This is the second of a two part series. One form of information that can help us with the CV quarantine is data about crowding at the grocery stores. There are many companies that provide video surveillance at retail stores and if only they would aggregate and anonymize such information and share publicly. We can […]
Category: Technically Speaking
Big Tech, Big Brother, and the Virus: The Cautionary Tale
This is part one of a two-part series. Big tech can provide surveillance, we know that by now. It can provide the surveillance at as fine a level as you want — at our individual level and at minute-level precision. The cell phone and the credit card, the two indispensable parts of our daily lives, […]
The Non-Expert Inventor
As a Computer Scientist, I catch myself sometime, when looking at a wonderful innovative system at work, thinking of the details that went into it. When face-to-face with the wonderful Starship zipping around the Purdue campus delivering food, I am thinking of what software security feature does it have to avoid it being hijacked. When […]
Internet at 50 Years: Hills to Climb
Citation In this second of my two part reflection on the internet at its 50th birthday, I turn my eyes toward three challenges the medium has to solve. I then list from a bird’s eye view some of the most important solutions being investigated in academia to fix these. In customary braggadocio, I include some […]
Internet at 50 years: Celebrating Three Victories
Citation The internet had a rather unobtrusive 50th birthday on October 29, 2019, celebrated in a low-key style mainly in the quiet hallways frequented by technologists. It has come a long way from the first unintended message “lo” sent by Leonard Kleinrock and Charley Kline in UCLA to SRI in Menlo Park. Much has been […]
Short Take: Beating the Autocracy of Autonomous Systems
In the previous post, I discussed through a dystopian scenario, a manifestation of how autonomous systems can reduce our lives to one of hapless destiny. I believe that we as technologists can develop technologies with some guiding principles that can help us avoid plunging into such dystopian scenarios, under most cases. I also believe that […]
Short Take: The Autocracy of Autonomous Systems
Autonomous systems are all around us. To large parts of the population, they are like the mythical creatures of yore of great power, great knowledge, and great control over us. Some in the wide world ask with growing consternation: “Are we still going to be in charge? Are we still the driver at the wheels, […]
