Voicemail for the homeless

Yesterday in San Francisco, Google announced a program to provide free voicemail for every homeless person in the city.  In recent years there has been a lot of talk about the "Digital Divide," that invisible chasm between those who have access to technology and those who do not.  In today's society, these digital "have-nots" struggle to find jobs and improve their situation.  It is difficult for employers to contact them, and even when they can be reached, they often don't have the skills necessary for many jobs.  Efforts such as the OLPC have attempted to bridge this divide, but these efforts are largely focused on third-world countries.   I applaud Google's push to help those at home, those hidden among our own.

The Cuckoo's Egg

A few months before beginning this semester, I read a news article about a hacker who had recently been sentenced to a prison term. I don't remember all the details of the story, but I specifically remember that the hacker said he first became interested in hacking after reading The Cuckoo's Egg. I decided then and there that The Cuckoo's Egg was a book I should never read.

Ever since we first got internet access at home, I've found myself intrigued by the idea of hacking. I've been fascinated with the idea that, with the right piece of knowledge, a person can gain access to increased stores of hidden information. The allure of “secret” information available only to those smart enough to find it was great. I've never been one to intentionally seek out illegal activities, but I can't deny a strong innate sense of curiosity. It didn't take me long to realize, though, that if I learned to hack, I'd quickly end up in more trouble than I wanted to face.

This semester, I was assigned to read The Cuckoo's Egg for a Computer Science class. I was actually excited to read it; I hadn't stayed away earlier because of dislike for the book, just fear of what it would do to me. In some sense, I was right to avoid the book—I finished reading with a slight desire to find out just what I could do.

More than a desire to break into a server, though, I came away from The Cuckoo's Egg fascinated with Cliff Stoll's notion of the network as a trusted resource. Stoll asserts that a network is only useful if the network (along with its stored information) can be trusted by its users. I've certainly been familiar with the idea of network security in the context of a wireless network, but it had never occurred to me that the network itself might be considered worthless if not properly secured.

The value of the network becomes even more apparent in light of the recent network outages which took place in the Middle East. Our modern society heavily depends on interconnectedness and information sharing. We've had no major September 11-esque attacks on our networks, and I fear that many are left with a false sense of security. The Cuckoo's Egg demonstrated just how apathetic many people are toward security, and I don't believe the situation has greatly improved in the intervening years. Most people are still security-ignorant, and I only hope that security education catches up before such a catastrophic attack takes place. Otherwise, it won't be pretty.

Interoperability and Data Viability

With the advent of the digital age, there has been increasing concern over the preservation of digitally-encoded information.  Documents created ten years ago cannot be read by today's programs, and emerging forms of entertainment—games, digital music, etc.—created ten years ago are often unreadable today.  The historically tight coupling between content and environment has led to a push for open standards which would enable digital information to outlast its original environment.  Readers may recall an e-mail campaign a few years ago encouraging anyone who received an e-mail with a closed-standard document attached to reject the e-mail.

Microsoft held a press conference today in which they announced changes to their technology and business practices relating to interoperability and data viability.  The technical specifications for all Microsoft Office documents are now openly available, and many of the programming interfaces have been exposed to permit interoperability with other programs.  As the announcement was made over 30,000 pages of documentation were posted online, documentation previously available only to corporations with a trade secret agreement. This new openness obviously comes at some expense to Microsoft, as trade secrets are necessarily being exposed. However, it's the right thing to do.  Office users create documents with the intent of recording information, not with the intent of creating a Microsoft document.  Digital information is only valuable to the extent that it can be accessed, and inasmuch as Microsoft follows through on today's commitments, they've make a large step in reaching that goal.