapidly identify viruses in bodily fluids. He led a team to develop a very early COVID-19 testing facility at the outbreak of pandemic.

Dr. Richard Hatchett an epidemiologist was another who warned early on about the coming pandemic. He also contributed to the Bush era pandemic response plan. This book is a sobering reality of what could have been. These medical professionals were stopped by the same system they were trying to save. Michael certainly makes it very clear the US does not have a healthcare system.

Tipping point ignored

Surprisingly, President George W. Bush read The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History. As a result, he triggered a plan to confront the next pandemic with Rajeev Venkayya, Richard Hatchett and Carter Mecher. This plan continued through the Obama Administration, but stopped under Trump.

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Cyberinfrastructure Education Reading Technology

Latest Read: Click Here to Kill Everybody

Click Here to Kill Everybody, Security and Survival in a Hyper-connected World by Bruce Schneier. He is a fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, AccessNow, and the Tor Project. He is also an Advisory Board Member of the Electronic Privacy Information Center and VerifiedVoting.org.

Click Here to Kill Everybody Security and Survival in a Hyper-connected World by Bruce Schneier

Consequently, Bruce details many key issues in computer security that require the leadership and legislative pen of Congress. I certainly could not have picked a better time to read this book. My review is certainly just scratching the surface of his book. Bruce has communicated a much needed story for every consumer.

Above all, consider the 2021 Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack, the 2016 attacks upon our voting infrastructure, or even China’s digital espionage stealing almost every aspect of American innovation.

Do you think the internet is still growing in size? It is not the number of people, but rather the millions of new devices that pose increased risks. Therefore Bruce is calling for policies to protect these devices, knows as the Internet of Things (IoT). Examples of cyber attacks upon automobiles, electric and nuclear plants, medical devices and even airplanes is certainly proof that we are at greater risk.

A different era of industrial controls

Above all, cyber risk originates from different time in history. Besides, in the 1950s did consumers in South America have access to the internet? Any talented programmer in South America had no means to hack conventional hydroelectric dam controllers. However, today this is a reality. So then, the programmatic controls for any damn in American could not have envisioned this threat:

former National Cybersecurity Center director Rod Beckstrom summarized it this way: (1) anything connected to the Internet can be hacked; (2) everything is being connected to the Internet; (3) as a result, everything is becoming vulnerable.
p. 27

At the same time, we really don’t have to look forward, but rather back at the innovations created in the 1950s and 1960s that launched the connected internet.

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Cloud Design Education Google Innovation Reading Technology

Latest Read: Coders

Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World by Clive Thompson. Clive writes for the New York Times Magazine, Wired, and The Smithsonian. This book is in fact, a very comprehensive review of computer programming.

Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World by Clive Thompson

In addition to tracing historical developments, Clive is addressing the origins of computer programming, artificial intelligence, and college computer science programs, and concludes with new coding companies that have entered the market including the Flatiron School.

However, Clive provides an honest and deep analysis about how programmers live, including the evolving demands required to succeed long term. Coding is not an easy career choice.

For this reason, it is challenging for women and minorities to land full time coder jobs. At the same time, everyone not attending a handful of elite universities to study computer engineering (Stanford, MIT, or Harvard) career opportunities at top flight companies remain challenging.

Yet for today’s gig economy worker, this book is an especially worthy read. Parents working will gain a better understanding of potential career paths for their children. Above all, if you have a daughter, Coders is mandatory reading. While his opening chapters reinforced the key role woman held in the launch of computing machines, it is now an uphill battle.

The Software Update That Changed Reality

Clive begins Chapter 1 The Software Update That Changed Reality with Facebook’s Ruchi Sanghvi authoring their initial newsfeed feature. There is a good view of how Ruchi faced challenges as a woman at Facebook. She then left to start Cove, later acquired by Dropbox.

Many will also appreciate the origin of ‘Hello World’ and to learn exactly what is a “bug” in software and the precision required that makes software execute flawlessly. This is a good chapter for any non-programmer parent.

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