The Universe (And 9,000 Glaswegians)

Tonight I went along to watch Professor Brian Cox at The SSE Hydro in Glasgow. As I’ve written about before, it feels like there’s something different in the current climate these days when 9,000 people turn up to hear a scientist speak:

I learned a lot tonight. Many different avenues for further study just opened up out of nowhere. And any night which combines Einstein’s Theory Of Relativity, wormholes, the 4D Space Time Continuum, photos of the Big Bang, a simulation of an Event Horizon by the guys who created the Interstellar Gargantura black hole is A Good Night…

But here’s my favourite.

We’re all made up of stars.

Quite literally. Pow.

Simple and (Less In)secure

One of the principles that seems to be constant no matter what endeavour you’re engaged in is – simplicity is your friend.

When it comes to eating plans, exercise regimes, cooking lessons, writing practices – whatever – an imperfect plan consistently practiced will always beat the perfect plan inconsistently followed.

Success is found that way mainly because of the incredible power that comes from building habits (no matter how small).

But simplicity has another very distinct benefit in another specific area – writing secure code. Or, more accurately, less insecure code (as security can never be an absolute).

To look further into this, it’s worth reading this thread by Sarah Jamie Lewis about the proposed Swiss online voting system. It’s hard to believe that this could ever be a good idea – for a whole number of reasons. But for the present purposes, let’s just focus on the security implications:

There’s been a lot of criticism about the project so far. But it’s impossible to disagree with what she’s saying here. No matter what kind of rockstar genius coders you might have, to date no one has ever written perfect code. Their will always be errors – and when the system is critical (even when it isn’t, to be honest, it’s just the stakes are much higher), you want to be using things that have been demonstrably proved to work together in ways that are robust.

Once you have complex code in play, not only does the code have to be written perfectly itself but the different packages etc also have to be integrated perfectly.

You’ve just massively increased the chances of causing problems in the future.

The easier it is to fix things, the more chance you have of getting it right. That’s why all important code has to be auditable. Because no-one can expect to get things right the first time around. And when when you start playing around with individual’s democratic rights, the stakes have just gone through the roof.

Women In Coding

Came across a good longread article in The New York Times earlier this week on ‘The Secret History of Women in Coding‘.

Whilst I already knew about quite a lot of the history (Ada Lovelace, the Bletchley Park ladies, Grace Hopper etc), I’d never thought too deeply about the reasons for the disconnect between the significant involvement of women in the early days of the computing ‘industry’ and the current split between the sexes in the industry beyond the obvious narrative around career inequality etc.

I find it particularly interesting because my original career was law – traditionally a stuffy male preserve. Yet whilst at Uni, women made up over 50% of my cohort. It’s a trend that has continued over the years, to the extent that far more women than men now study law. But in the past twenty years that I’ve been working in and around the technology industry, it’s clear that the story is quite different for coding which is now heavily male-dominated, despite its origins.

The article raises an interesting point: because in the early days literally no-one had any coding experience, recruiters weren’t seeking out those with previous expertise. But this all changed with the introduction of affordable computers into homes in the 1980’s. Suddenly you had teenagers who acquired many hours of experience whilst experimenting with their home computers. And, for the most part, they were male. The article argues this was due to the stereotypical ‘boys like building/engineering, girls like craftwork/housework’ split that was obviously more prevalent back in the households of that decade.

It’s a great long article. But for me, the most important point comes in the explanation of the different attitude adopted by Carnegie Mellon University who identified the issue. Instead of rewarding the ‘obsessive hacker’ with a place at University studying computer science, they broadened their outlook considerably:

“They still wanted to encourage those obsessive teenage coders, but they had come to understand that the neophytes were just as likely to bloom rapidly into remarkable talents and deserved as much support. “We had to broaden how faculty sees what a successful student looks like,” he says.

“The admissions process was adjusted, too; it no longer gave as much preference to students who had been teenage coders. Faculty members became more used to seeing how green coders evolve into accomplished ones, and they learned how to teach that type. 

“Carnegie Mellon’s efforts were remarkably successful. Only a few years after these changes, the percentage of women entering its computer-science program boomed, rising to 42 percent from 7 percent; graduation rates for women rose to nearly match those of the men.”

I’m a huge believer in this. With the exception of a one-off short project, experience really doesn’t matter in a whole range of activities. Give me someone who has the passion and drive to learn from scratch any day of the week. Perhaps easier said than done for many institutions that are still too brittle to change their ways or culture. Still – given the divergence between the limited supply and the unmet levels of demand for coders, when you consider just how outsized the potential rewards are, surely it can be nothing other than a direction that’s worth taking. For everyone involved.

 

The Mystery of Cicada 3301

A Saturday video for all of you who like a good treasure hunt….and they don’t come better in the digital world than the story of Cicada 3301.

To date, no one has managed to solve the mystery. There are rumours that it may be some kind of recruitment test for a secret service like the NSA or MI6 or perhaps some kind of digital mercenary group. It certainly appears to be organised by some very well-funded individuals, given the fact that the clues have been hidden all over the world.

But still the answer remains unsolved.

A Lost Opportunity

This is a lovely story.

‘Opportunity’ was the name of the rover that NASA landed on the surface of Mars back in 2004. It was designed to last just 90 Martian days and travel 1,000 metres.

Instead, it survived for almost 15 years and broke the record for the furthest distance travelled off-world (ie Earth) at over 28 miles.

This little overachiever did many things – not least of which was sending us confirmation that the history of Mars included time as a wet planet that was suitable for habitation.

So it’s not surprising that the folk responsible for coaxing that little rover across the darkness for many years felt a tug at the heartstrings when it – finally – gave up the ghost following a particularly heavy Martian sandstorm last year.

The last signal was received on June 10th 2018. All subsequent attempts to communicate failed – and NASA have finally now pulled the plug.

It’s not hard to imagine that if we get this all wrong – the overpopulation, the nuclear game theory, the global warming – we’ll end up sealing our own fate here on Earth. And many years down the line, some other civilisation will stumble across one of our furthest explorers and be struck with exactly that same sense of wonder in considering what became of us as we hold today about that hot red planet.

The Romance of Valentine’s Day

Rather than crafting a beguiling paean to love on Valentine’s Day today, I thought I’d share a couple of much more interesting facts for all you non-romantic types out there. Both newsworthy events happened somewhat bizarrely on exactly the same day back in 1929.

The Valentine’s Day Massacre

Yeah, about as far from red roses and heartfelt chocolate sentiments as you can imagine. In 1929, the final big gang battle took place in Chicago between the forces of crime bosses Al Capone and Bugs Moran.

Capone’s team tricked Bugs’ crew into taking part in a bootleg whisky deal. Dressed up as policemen, they tricked them into lining up against a wall without weapons – before gunning all seven down in cold blood. Bugs himself only escaped when he saw the police uniforms entering the garage in front of him and scarpered before it all kicked off.

It was the last big confrontation between the two gangs and shocked the public who started to question whether banning whisky was more important than overturning the Prohibition that gave criminals such as Capone the power to build little empires in the first place….

Sir Alexander Fleming Discovers Penicillin

But whilst the headlines were being written in Chicago, a far more quiet revolution was starting in the UK. On 14th February 1929, Scottish bacteriologist Sir Alexander Fleming made one of the greatest discoveries of the modern medical age when he discovered penicillin.

It’s hard to overstate just how significant this discovery was. It heralded the dawn of a new antibiotic age. Before then, anyone could end up with a fatal infection from a simple cut or scratch. And all because Fleming returned from holiday to find a blob of mould growing on one of his petri dishes which seemed to have stopped the growth of the bacteria. It’s impossible to estimate just how many lives have been saved so far by penicillin. But that number can only be described as one thing: humungous…. (technical term)

So for all you non-romantic types, resolutely resisting any tugs on your heart strings by your loved one this evening, I hope that’s cheered you up. After all, this is a day that gets its title from the beheading of St. Valentine in 278 A.D. He was a priest in Rome who defied Emperor Claudius’ ban on all marriages and engagements since it was believed that they were making men far too attached to their wives and reluctant to join the army. Valentine was all too happy to perform marriages for young lovers in secret….until the Emperor found out and order him to be beaten to death with clubs and beheaded.

Ah, the romance.

Bitcoin Sent Across Borders Using Radio

This is pretty amazing – a Bitcoin transaction that didn’t need the internet or satellite.

To translate, the sender used a free protocol for shortwave communications called JS8Call shortwave radio to send bitcoin. That protocol lets you connect a shortwave radio to a computer in order to send and receive shortwave-transmitted text messages between JS8Call users – with no special licence required.

You can see the transaction where the recipient took the money here if you’re interested. The sender sent the recipient his private key and the recipient used this to transfer the funds to his wallet. As an alternative, he could have prepared a signed transaction to send to the recipient who could then have broadcast that to the blockchain.

This image shows the data from the sender’s shortwave radio. These radios hear static (electromagnetic noise) continuously. The picture shows when there’s an interruption in that background noise caused by a recognisable signal – which in this case was the signal that the private key had been received.

So, why’s sending Bitcoin via radio so cool?

It’s already been sent via mesh networks and satellites. And it was only a brain wallet that was used in this proof of concept (i.e. where you just remember a seed phrase in your head – not the most secure but great if you’re running from a collapsing country or economy).

In short, it’s worth taking notice of because it’s yet another string to Bitcoin’s bow when it comes to its original superpower – censorship-resistance.

Technology, Behaviour Control & The Removal of Freedom

You’ve probably heard of B.F.Skinner. He was an American who made some important discoveries in the 1930’s as he developed operant conditioning: in other words, how to change people’s behaviour with either reinforcement or punishment. If you haven’t heard of the man, you might still have heard of the Skinner Box (which, contrary to urban legend, he apparently didn’t place his daughter into after all…).

In many ways, those ideas and his body of work represented the spiritual forebears of today’s digital world. Particularly for the two billion Facebook users and countless Amazon customers whose daily interactions online are guided in unseen ways by the platforms they rely on for ‘entertainment’…

That superpower could be used for good (as with Number 10’s Behavioural Insights Team). Yet these vast commercial digital behemoths are financially incentivised to remain laser-focused on continually improving their ability to accurately predict your behaviour in real-time throughout each day. Because doing this enables them to serve you more profitable advertising – whilst a more positive use of the technology is left in the wake of the relentless drive towards profit.

Looking back at history, this perhaps isn’t as new a problem as it seems. Over 45 years ago, there was public outrage in the US when behaviour modification techniques, first practiced in military and government-funded institutions were applied to captive individuals who fell outside their original scope (prisoners, pyschiatric wards, classrooms and the like). Check out this quote from a report of the time referred to in Shosanna Zuboff’s latest book – it’s taken from a federal investigation into the issue (‘Individual Rights and the Federal Role in Behaviour Modification):-

“When the founding fathers established our constitutional system of government. they based it on their fundamental belief in the sanctity of the individual….They understood that self-determination is the source of individuality, and individuality is the mainstay of freedom….

“Recently, however, technology has begun to develop new methods of behaviour control capable of altering not just an individual’s actions but his very personality and manner of thinking…the behavioural technology being developed in the United States today touches upon the most basic sources of individuality and the very core of personal freedom… the most serious threat… is the power this technology gives one man to impose his views and values on another….

“Concepts of freedom, privacy and self-determination inherently conflict with programs designed to control not just physical freedom, but the source of free thoughts as well… The question becomes even more acute when these programs are conducted, as they are today, in the absence of strict controls. As disturbing as behaviour modification may be on a theoretical level, the unchecked growth of the practical technology of behaviour control is cause for even greater concern”.

The idea that such vast power could ever be in the hands of anyone other than the state was beyond comprehension at that time – let alone in the hands of such unregulated superpowers as Facebook. The impact of the surveillance capitalists is particularly scary in this context however – because the greater the extent to which others can prove to be able to manipulate and redirect your behaviour, the shakier the foundations of your freedom as an individual become.

The more these companies develop the power to control your life, the fewer options you have in practice to interact with the world that lies in front of you. This issue isn’t simply a worry about your phone being able to identify that you’ve just returned from a run and therefore likely full of positive endorphins and more likely to make an impulse purchase if the right advert is served to you in this context. It is that this desire – partially manifested today, but becoming increasingly fully established – of others to control the decisions in your day has the very tangible outcome of removing the freedom you have to define your own life.

Reason #2345 to consider #DeleteFacebook.

David Deutsch and Knowledge

Another day, another great podcast! This time, a TED Interview of David Deutsch by Chris Anderson (here’s the transcript, if you’re a reader rather than a listener).

I can’t pretend I understand everything he says by any means. I suspect he’s lost more brain cells throughout his life than I could ever aspire to grow in my own tiny skull-sized kingdom. But there are a couple of sections that I found particularly interesting.

The first is the difference between humans and, say, monkeys when it comes to imitation. Whereas an animal with the intelligence of, say, a monkey will imitate a human that unlocks a safe, it will copy the behaviour exactly. So if a man opens the safe with his toes, the monkey won’t think to attempt to open the safe with his fingers, for example.

The second is a point that I’ve heard a few times before but this time stuck in my head. The history of human civilisation shows that a couple of times previously humanity appeared to reach a tipping point of educated curiosity – in the sense that knowledge continued to survive for more than a couple of generation – before it somehow all collapsed.

In other words, it’s important not to forget that all collective knowledge has a certain fragility to it. Think of how advanced Ancient Athens was for example. Or the Roman Empire which, following its collapse resulted in the democratic, economic and cultural deterioration in Western Europe more popularly known as The Dark Ages.

Perhaps we’ve somehow passed that tipping point today? But it’s also very possible that we haven’t. A somewhat sobering thought…

There’s also a great piece on the podcast on The Fermi Paradox (or the Fermi Problem as Deutsch calls it as he says he can see no paradox there), one of my favourite puzzles. In other words, if there is indeed other forms of intelligent life out there in the universe, then where are they all? Because there is almost a zero chance of any civilisation having been created at exactly the same time as ours so, in intergalactic terms, the fact that one civilisation would be so far advanced (taking into account the exponential development that will likely take place with the accumulation of knowledge and technology) that, if they wanted to settle the whole galaxy, it would have been done already in the blink of an eye (in the timescale of the universe). So they must be millions of years ahead of us. But if that’s the case, where are they?

One explanation of course is that we’re the first civilisation to reach this state of advancement in the universe. Again, not entirely comforting when you think about what the chances are of the first one actually making it through further time to thrive successfully. Plus we reject this kind of explanation as it’s, well, kind of boring.

I’ll park that topic there as I’ve been meaning to write a proper post on it for a while. Plus I’ve also just bought a book to dig into the many different theories on the topic (‘If The Universe Is Teeming With Aliens, Where Is Everybody? Fifty Solutions to Fermi’s Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life’ by Stephen Webb).

But in summary: it’s our job to consistently seek to gain knowledge. If things go wrong, it’s down to the fact that we simply haven’t understood what’s going on – and therefore it’s incumbent on us to ensure that we work out why.

Lucky Entrepreneurs

Some very wise words on a Sunday evening from the Marc Andreessen blog archive:

“Luck is something that every successful entrepreneur will tell you plays a huge role in the difference between success and failure. Many of those successful entrepreneurs will only admit this under duress, though, because if luck does indeed play such a huge role, then that seriously dents the image of the successful entrepreneur as an omniscient business genius.“

However, it’s not as passive as it may sound. Yes, there’s blind luck where good things happen entirely out of the blue. But there’s also the far more exciting type – the luck that is more likely to occur to those who are consistently ‘busy’ (I guess that’s why that quote – “The harder I work, the luckier I get” – has such resonance).

And then? There’s also luck that appears in disguise – opportunity that only presents itself to those who have trained themselves to look out for the chance happenings that will benefit them. A great excuse for people to work hard at both training and focus on a speciality.

In other words, random luck; luck that rewards the curious who throw themselves about with enthusiasm; luck that helps those who’ve worked on their special abilities from learning and joining the dots; and luck that comes to those with ‘eccentric hobbies and personal lifestyles’ .

So, a few tips for a Sunday evening: be curious, energetic, look at how many different things fit together and don’t just follow the crowd but develop your own point of view.

And get lucky.