“How to slow down in a world that is speeding up?” Johann Hari writes in the book Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention – and How to Think Deeply Again. He outlines twelve problems for our individual and collective attention span, ability to focus.
Tag: Surveillance
Book review: Fancy Bear Goes Phishing
As soon as I noticed a book published with this savvy title this year, I knew I had to read it: Fancy Bear Goes Phishing: The Dark History of the Information Age, in five Extraordinary Hacks. In his youth, Scott J. Shapiro spent much time with computers, but later chose a career in philosophy and law. When writing about cyberwar, he returned to computers, re-learning programming and computer science. Attempting to answer the simple questions of why the Internet is insecure, how do hackers exploit insecurity and how they can be prevented, or at least decreased in numbers, Shapiro takes us on a journey with five stops, from the late 1980’s to the hacks of the Democratic National Committee and the Minecraft wars.
Book review: Weapons of math destruction
Cathy O’Neil is a computer scientist and mathematician, who left the academic life for the financial industry in the early 2000’s, working with computers, for companies making lots of money. There she discovered what is now called Big Data and later became troubled by the purposes and intents of algorithms. After realising the even more troublesome side effects on society, she thus wrote this book, with the secondary title How Big Data increases inequality and threatens democracy.
The debate on refugee espionage
Refugee espionage, according to Swedish law, is when a person unlawfully, secretly and systematically, over time, gathers information about someone else in order to provide a foreign power this information. It’s been part of Swedish law since the 1940’s and Sweden is one of the few countries to actually prohibit this action. How does the Swedish parliament and media debate refugee espionage since 2014, when the law was revised?
Book review: How to lose the information war
Nina Jankowicz’s second book is focused on Central and Eastern Europe and, as the title implies, information warfare, directed by Russia.
Thesis proceeding
The snow is still covering parts of the ground and I’m writing the introduction, purpose and research questions on my bachelor’s thesis in political science. If all goes according to plan, it’ll be complete and presented to the examiner and supervisor in late May and in May-June it’ll be publicly discussed and examined.
Book review: Click here to kill everybody
For those who don’t know of Bruce Schneier, he’s one of the world’s most famous and prominent cybersecurity experts. If there’s one person you’d like to guide you and hold your hand while in need, Schneier is the one. This book is about basics of cybersecurity, not the technical aspects, but rather about security on the Internet and the Internet+, the interconnected world of the Internet of things.
Time to decide again
It’s been two years and finally it’s time to study some more. In roughly one month, we’ll begin writing our bachelor thesis.
Book review: Reset
The director of the famous Citizen Lab has written about the state of the (tech) world and solutions to the crisis of democracy and tech. If there’s one book to rule them all, this is the one.
Dead soldiers in Clearview AI (Revised June 15th)
The war between Russia and Ukraine rages on. One method for the Ukrainian resistance to raise awareness of the number of dead Russian (and Ukrainian) soldiers is to use Clearview AI, the facial network services company, which can detect faces and connect them to, for instance, social media profiles.