Notes from the Electronic Cottage 3/16/17

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

Amidst the huffing and puffing that passes for government these days, you may be forgiven if you haven’t heard that the very important Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) will expire at the end of 2017 unless Congress renews it. This is a part of FISA that attempts to control, albeit to a less than optimum degree, what the NSA can and cannot do within the borders of the United States. It is a really important law that could stand improvement.

For background info:
theregister.co.uk/2017/02/15/section_702_mass_surveillance
aclu.org/search/section 702

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Notes from the Electronic Cottage 3/2/17

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

Some estimates suggest that there could be 50 billion connected devices in the world by 2020 making up a huge web that many refer to as the Internet of Things (IoT). From interconnected devices in our cars to our homes to our children’s toys and beyond, we humans are going to be interacting regularly with often artificially intelligent sensors and electronic devices. Are we ready to handle them all? A recent report from the Community Computing Consortium raises some pretty important questions. If you’d like to see the whole report yourself, take a look at cra.org/ccc/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/02/Safety-Security-and-Privacy-Threats-in-IoT.pdf.

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Notes from the Electronic Cottage 2/23/17

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

It seems like tech White Hats are always trying harder to devise more secure ways to protect our computers and information, and Black Hats are trying just as hard to break those protection systems. Now there is a technology developing that may either make secure encryption effectively impossible – or just maybe make it unbreakable. It’s called Quantum Computing and it promises computing power beyond anything available today.

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Notes from the Electronic Cottage 2/16/17

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

Think self-driving cars are examples of amazing technology? They are but there even more amazing examples of human-machine interaction on the horizon which suggest that we are entering a time when machines and people are going to interact more and more directly and deeply. What kind of world are we creating? Here are some early glimpses.

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Notes from the Electronic Cottage 2/9/17

Producer/Host: Jim Campbell

The prospects for science and technology in this country do not seem particularly bright at the moment judging by the words and actions coming out of Washington recently. But there are still amazing things going on in labs all over the world, especially at the intersection of health science and digital technology. Here are a few that could have a big impact on our everyday world before too long.

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