Technology Advance Enables Machine Surveillance

Ah, big data problems.  These are the ones we mention that people are continuously trying to solve.  We've had guests to the classroom report on their desire, and a marketing initiative discussing their ability to produce directed advertising to mobile subscribers by understanding data they receive about users and delivering marketing based on their preferences and environments.  This article takes a look at the same technologies and views the dark side and even discusses the negative impact on freedom of our ability to process big data.
You remember Minority Report?  Thousands of people walking around being retina scanned and then receiving directed marketing.  Well, the realist in me initially thought, no way you can do retina scans from that distance, and even if you could, the time frame to sort through retina listings presents a huge big data problem. Both these problems are solutions that are being sought.  What happens when the time to search  billion records for a single match is reduced to mere seconds?  What if the remote retina scan remains impossible but you can do facial, body heat, or some mix of scanning at a remote distance in order to identify a passerby?  At what point does that scan become invasive or illegal of my personal space?  Is this machine surveillance legal and for what purposes?   Ah the joys of technology getting mature.

Idea and inspiration for this post comes from this article.
http://opinion.latimes.com/opinionla/2011/11/techonomy-mike-lynch-autonomy-surveillance.html

The most innovative man to die in October 2011?

How many of you have heard of Dennis Ritchie?

We all mourned the loss of Steve Jobs in October, but about a week later the world of innovation and computers suffered the loss of arguably a larger innovative mind.  Dennis Ritchie was the creator of the C programming language and a developer of UNIX.  Ask your local tech geek where we would be without those two disruptive innovations.  Both innovations are at the heart of computer language and operating systems today.   UNIX is extensively adopted in Apple's product line, was used by DARPA in designing what we know today as the internet and is the basis for much of today's open source software movement.

As I thought about a speaker from this last week's class challenging what disruptive technology is, I thought of Dennis Ritchie.  I thought of how his languages are still at the base of many innovations that are still occurring today.  He challenged assumptions and grew new ideas.  Was his innovation less amazing and stunning than Steve Jobs.  How do you evaluate the worth of two great individual's innovation.  Certainly not only by public opinion or direct monetary worth.