Continued Education

Excellence depends on individuals who take responsibility for acquiring and maintaining professional competence.

-ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct

The field of computer science is never stagnant. It’s incredible to look back on even the past five or ten years and observe the developments that have taken place within the field and the impact of those changes on a wide spectrum of industries. This dynamic nature brings both opportunities and responsibilities. In particular, computer scientists have the responsibility of continued education in order to build successful products and services that change the world for the better. Learning opportunities come in many forms, from on-the-job adaptation to formal education. The exact format of the educational source doesn’t matter as much as the commitment of the individual to learn what is necessary to achieve excellence.

Thoughts on Targeted Ads

The Cost of Free Time

A good measure to use when determining the value of a hobby is if it adds to or takes away from your sense of balance. Healthy activities help you feel revitalized, refreshed, and ready to tackle your challenges.

– Charles D. Knutson, Just a Game?

Life is full of pressures, responsibilities, and deadlines.  Little wonder society increasingly relies on recreation and entertainment to take a break from it all.  Some of these activities, however, can do more harm than good.  When used excessively to procrastinate, they have the opposite of the refreshing effect we seek.  As with all things in life, balance is required.  Wholesome breaks help us balance mentally and physically.  “Healthy” and “unhealthy” activities aren’t defined by their exact nature, but rather by how they leave us.  Healthy activities can easily transform into something harmful once we start to spend too much time (or just the wrong time) on them.  It would be wise to routinely self-evaluate the cost of our free time.

For Better and for Worse

There’s no doubt that the internet has changed how society communicates, interacts, and behaves.  Many will try to paint these changes as either black or white, but the truth is far more complicated than that. In Here Comes Everybody, Clay Shirky explains that such efforts are futile: “When society is changing, we want to know whether the change is good or bad, but that kind of judgment becomes meaningless with transformations this large.”  For example, changes in communication have allowed the formation of groups that would never have been established prior to the internet.  Inevitably, some of these groups pursue goals deemed immoral while others have ideals that society as a whole approves of.  Still others have divisive agendas. The same technological tools enable people from across the spectrum to easily find and connect with like-minded individuals.

With technology, the question is rarely “is this tool good or bad?” and even less frequently will that yield a universal answer.  But is that really so different than previous tools?  From the wheel to the printing press, all revolutionary tools have been used for building, destroying, and morally ambiguous purposes.  Now, to be clear, the futility of such a question doesn’t mean we should stop considering our new tools.  On the contrary, we ought to carefully determine how we, as individuals and as a society, can make the most of them.  Even if fringe (and sometimes mainstream) groups use technology for morally bankrupt causes, more often than not the same tools can be used for good.

Work and Play

It may well turn out that one of the most important effects of open source’s success will be to teach us that play is the most economically efficient mode of creative work.

– The Cathedral and the Bazaar, Eric Steven Raymond

Open source software has proven a lot of assumptions false.  Prior to the widespread and sustained success of popular open source products, it was generally believed that they would fall apart because developers wouldn’t contribute enough without financial motivation.  While motivations vary and the reasons for the viability of open source software are far more complicated than this, such opinions failed to take into consideration one crucial fact: people are willing to work hard when having fun.  Open source software offers a sense of play, discovery, and creativity that hasn’t typically been part of the commercial code monkey development process.  Progressive companies have begun to integrate these aspects into their culture and workflow.  I am excited to see how the industry continues to adapt to attract the best programmers–the same programmers, according to Raymond, who tend to be most involved with open source projects.

Who Belongs in Computer Science

Every field of study has some sort of stigma attached, but select few are as deeply entrenched as the perceived persona of a computer scientist.  We recognize him–yes, just him, not her–as soon as he enters the scene of a movie.  He is defined by his clothing, his interests, and his (lack of) social know-how.  None of those stereotypes bother me so much as the one I hear when I tell someone of my chosen career: “Oh, I could never do that; you must be so smart!”  There’s an almost mystical air about computer science because nobody is exposed to it unless they actively seek it out.  And that’s when those stereotypes become a self-fulfilling prophesy about who is in the field.  You don’t have to be an awkward genius who loves The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy to be a computer scientist.  In reality, the ideal computer scientist loves to create, explore, and solve problems; a computer just happens to be a handy tool for those purposes.  Better representation of gender, interests, and backgrounds will occur naturally in the classroom and industry as we emphasize those attributes and unmask the true nature of computer science.

Illusions of Social Media

All my friends travel the world, earn $60,000 a month, and have flawless marriages.  That’s what I learn in a few moments on Facebook.  Of course, from my real-life interactions, I know that they each have struggles, trials, and imperfections. If I’m not careful, however, the perceptions caused by social media begin to harm my view of myself and my friends.  When I visit Facebook–especially in moments of loneliness or boredom–the stream of accomplishments and adventures can be overwhelming.  I sometimes catch myself envying the combined highlights of hundreds of lives and wonder why they’re not part of mine.  In those moments, I lose sight of my blessings and forget that I can help my friends as much as they help me.  The only valid solution doesn’t depend on my friends changing their habits, but instead requires a personal, internal change of attitude.  When written down, the better perspective is obvious and even a little silly: social media can be a fun way to keep up with friends, but the posts themselves are not my friends.

Whose Responsibility is Security?

In The Cuckoo’s Egg, Cliff Stoll recounts his experience tracking and countering a determined hacker.  Perhaps the more persistent conflict, however, is Stoll’s battle with companies, governmental agencies, and individuals to acknowledge and respond to the threat.  While Stoll’s hacker has long since been caught, the other conflict remains only partially resolved.

The great difficulty with security is that a single vulnerability can be enough for an attacker to exploit an entire system.  Among other sources, these holes come from buggy software, poor passwords, and insecure networks.  A system therefore depends on the integrity and care of people from several organizations.  Each party shares responsibility for protecting the system by securing their entry point.  Users should have secure passwords that they don’t share with anyone–or leave on a Post-It note on their computers.  Software developers should perform thorough testing.  System administrators have the responsibility of ensuring pieces work as advertised and interact appropriately; they should also ensure their users follow proper security procedures.  A great deal of headache could be avoided if each participant better understood and carried out their role in security.

Even with informed and responsible contributors, however, no system is perfect.  The source and extent of a breach is rarely obvious immediately.  Due to the connected nature of the internet, it is in everyone’s interest to help fight for security.  With recent security issues, such as Heartbleed in OpenSSL, the community has been quite responsive.  Patches and fixes have been released within days (or sooner) of a vulnerability being published.  This represents quite an improvement from a few decades ago when Stoll fought for anyone to even acknowledge the issue.  These changes are comforting.  Moving forwards, as more and more vital information becomes accessible from the cloud, the importance of these issues will increase.  It will be ever more essential to educate casual users and administrators alike of the dangers and responsibilities of security.

Current Events: The Internet of (Hackable) Things

Based on the article here.

From light switches to thermostats, you’d be hard pressed to find a household electronic that hasn’t been made “smart” in the past few years.  Home automation brings many potential benefits, among those peace of mind and security when away from home.  But perhaps allowing your phone to lock up your house just moves the danger from your front door to your device itself.  Baby monitors, TVs, and more are prone to lackluster security measures, particularly the use of weak passwords.  As such a new and rapidly-developing industry, the proper safety precautions have not been fully put into place.  More importantly, most users aren’t aware that they might be vulnerable.  As we increasingly delegate our most critical tasks to the cloud, we need to be significantly more careful.  Experts predict that we’re just seeing the beginning of an explosion of connected devices in the home.  Let’s ensure that we see a corresponding increase in security measures and consumer awareness.  So if the lights start to flicker and you feel a sudden chill, your house probably isn’t haunted–but your network may be.

Facing Technology Head-On

It is not enough to avoid the negative uses of technology; we must actively use the tools made available us to advance good causes.  Sitting idly by on the sidelines will just allow the negative uses to dominate the scene.  Instead, the world needs ethical, creative people to realize the benefits.  For example, there will always be those who use the internet for illicit or inappropriate activity, but it also has the power to unite people in a common, productive cause.  We can build tools and applications that can instantly reach millions of people for good.  As we do so, we invite everyone to choose better options and help inspire others to use their talents to help the world spin a little more smoothly.  Doing this in healthy moderation allows us to control technology, and not the other way around.  So, rather than passively surfing the web or simply avoiding it altogether–neither of which are the inherently evil–let’s take advantage of it to spread joy, ease burdens, and lend a helping hand.