Notes from the Electronic Cottage 4/11/19

Internet Big Picture

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

So how is the Internet faring these days, especially from the perspective of what we thought the Internet would become 20+ years ago? Here are some visions from then and now. See what you think.

Here are the works mentioned in this program:

John Perry Barlow: A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace. 1996, www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence

Lawrence Lessig: Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, 1999.

Bruce Schneier: Click Here to Kill Everybody, 2018.

Notes from the Electronic Cottage 4/4/19

Cashless Society

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

How much cash is in your pocket or purse right now? If you are like most people, the answer is “not much.” More and more people in this country are choosing to pay for even small purchases with credit or debit cards, and in a few countries many stores won’t even accept cash any more. There are upsides and downsides to this trend. Here are a few.

Notes from the Electronic Cottage 3/21/19

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

What Can Our Ears Believe?

Technology is pretty amazing, as we all know. Today, couple of examples of products that have been demonstrated, though are not yet fully commercialized. This software can essentially make anyone whose voice it has a sample of say pretty much anything, including things the person has never said, in one case merely by typing text on a screen. Don’t believe it? Check www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=9&v=I3l4XLZ59iw. And take a look at www.lyrebird.ai as well where you can talk for a minute or more and have your own voice synthesized. Spooky – or Great?

Notes from the Electronic Cottage 3/7/19

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

Password Hygiene 1

Despite all sorts of attempts to do away with passwords, we still live in a password world on the Web. That means it’s really important to have passwords – or pass phrases – that it is really hard to crack. Here are some considerations to ponder as we construct crack-proof passwords for our increasingly online lives.

The Diceware web site mentioned in today’s program is at: world.std.com/~reinhold/diceware.html