Introduction
At a time when it seems impossible to avoid the seemingly growing hysteria over the threat of cyber war,[1] network security expert Marcus Ranum delivered a refreshing talk recently, “The Problem with Cyber War,” that took a critical look at a number of the assumptions underlying contemporary cybersecurity discourse in the United States. He addressed one issue in partiuclar that I would like to riff on here, the issue of conflict escalation–i.e. the possibility that offensive use of cyber attacks could escalate to the use of physical force. As I will show, his concerns are entirely legitimate as current U.S. military cyber doctrine assumes the possibility of what I call “cross-domain responses” to cyberattacks.
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Sean military
Yes! Or so says Evgeny Morozov of Foreign Policy magazine’s net.effect blog.
I don’t agree. Or, maybe more correctly, I think he misses the point. If Twitter reveals that people are acting like a dumb herd of swine (which I’m not sure is the case), then so much the better! That’s an interesting and potentially valuable thing to know!
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Sean scholarship2.0
While doing some quick and dirty searching on Lexis-Nexis in an attempt to get a sense of the growth of interest in cyberwar and cyberterror over time, I came across an interesting quote from futurist Alvin Toffler of Future Shock and The Third Wave fame:
Cyberterrorism. This concept sees criminals of all types from mobsters to outlaw governments tapping into American computers, possibly bringing the country’s entire economy to a standstill.
“We will see information terrorism,” he says while lunching near his home here. “They won’t need to blow up the World Trade Center. Instead, they’ll feed signals into computers from Libya or Tehran or Pyongyang and shut down the whole banking system if they want to. We know a former senior intelligence official who says, Give me $1 million and 20 people and I will shut down America. I could close down all the automated teller machines, the Federal Reserve, Wall Street and most hospital and business computer sys-tems.’ ” [1] (Emphasis added)
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Sean Uncategorized
I’ve created a quick and dirty Yahoo! Pipe that aggregates news from Google News and Yahoo! News about the ongoing swine flu outbreak and plots it on a map.
And here is a dynamic graph showing Twitters mentioning “swine flu,” “flu,” or “influenza.”
[Also posted at Transformation Tracker.]
Technorati Tags: swine flu, flu, influenza
Sean scholarship2.0, web2.0
After a long hiatus we are back…better than ever. There have been some changes. Some of our contributors are full blown Asst. Profs know so we have street cred. Also I just gave a talk at the Univerisity of Illinois. Here is the link to it. More to come soon.
Hector Uncategorized
This is a test post, the first in a long time, on the new, improved, I Shot the Cyborg!
Sean Uncategorized
Well, IStC readers, it does seem that we’ve been fairly dormant lately, but I bet there are a few of us that will attempt to stick out this drought. You will notice, however, that I continue to cross post my thoughts here on my other site.
For those not in the know, the ESA, or Entertainment Software Association is a U.S. based lobbying and representative group with membership largely compromised of videogame companies. They have done quite a bit of research related to market demographics of gamers in the U.S. More recently they have turned to “educational” programs aimed at school children to teach them the dangers of copyright violation and piracy. Their educational programs contain no mention of “fair use,” however.
The ESA is also the parent organization of the ESRB or Entertainment Software Ratings Board. The ESRB is the organization which all console manufacturers require licensees to acquire ratings through prior to distribution. Most computer game software goes through this process as well, primarily because most distributors (WalMart) will not distributed un-rated entertainment software.
Recently, numerous large organizations have begun pulling their ESA memberships. This means that they will not be paying their rather large membership dues which keep the ESA in operations.
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admin "The Industry", Oops...unintended consequences, videogames
There’s an interesting piece in Wired today, “U.S. Spies Use Custom Videogames to Learn How to Think.” I’ve pasted an excerpt below. It’s a good read, so head over and check it out.
In the wake of the intelligence bungles that propelled the United States into the Iraq war, it’s no secret that the nation’s spies have been working to improve the quality of their analysis. Now the top U.S. military intelligence agency has come up with a new tool for teaching recruits critical thinking skills: videogames.
The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency has just taken delivery of three PC-based games, developed by simulation studio Visual Purple under a $2.6 million contract between the DIA and defense contractor Concurrent Technologies. The goal is to quickly train the next generation of spies to analyze complex issues like Islamic fundamentalism.
Given a choice between a droning classroom lecture or a videogame, the best method for teaching Generation Y was obvious. “It is clear that our new workforce is very comfortable with this approach,” says Bruce Bennett, chief of the analysis-training branch at the DIA’s Joint Military Intelligence Training Center. (More here.)
–Sean
Technorati Tags: videogames, intelligence analysis, DIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, spies
admin military, videogames
Hello All
I recently was asked to give a public lecture on video game culture. Here is a link to the podcast incase anyone is interested. http://www.hum.utah.edu/humis/podcast/happyhour/hPostigo-S.mov
It took place at Squatter’s Brew Pub. Beer and a video games talk…what could be more fun?
–Hector
admin videogames pariticiptory culture, user generated content, video game culture
A recent post on the Zotero blog points readers to the most recent development road map for the open source citation management extension for Firefox. It looks as though the features that I have argued are essential to making Zotero truly unique and powerful are in our near future. Those features include the ability to sync one’s references across multiple computers, the ability to share references/collaborate with others, a recommendation engine to help the user find other, related sources, and finally, a quasi-social networking feature that will allow users to find other users who have similar interests. More after the jump.
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admin (co)production, scholarship2.0
