info-design

I was saddened to hear that Douglas Engelbart passed away. Of course, there was the mouse, but it was the 1968 Mother of All Demos that shows how much we owe to him. As a Steve Jobs fan, I understand why Engelbart has been called "Steve Jobs' Steve Jobs." These were things produced not just for their own sake, but with a larger goal in mind of raising our "collective I.Q." We all wish he'd benefited more personally from his contributions, so much more than a slick business plan.

I picked up this mousepad during a short engagement at SRI. I'm thankful to have experienced a world that would enable and support a person like Engelbart. That I know people who referred to him as just "Doug" is pretty cool.

Connecting the Dots 
A couple of times here, I'd wondered about Valley technology to connect the dots to bolster national security. Of course, now with the NSA Prism program very much in the news, things have ramped up considerably. Working at Hortonworks and being immersed in Big Data, connecting the dots is very much a reality.

Portable
Of course today, my use of the term "portable computing" is just quaint. It has been "mobile" for some time, and with Google Glass, "wearable." My last Blackberry is a Torch, now in the same pile with all the other portable devices I've chronicled here, going down just as Palm did. I'm all in with Apple now, with an iPhone and iPad, and a random sprinkling of iPods.

Labels: equipment, Government, technology, valley history

I'd previously wondered if it weren't possible to apply some Valley technology to help strengthen our national security in the wake of the attempted Christmas Day bombing. Since then, I'd come across Palantir Technology, a company the very much looks like what I had in mind. As heartening as this was, a recent New York Times piece, "New Teams Created to Connect Dots of Terror Plots," renewed my concerns. The counter terrorism center was preparing to cut its workforce up to 20 percent, but is now instead ramping up to connect the dots:

• 36+ : Yemen and Al Qaeda offshoots
• 200+: terrorism and watchlist duties
• 300: "all-source analysts"
• Hundreds more expected to be added

While this level of commitment of resources is impressive, in absence of any other information, I think it would be troubling for technology people. If I were presenting this for technical approval, I could see one of the first questions coming: Does it scale? If large numbers of people is your resource in the absence of anything else, then maybe that's the approach. The 2008 Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony, for example, was astounding in its own right, but the jaw dropper was the performance of what appeared to be mechanically actuated boxes turning out to be hundreds of orchestrated, practiced people. But addressing the task of combing through mountains of data with humans just seems ultimately a sisyphean exercise. It may be okay that they may never get on top of the situation, but getting increasingly closer, or even maintaining the existing gap, may be all that we can ask. The problem is, the gap is growing, as this week's plane crash into an IRS building shows. Whether or not this event can be characterized as domestic terrorism, it remains that yet another vulnerability to be monitored has surfaced.

Labels: Government, technology

I'd guess my reaction to the Christmas Day attempted bombing by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was shared by a few others: after 9/11 and the shoe bomber, how was this possible? I looked forward to President Obama's remarks, as well as the the press session with the President's Assistant on Counterterrorism, John Brennan, and Homeland Security Secretary, Janet Napolitano. I also read the Summary of the White House Review and President's Directive on Corrective Action.





I came away thinking we could do better. If, as the Summary reports, "previous formidable barriers to information sharing" and "entrenched patterns of bureaucratic behavior" have now been "largely overcome," then the application of technology might need a boost.

It's things like Secretary Napolitano citing half a million individuals being characterized by analysts and tracked, and giving the sense that we're supposed to feel overwhelmed by the number. It's references to data being available, but not connected.

It's this kind if stuff that makes me wonder whether we'd benefit from a meeting of the minds between the security technologists and Valley people: Web 2.0, social media, digital marketing, and e-commerce. For example, could the characterization of those individuals being watched be something like what we do in assigning attributes to customers. Based on past behaviors, instead of the likelihood to do home repair, characterizing the likelihood to assemble bomb materials. Scoring models for extremism. In the world of targeted selling, half a million is not a large number.

Given what's being reported, you get the image of a beehive of security analysts combing through data. I'm sure some level of automation and "dashboards" are in place, at least I hope they are given that a deluge is expected. This isn't the kind of thing that can be addressed by hiring up. What can be done to better leverage current analysts and even assign to machines things now being done be humans?

Finally, another thing that struck me was the absence of any reference to Federal CIO, Vivek Kundra. I was under the impression that he was going to bring the Valley ways to Government. Maybe next on the agenda.

Sure, this is simplistic. I'd bet there's a lot going on in the spook world that I'm underestimating. But I'd love to get a sanitized view, if just to get a sense what it looks like. So let's say down the line CIO Kundra convenes the grand convergence of the Valley (and elsewhere) and Government, and it turns out that the Amazons have something to learn from the CIA. I don't think anyone would be too upset about that either.

Labels: Government, social media, technology