akrish

This week I found several interesting online articles that I’d like to share here.

The first relates to SOPA and PIPA, the two legislative acts about fighting online copyright infringement. I personally don’t know too much about them but in an effort to learn about these pieces of legislation, I found a report published by the ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, that has a decent amount of influence, especially with scientists and technical people. The article is a bit technical, but the thesis is that the costs associated with blocking traffic (i.e. blocking DNS lookups and search engine hits) is quite high and it cannot be done simply by tampering with US-based DNS servers. Therefore the article proposes that anyone (or entity) that requests a court order under these acts needs to financially compensate the other party for carrying out the court order. This would mean that anyone who would like to censor a website would need to pay for that website to remove itself from DNS servers and search engines. The ACM article states that this is a non-trivial task, meaning that the prosecuting party would have to pay a substantial amount. If these bills were to pass, I hope this would mean that corporations would not be willing to actually carry out these court orders.

In somewhat related news, this NY Times article about academic publishing looks at alternatives to the traditional (read: antiquated) publishing system. This relates also to this article I wrote earlier but is not only better written but also better informed. There are several attempts to circumvent traditional academic journals; one mentioned in the article is ResearchGate, which is more or less an academic social network. I’m really happy to see that people are working on this and I hope that some of these catch one, despite the fact that academia is fairly conservative at adopting change. Another interesting facet of the NY Times article is that they managed to talk to spokespeople of Elsevier and Science, who gracefully toe-d the party line saying that the costs for maintaining curated records of publication motivates the exorbitant prices for journal subscriptions.

Cathy O’Neil, mentioned this article and wrote about one of her own horror stories of dealing with publishers. In fact her experience with publishers partly contributed to her leaving academia. In a nutshell, the publication process is atrociously slow, and this really slows innovation and also makes impatient people incredibly annoyed. Alternative form of publication and recognition could almost certainly speed up the dissemination of knowledge and foster more rapid innovation. I can see how this would really annoy me, but since machine learning is a field where top publication venues are mostly conferences, I haven’t noticed this much. Conferences are a great way to spread ideas quickly and efficiently, but in many fields they are regarded as second or third tier publication venues, so technical content is often lower quality. Maybe one quick fix in other fields is to convince people that conferences are a reasonable way to publish, thereby increasing their impact factor while simultaneously promoting more rapid innovation.

Timothy Gowers, a famous mathematician (a Fields Medalist) and blogger, also wrote here specifically about the bad practices of Elsevier, one of the big academic publishing companies. In his article he publicly declared that he would boycott Elsevier in every way, refusing to peer-review for, publish in, or in any other way serve for Elsevier journals. He also considers both top-down and bottom-up approaches for changing how these companies operate, and his boycott is a step in the bottom-up direction, an individual act rather than a more coordinated effort from academics. Either way, I’m glad to see that academics are taking a starting to take a stand against publishers.

Author: Simon Singh

Singh recounts the history of cryptography, starting from the primitive ciphers used in ancient times, through the famous protocols used in World Wars I and II, and up to the current state of the art in public key cryptography, including a brief tour of quantum cryptography. His discussion starts with the famous Caesar Cipher, which simply shifts the plaintext alphabet by a fixed number of positions to obtain the ciphertext alphabet, which is easily broken by frequency analysis. He then progresses to more advanced polyalphabetic ciphers, which switch between different Caesar shifts over the course of a message, which culminated in the Vigenere cipher that was popular in World War I. Again the Vigenere cipher can be broken by a more careful frequency analysis and Singh details how one can do this with a fairly simple example. He continues to World War II, where the German Enigma machine presented itself as a new challenge for cryptanalysts. Here the work of several British mathematicians, including Alan Turing, ended up breaking the Enigma code, but the technique is quite complicated and very heuristic. Next, he discussion the famous Diffie-Hellman key exchange protocol and RSA public key cryptography, both of which are still in use today. Finally he presents some more theoretical topics, namely how quantum computers can possibly used to break RSA and how quantum cryptography offers a truly unbreakable cryptography protocol. Singh also goes on several tangents, discussing the Navajo Whisperers, archaeological decoding, and some legends involving cryptography.

He’s narrative is framed as an arms race between the code makers and the code breakers, and one of the prominent themes of the work is that necessity is the mother of invention. In other words, there is no need for innovation if the current state of the art is good enough. This happened many times on the side of the code makers, if their existing messages could not be decrypted, then there appeared to be no motivation to develop stronger protocols. Similarly, on the side of the code breakers, if their techniques worked well enough to decipher enemy messages (or if there was no threat from an enemy), there was no need to develop more advanced methods. This is why a lot of the advancement in cryptography, on both sides, takes place during times of war.

Another interesting theme is how secretive all of the advancements and cryptanalysis research was until very recently, and also how important it was that things remain secret. When the Vigenere cipher was broken, the British government successfully covered up the fact that it was broken and the Germans continued to use it throughout World War I. Only before WWII did it become apparent that the British could read messages encrypted by the Vigenere cipher, prompting the Germans to develop the Enigma machine. It is also interesting to know that both RSA and Diffie-Hellman key exchange were independently discovered by British academics, but this information was not released to the public until very recently.

Overall, “The Code Book” combines elements of science, mathematics as one would expect, with interesting historic, political and personal elements as Singh introduces all of the major players in the cryptographic arms race. Most of the cryptography itself is fairly primitive, because for much of history things were done by hand, and the resulting protocols are far from secure in the age of computers. However, this progression set the stage for the modern cryptographic protocols which are now in widespread use.

As far as a “The Code Book” is a popular-science book, I did not get too much out of the book, probably because I already know a decent amount about cryptography. In many cases it was obvious to me where the primitive protocols broke down and how one could break them. However, when viewed as a historian, I found it interesting to see how and why cryptography has developed to where it is today.

Author: Ray Bradbury

In Fahrenheit 451, Bradbury describes a dystopian supposedly-futuristic society in which reading is not allowed. This policy is enforced by book burnings orchestrated by government-employed firemen. The novel follows Guy Montag, a fireman who starts questioning the censorship policy after meeting a young girl with a unique curiosity, and after he watches a woman voluntarily burn herself alive with her books. He collects some books and starts reading them, but is soon found out and forced to flee the city. He escapes and runs into some other fugitives living in the forest. These people have memorized whole books and serve as the protectors of literature, waiting for a era devoid of censorship. At the end of the story, war breaks out and the city is bombed, leaving the exiled people to rebuild the city (presumably also the country) and start the new era.

Bradbury prediction about the future is not entirely inaccurate. His main qualm is that technology has changed the pace of life and how people think to a point that creative, inquisitive thinking does not happen anymore. Specifically his criticism is against television, but I would argue that many other technological advancements are contributing to this transformation. Now days it is increasingly common that people are unwilling to devote more than a couple of minutes to any single task and consequently people are not informed to the point where they can make educated decisions and ask provoking questions. The increasing popularity of twitter as a media source is evidence for this phenomenon. I don’t mean this as a criticism of twitter, it is actually a criticism of the population, who soaks up an application that is just providing what they want. This is along the same lines as Bradbury’s criticism; the media is giving people what they want, the problem is that people prefer television, news clips to potentially more intellectual tasks like reading literature.

Another related theme is that people are wrapped up in their own fantasy worlds, often oblivious about reality. This results in less stimulating conversations with people as well as a lack of appreciation for complex things like natural beauty. My guess is that this also contributes to people’s preference toward television and mass media. In Fahrenheit 451 this theme is portrayed by Mildred Montag, Guy’s wife, who is constantly listening to the radio or watching tv, ignoring Guy’s existence and oblivious to her surroundings.

This theme again is becoming more and more pertinent to our society, where people are always listening to music, on their smartphones, or otherwise unaware of their environment and the people around them. This is one of my main criticisms with smart phones and I really believe that it is ruining society, so I was glad that Bradbury wrote about it in Fahrenheit 451. On my bus ride to school, everyone is listening to music or playing games on their phones, making it that much harder to strike up potentially stimulating conversations. At meals people are constantly distracted by their smart phones that conversation becomes much more superficial and uninteresting. Needless to say, I find it incredibly annoying.

Technology has a lot to offer in terms of efficiency, but there are negative side effects, like hindering social interaction and decreased attention span, that are often neglected but are also hard to quantify. How do we combat these negative side effects, so that we can enjoy the positives? For one, we can consciously avoid using technology in places where we could be interacting with other people. My friends have a “no phones at the dinner table rule” which I think is a great example of this. I also generally try to avoid using my cell phone when I am with other people, but it is important that everyone buys into this. As far as decreasing attention span, one solution is to promote reading literature. I think this is the approach Bradbury is aiming for.

So to summarize, Fahrenheit 451 is very applicable to modern society. It is interesting, well written, and its implications to our world are certainly thought provoking and hopefully inspirational.

Author: Christopher McDougall

In “Born to Run,” sports journalist McDougall helps organize an epic 50-mile race between some of the best long-distance runners in the world. These athletes include several champion ultra-marathoners from the U.S. as well as several Tarahumara, a native american people living in the Copper Canyons of Mexico. Organizing the race is challenging, as the Tarahumara typically keep to themselves and don’t tend to leave their homelands, meaning that the American athletes would have to venture into the dangerous, harsh terrain of the canyons. Yet, the actual race is, while exciting, not a critical point of the book. Rather, McDougall conducts interviews with many of the American athletes, providing insight into motivational, evolutionary and physiological aspects of running that can change the way recreational runners think about running. Additionally, the histories of many of these athletes, particularly the history of the Tarahumara competing with Americans, is fascinating in its own right.

Two interesting asides are biological in nature. The first takes an evolutionary biology perspective at answering the question “why is it reasonable to think that humans can run ultramarathon distances (30+ miles)?” The answer lies in the fact that humans used to be persistance runners, who chased their prey at a leisurely pace for miles until their prey literally collapsed with exhaustion. A morphological study of humans reveals that we are uniquely adapted to this form of hunting, in that we stand upright so that our lungs do not collapse as we run, our hamstrings, essential for running, are very strong, and we can breathe effectively while running, rather than needing to stop and pant (like many quadrupeds). It turns out that this form of hunting was much better suited to the changing climate (post ice-age) when humans ousted Neanderthals (which may be a different species) as the dominant species. Persistance hunting is still practiced in some parts of Africa, and it is not uncommon for hunters to run tens of miles. In light of this, ultramarathons do not seem all that crazy.

Another interesting aside in “Born to Run,” and probably the sticking point with so many runners, is the argument for barefoot running. McDougall cites evidence showing that many running shoes offer too much padding, changing the way that we run and actually increasing the likelihood of overuse- and impact-related injuries. On the other hand, running barefoot allows us to run naturally, in accordance with our physiological design, and not only reduces injuries but has the added benefit of being more efficient so that we actually run faster. This sort of thinking has become popular recently and has sparked a new barefoot running movement, backed by top physiology researchers.

The athletes in “Born to Run” are also quirky and their lives and past races are fascinating. It is really interesting to read about how these people started running and what drives them to keep pushing their physical limits. Apart from the biology, “Born to Run” is inspirational in that reading about these people motivates one to get running and see how far they can push their own limits. I certainly was inspired.