Glut-ton for Punishment

What happens when you analyze global infectious diseases, the World Wide Web and some old bling? You get this report from the National Academies called Glut: Mastering Information Through The Ages.

For $33 this report is all yours. Although this report summary reminds me a bit of Jared Diamond's series of books that tie together cultural and historical events to support modern trends. Who knew history was so net-centric?

"What do primordial bacteria, medieval alchemists, and the World Wide Web have to do with each other? This fascinating exploration of how information systems emerge takes readers on a provocative journey through the history of the information age.

Today's "information explosion" may seem like an acutely modern phenomenon, but we are not the first generation nor even the first species to wrestle with the problem of information overload. Long before the advent of computers, human beings were collecting, storing, and organizing information: from Ice Age taxonomies to Sumerian archives, Greek libraries to Dark Age monasteries.

Today, we stand at a precipice, as our old systems struggle to cope with what designer Richard Saul Wurman called a "tsunami of data." With some historical perspective, however, we can begin to understand our predicament not just as the result of technological change, but as the latest chapter in an ancient story that we are only beginning to understand.

Spanning disciplines from evolutionary theory and cultural anthropology to the history of books, libraries, and computer science, writer and information architect Alex Wright weaves an intriguing narrative that connects such seemingly far-flung topics as insect colonies, Stone Age jewelry, medieval monasteries, Renaissance encyclopedias, early computer networks, and the World Wide Web. Finally, he pulls these threads together to reach a surprising conclusion, suggesting that the future of the information age may lie deep in our cultural past."

-Bill

If You Network It, They Will Come

This Brookings report speaks to this author's Rustbelt roots. What are the key differences between America's thriving urban centers and cities that were once major industrial centers? Brookings suggests that an economic focus (read: get on the globalization bandwagon) will help revitalize former industry heavy cities.

The lesson is that in order for these cities to once again achieve economic prosperity, they have to connect to the wider globalization economic trends.

“A dynamic economic moment is also now underway, a result of a fundamental restructuring of the global economy:

• Globalization has accelerated the shift of our economy from the production of commodities, to the design, marketing, and delivery of goods, services, and ideas. Services employment grew by 214 percent from 1970 to 2000 as manufacturing declined, and now represents 32 percent of all jobs in the country.

• The shift to a knowledge and innovation economy demands greater numbers of highly educated, highly skilled workers—now the single biggest driver of economic growth across metropolitan areas.

• The role and function of universities, colleges, medical research institutions, and other institutions of higher learning in economic development and community revitalization is growing and changing.

• The growth of the knowledge economy is altering the value and function of density and proximity, which is widely held to help accelerate the transfer of knowledge and ideas between people and firms.

While globalization and technological change have undoubtedly contributed to the decline of those cities reliant on “old economy” industries, moving forward, they also have the potential to give them back their competitive edge.”

-Bill

Upcoming Event: NGDC Conference

Next Generation Data Center Conference and Expo

August 6-9, 2007

San Fransisco, California

A copy of the brochure can be found here.

-Mike

Network Comms - Background

Excellent background piece in the latest issue of Scientific American on network communications.

"The military has recognized the robustness of network coding and is now funding research into its use in mobile ad hoc networks, which can form on the fly. Such networks are valuable in highly changeable environments, such as on the battlefield, where reliable communications are essential and establishing and maintaining an infrastructure of fiber-optic cables or cell towers is difficult. In an ad hoc network, every soldier's radio becomes a node in a communications system, and each node seeks out and establishes connections to neighboring nodes; together these connections establish a network's links. Every node can both send and receive messages and serve as an intermediary to pass along messages intended for other receivers. This technique extends communications capabilities far beyond the transmission range of a single node. It also allows enormous flexibility, because the network travels with the users, constantly reconfiguring and reestablishing connections as needed.

By changing how networks function, network coding may influence society in ways we cannot yet imagine. In the meantime, though, those of us who are studying it are considering the obstacles to implementation. Transitioning from our router-based system to a network-coded one will actually be one of the more minor hurdles. That conversion can be handled by a gradual change rather than a sudden overhaul; some routers could just be reprogrammed, and others not built to perform coding operations would be replaced little by little.

A bigger challenge will be coping with issues beyond replacing routers with coders. For instance, mixing information is a good strategy when the receiving node will gather enough evidence to recover what it desires from the mixture. This condition is always met in multicast networks but may not be the case in general. Moreover, in some circumstances, such as when multiple multicasts are transmitted, mixing information can make it difficult or impossible for users to extract the proper output. How, then, can nodes decide which information can and cannot be mixed when multiple connections share the same network? In what ways must network coding in wireless networks differ from its use in wired ones? What are the security advantages and implications of network coding? How will people be charged for communications services when one person's data are necessarily mixed with those of other users? In collaborations that span the globe, we and others are pondering how to unravel such knots even as we strive to enhance the capabilities of the communications networks that have become such an integral part of so many lives."

-Mike

Upcoming Event: Operations Research

Thanks to Alidade for sending this along. Please find registration and conference information here. The event is going to be held in Annapolis on Monday, June 11.

-Bill

My Unmanned System is Better than Your Unmanned System

The Unmanned Bloggers are not above cross-posting some good video material.

See the following post from DefenseTech.org on the future of unmanned aerial combat. Just goes to how many companies out there are experimenting with vehicles of all sorts of shapes and sizes.

-Mike

In Other Words

I certainly didn't need any more threats to be frightened of. Now the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute has released this report to add to the QDR threat matrices.

And I thought hybrids were a good thing.

-Bill