Despite writing a well-received article on cybersecurity and feeling that I had finally cracked it regarding writing and productivity, it all went to shit.
I took a break as several things have been, frankly, overwhelming.
Without going into personal territory, I seem to live between extremes, with very little in the middle zone. It’s either all excellent or all dreadful. There will be some changes to my working week that I’m looking forward to, but I’m not giving up on the dream of writing and producing great articles and even research papers. I’m finishing an essay for a tourism business school, and with some luck, I’ll finish it in the next couple of weeks.
Reading
I finished iWoz, and to be fair, it was dragging on a little and, by the end, was a little bit boring. Although, right until the end, the book sounded just like him, and I’d be surprised to hear that his text had been heavily edited. On the good side, the feeling of computer nostalgia was present till the end, and I loved it. I’d recommend the book to anyone wanting to know a little more about how the computer revolution started and how circumstances and luck played an enormous part.
As a side note, if you want to have the complete story of the Macintosh, try this website that was eventually turned into a book: Revolution in the Valley.
I finished the Foundation series. Very entertaining. Now I’m looking for the next set of novels to read. As I’ve said before, Asimov is one of my favourites, and I still haven’t read everything he has written, so I might start to have a look there. Perhaps the Robot series. They look interesting.
In the meantime, I’ve started to read a book about slavery called A World Transformed. I think it is our duty to try to understand a little more about how, through the most organised system of kidnap and forced labour, the global north has benefited and still benefits to this day on the back of literally millions and millions. Living in the Caribbean only makes this more important and visceral to me.
I’m looking forward to digging in, and it has not disappointed me, with the author not shying away from a very emotive and difficult subject.
I need to pick up the pace on some of the other serious texts I’ve started. I’ll list them here next time, perhaps.
Of note
A new (anti?) social network was birthed between my last note and this one. It is called Threads and is a Twitter rip-off with fewer tools and few Nazis. That will change, of course. I mean both things.
Threads is Facebook’s, I mean ‘Meta’s’, second attempt at a text-based social network leveraging the social graph of Instagram. The first iteration failed spectacularly. This version seems to have gained traction, but there are serious doubts as to the longevity of that. I can’t see into the future, but I suspect this product will live or die on its ability to generate ad revenue.
Zuckerberg is only a one-trick pony. Pushing Ads into people’s faces is all he cares about and can do. Threads will inevitably get ads after its ad-free honeymoon period that is only there to initially trick people onto the site.
Such a drastic change to the user experience might be enough to discourage many away from it. Or its cannibalisation of Instagram might not bring as much revenue to the king of ads. And like most kings, he has not your welfare at heart; he has only his own.
Interestingly, the ‘Metaverse’ has virtually disappeared from his vocabulary recently. I’m not surprised. It was all smoke and mirrors and bluster. As soon as the sums on ads didn’t add up —an exponentially smaller target market— it was dead in the water. A floating corpse winding down a muddy river.
I finally got around to finishing off the newsletter in between training sessions and the odd site visit for a client.
I’m pretty happy with the way it went. It was succinct despite being over 2500 words. I’d originally written it, or at least the basis of it, as a report for a project a year or so ago.
I decide to get it up to date and rewrite a few sections to consider changes in the region.
I then published it in my newsletter and on LinkedIn.
I’m quite surprised how it was received, to be honest. Nearly 2000 views and many reads on the newsletter platform, netting me a few new subscribers.
Reading
For my morning read, I started a book I bought a long time ago that I just didn’t get around to reading. iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon.
It’s a fun book, and as someone who has met Steve Wozniak and got to chat with him for a few minutes, it reads exactly like he talks. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is just a transcript of a recording cleaned up a little for grammar.
For me, it highlights the fundamental difference between those founders of the tech scene and the vile maggots of today.
I’d like us to get back to some of that feeling and sentiment of wonder and discovery. And without sounding like an old man shouting at clouds, I think we’ve lost a little of that doing something to push and learn more, share more and try to figure out how and why something is. The money men, startup bro culture and the cancer of adverts have fundamentally polluted the internet, and it is something we’re unlikely to get back.
Nearly two-thirds of the way through the last Foundation book. I’d better start looking for something else to read soon.
Of note
When I met Woz a few years ago, we exchanged business cards, and I have treasured it ever since. It is a sleek metal business card with an interesting design based on punch card holes for his phone number. I’ve never called it and would never disturb someone out of the blue like that.
I’ve been teaching small businesses the uses of GenAI, and I have to say, this is one of the rare times that I have seen such interest and such understanding about how it can be used in business from complete beginners.
I labour the point about laws, copyrights, hallucinations etc, and the response has been really good.
The transcripts of the last communications coming out of the Titan submersible are terrifying. Best to avoid them.
A brief look at the state of affairs and a few recommendations
Sorry for the hiatus. I *really* wanted to write more here, it just wasn’t possible.
To make it up, this one is a fairly long one, despite taking an axe to the original draft. 🤣 I hope you like it, and don’t hesitate to ping me if you want me to expand on any areas that I have deliberately kept brief.
Enjoy!
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Within the last ten to fifteen years, there has been an almost exponential growth in the use of the internet in the Caribbean. Typically internet use had been lagging behind that of many parts of the world. This dramatic change has occurred rapidly and, unfortunately, without the guardrails typically developed during the progressive adoption of the Internet. The Caribbean has gone from a tiny percentage point in adoption to nearly 70% of the population, totally skipping the progressive uptake as we have seen in the US, the UK and the EU.
Internet use in the Caribbean is primarily through a mobile contract, with more mobile phone connections than people in the region. Many people have two or more mobile phones, often with data connections. And even though mobile internet in the Caribbean remains relatively expensive, with certain caveats, mobile internet usage is greater than that of fixed broadband use and is, for many, the only way they interact with the internet through apps or social networking. Once a subscriber gets a smartphone and a data connection, there is an almost 100% signup rate for social media such as WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram.
As our lives and the economy surrounding us become digitalised with ever-more products, services and processes moving into the virtual world from the physical world, so does the threat of misconduct. In the same way that crime has followed —and, in some cases, driven innovation— our lives are under pressure from actors worldwide that target us based on our weaknesses. The potential for harm is significant, from losing money to becoming unwittingly part of an organised attack on larger targets like state attacks. As the economies of scale of internet use and online life increase, so do the economies of scale of potential for crime.
This has not gone unnoticed, and small businesses and the public are starting to emphasise protection, detection, and clean-up tools in much the same way that we in the Caribbean are aware of environmental and natural disaster risks and planning accordingly. It is estimated that the biggest spenders on cybersecurity over the next three years are micro-sized and small-sized businesses – the backbone of companies in the Caribbean which are estimated to be somewhere in the region of 95% of businesses in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Cybersecurity in the Caribbean is at an early development stage, and specialised service companies that fill the requirements are few and far between. Small businesses and the public need specialised help at affordable costs to ensure they do not fall victim to cybercrime.
Read on.
The Caribbean Context
It will come as no surprise that Cybersecurity is fast becoming one of the most pressing issues for business and society in the coming years. The Caribbean perspective is no different from that of the rest of the world; however, certain specificities make the challenge more delicate and need particular attention.
The distributed and only somewhat-collaborative nature of the Caribbean (the CARICOM members) and the fractured nature of the regional geopolitical situation (French, Spanish and Dutch West Indies sharing the space with the English West Indies) require a more integrated, collaborative and subtle approach.
For the most part, the larger countries in the Caribbean have tended to follow patterns seen in larger countries worldwide. They have become more outspoken in their knowledge and response to the region's cybersecurity issues. As companies in the Caribbean have become more visible to the broader world, thus increasing risk, governments, businesses, and citizens alike have become more aware of those risks and of the need to implement adequate protection systems to fight unwarranted incursions.
There is an increase in risk proportional to the rate of economic development; thus, as the Caribbean becomes more developed, cybercrime becomes a more viable means of extracting money from any unwitting community simply because the perceived potential financial gain is much more significant. Cyber malfeasance is a business! Pure and simple.
Case Study: Costa Rica – State of Emergency
Regrettably, Costa Rica recently saw this when it had to declare a state of emergency after multiple government agencies fell foul to a Conti ransomware attack. Not only had data been rendered inaccessible by AES-256 encryption and an attached US $10 million ransom (subsequently raised to US $12 million), but government data had been extracted over several months and later leaked openly when the government refused to pay the initial ransom demand. As of late April 2022, some 97% of a 672GB data dump was publicly available. Fears for the extent of data included have mounted, and so far, no review has been ordered to determine the risks for citizens and businesses of Costa Rica. But as some of this data appears to have been extracted from health systems, customs systems and other government systems that deal with payments (Social Security and Social Development), the fear is that many may fall foul of the spread of this data in the coming months and years through phishing the general public or through highly targeted attacks on influential or wealthy individuals.
The Trinidad and Tobago Cyber Security Incident Response Team (TT-CSIRT) recently observed a sharp increase in malicious cyber activity targeting local and regional entities.1 The TT-CSIRT urges all entities (public and private) to adopt a heightened state of awareness.
The Caribbean has been slow to acknowledge cybersecurity threats to the region. A lack of data and measurement has meant that many successful attacks on business and government have gone unnoticed by the population, exacerbated by a culture of silence. No high-profile witnesses have spoken up about their experience dealing with the initial phases, legal process, and clean up after an incident. Fear of damaging customer confidence is partly responsible for this; however, this only leads to less information on how cybercrime affects the region. It would be safe to say that what is reported is only the tip of the iceberg and that cybercrime is much more prevalent than is generally known.
Recently, governments and institutions have made more effort to address the issues, including public awareness campaigns and working with international NGOs to develop a better cybersecurity posture for people and businesses alike. One example is Get Safe Online. Get Safe Online operates through a network of Ambassadors that organise in-the-community training using the tools and training materials developed by the organisation.
Legislation and cybersecurity strategy
When it comes to cybersecurity law, the picture is not much better. Saint Lucia, for example, has an “in development” National Cybersecurity Strategy, and despite taking the lead compared to its neighbours in the OECS, it somewhat lags behind the international community. Barbados is another country with the ongoing development of cybersecurity legislation. The most significant barriers to establishing and implementing legislation are government capacity and political willingness. A government like Saint Lucia’s faces challenges on many fronts, stretching resources beyond capacity. A general lack of world-class expertise is also apparent in the region, coupled with a general feeling that cybersecurity is only an ICT responsibility, making cross-government and cross-sector priorities challenging to place at the top of the list.
In the wider OECS region, only Saint Vincent and the Grenadines has specific cybercrime legislation with the Cybercrime Act of 2016. In other countries, cybercrime is regulated under Computer Misuse Acts or Electronic Crime Acts. They are primarily focused on how technology is used to commit crimes without explicitly addressing cybersecurity and how to deal with attacks on information systems. Questions remain on the capacity of countries to adequately prosecute this type of crime which relies on having sufficient infrastructure, personnel and accompanying judicial systems. Many lack the right equipment, software, and training to identify cybercrimes correctly.
Regionally, CARICOM IMPACS has sought to establish harmonised standards of practice, expertise and systematic treatment of cybercrime. It has additionally targeted infrastructure capacity-building to increase crime detection, law enforcement investigation and prosecution. RSS, or Regional Security System, is another organisation with a mandate to prevent and defend against cybercrime that has limited scope for responding to cyberattacks, somewhat because of a lack of harmonisation of policies regionally. Like many regional organisations, they, unfortunately, lack funding and capacity to respond adequately to the modern threat landscape.
What about CSIRTS?
Similarly, the state of Cyber Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT) development in the Caribbean lags behind the South American continent and the broader region. Only Barbados, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago have implemented funded and functioning CSIRTS. Suriname has restarted a program after having abandoned it a few years ago.
The impact
Small and micro-sized businesses are the backbone of the private economic structure of the Caribbean, and it is precisely these businesses that are the most vulnerable and the least resourced to deal with the complexities of digital security requirements of today. This has been substantially exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, in which new expectations by employees on how, when, and where to work are becoming normalised. Working from home and the expected turn towards a flexible hybrid model for workers have widened the security exposure for companies. In other words, attacks do not need to target one specific network to gain entry to a company; many distributed networks are potential threats. This makes it difficult for understaffed, undertrained and crucially under-financed IT departments to manage such distributed networks in physical and technological terms.
Whilst cloud computing is still in the early development stages in the Caribbean, not all businesses and administrations are advancing simultaneously. Some are more advanced than others, having moved not only low-hanging fruit applications like email and accounting to the cloud but have embraced the possibilities that cloud computing offers, shifting line-of-business applications and identity services and other business-critical services off the on-premises systems. Moving to the cloud changes the security exposure for the entity in question, requiring specialised knowledge to best protect and monitor for breaches and unplanned downtime.
The COVID-19 pandemic has left MSMEs with budgets for investment at historic low levels. MSMEs are typically small businesses with more pressing day-to-day issues, such as immediate revenue generation to pay the bills. With existing relationships with telecom providers, the telecom companies will likely provide cybersecurity offings soon, given the network-based nature of the threat.
The threat landscape (non-exhaustive)
Understanding global threats and their provenance will also play a prominent role in understanding the landscape and developing solutions to minimise those risks. The most common threats to small businesses and administrations in the Caribbean are estimated as follows:
Ransomware
Immediately after a successful penetration of defences, a small application sits in background tasks on the infected computer or computers, slowly encrypting data using a virtually impossible-to-decipher encryption key. Once the data has been fully encrypted, the user is alerted that the data is now inaccessible. A ransom of a significant amount is required to decrypt the data and allow access once again.
Social Engineering or Phishing
Social Engineering or Phishing is a psychological technic to garner an employee's confidence in a company or government office and then exploit that confidence to extract information or gain access to restricted data. It is often the method used to deploy ransomware and is the weakest link in the armour of cybersecurity.
Internal malicious intent
Although relatively rare by most counts, the risk of a disgruntled employee with access to confidential and vital data is manifest. This can be highly disruptive to a business or administration. For example, employees on social media displaying discontent can be the target for exploiting weaknesses to enter a network.
Poorly configured and patched systems
Even the best firewall is only as good as its configuration and patch level. Poorly configured or outdated firmware in IT equipment is a regularly exploited vector for entry into the target network.
Poor credential hygiene
Easy-to-guess passwords, not regularly changed passwords, and sensitive data with poor access controls are easy targets. Sparse use of two-factor authentication also plays a role in allowing those that should not be permitted.
Mitigation Strategies and Policy Guidance
The following is just a small sample of the opportunity to improve the threat landscape in the region. If you’d like more detailed advice, please let me know.
Invest in the expansion and capacity-building of CSIRTs and regional cybersecurity organisations
Only with adequate and ongoing funding will the diverse region be able to fully appreciate its desire to develop world-class cybersecurity services protecting the public of the Caribbean. We would recommend regional, local government, NGO and private sector funding be increased substantially and rapidly. Events in Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago and more recently in Martinique show the threat is here and the consequences substantial.
Development of affordable managed services for the region
Security software of the past that required an initial purchase, installation and configuration to become fully operative and successfully manage that threat cannot deal with today’s ever-changing security threat landscape. Capital purchase of security software is no longer adapted, and the business model has changed.
We recommend that a managed service provider (MSP) starts with a small but highly specialised team incentivised and remunerated on contract signups and renewals. As the business grows, so can the team and the incentive structure.
Develop and deliver targeted education for users, managers and decision-makers
As with much in life, better education is the key to fundamentally understanding and acting on the current context. There is, sadly, not enough specialised education in the region for the general public to fully understand the implications of good cybersecurity practices. Although organisations such as Get Safe Online have been doing some of this over the last few years, we recommend that governments and NGOs invest in developing local training and awareness on specific cyber security issues, such as protecting smartphone use on the internet.
Develop targeted and highly focused services designed for MSMEs
Customers need to quickly see the value of the offering and be onboarded rapidly and without difficulty. Time spent designing simplified services and automating the onboarding process for the customer will allow the customer to take advantage with less apprehension. Particular attention should be given to building modular services, allowing flexibility in the offering tailored to the customer and not the supplier.
Understand where existing services lack and fill those gaps
Conducting a gap analysis of the state of cyber defences in the Caribbean, looking at the state of government or law enforcement’s resources and role in cybersecurity, including participation from the private sector. This will likely identify complementary areas of interest, encouraging the broadest and most efficient development possibilities.
Develop Security-as-a-Service offerings sold as insurance policies
Just as we have cyberattack software as a service, we should have Cybersecurity as a Service. Software as a Service (SaaS) has been a great enabler for small businesses to use enterprise-grade software that was previously out of reach financially and technically. So it should be for cybersecurity. Providing a service offering akin to an insurance contract (leaving the details of the included/excluded services outside the scope of this report) would allow MSMEs to strengthen their defences in the most cost-effective way.
I didn’t get around to documenting and writing what happened the week before last. And to be fair, it’s probably a good idea. It was a difficult week, to say the least. I’m not inclined to go into any detail here but suffice it to say, I was a little stressed about the happenings despite being totally on the right side of things. I have no idea how it will all play out, but it is behind me now, and I can move on.
The issue largely consumed the week, which is why I didn’t write here.
Last week was a little more pedestrian. Although it’s funny to note that a “pedestrian” week includes getting battered by a tropical storm.🤣
TS Bret was born in the Atlantic Ocean around mid-June. Right behind the wave that turned into a depression, then a storm was another wave that eventually turned into a tropical storm too.
This is the way.
And although not unusual that a tropical wave turns into tropical storm Bret, and to be fair, it had toyed with the idea of becoming a hurricane (link), it was highly unusual that we had not one but two, Cap-Verdian tropical phenomenons in the Atlantic at this juncture of the season.
This just doesn’t happen that often, and it is the first time since something like the 1930s. At some point, we’re going to look at all these data points and finally understand that something is wrong with the climate.🤔
I’m being facetious, of course, however, FFS, things are going to get very bad very soon if our collective self doesn’t act decisively.
That reminds me of the post I saw on Mastodon this morning before writing this. Something along the lines of; learning psychology helps us understand how, individually, we are wonderful creatures but, collectively, utterly vile.
A busy week ahead, but for the first time in a while, I’m starting to see the opportunity to develop. I’ll check back in here in a few months, I guess.
Reading
I cracked and purchased the last book in the Asimov series Foundation. As I’ve said before, it’s not strictly the last book, as it is number five in the seven-book series, having mistakenly read numbers six and seven out of sequence.
I’m on board with the story and enjoying having the cognitive break from whatever else is going on around me. Even a few pages per evening are enough to help me relax and ultimately sleep better.
I’m going through the hundred or so browser tabs open, filing and reading the articles I picked out because of some interest.
I think we owe it to ourselves to learn more about the historical context of the time that gave birth to tech as we know it today.
A prime example would be the recent “uncovering”, if you can call it that, of the fact that the Luddites were not anti-tech as popular delusion would have you believe. Understanding the history, the context and the stakes of that period helps us understand the why and can ultimately help us understand the context of today. Big Tech is going through a reckoning, but I don’t think we are completely there yet, and I think it is going to get uglier before it gets prettier.
Although not strictly reading, I listen to a number of podcasts but have recently stumbled upon a few very interesting productions.
Tech Won’t Save Us is a good example of getting to hear the counterpoints to the tech industry. You should give it a try, even if you don’t fully agree with it.
Of note
I fucking despair. And I mean that in the most strongest of terms.
Two billionaires are going to have a cage fight because they have a “beef” with each other.
GROW THE FUCK UP, YOU PATHETIC CHILDREN.
In other news of note, OceanGate… or is that Ocean Gate?
Big Tech hubris, machoism, and arrogance have lead to the deaths of 4 duped passengers. What the CEO did is fucking inexcusable and his loss of life is one of the consequences. There will be more and investigations into the operations are likely to reveal a rat’s nest of filth behind the operation.
I won’t dwell on it, but it will remain in my consciousness and influence how I deal with that person in the future. Sadly, in business, some are not very honest. This specimen falls in that category. I know I have been upfront and honest and haven’t screwed anyone out of money, and If I’ve made a mistake, I’ve done everything possible to correct it.
On to other matters.
I’ve been asked to train a group about using generative AI in the workplace. I’m putting together a short training course to achieve that goal. I have a tendency to dive deep into subjects like this, so I’m trying to scale back the scope to concentrate on the essentials so the participants can learn a few basic elements and then go on to use them successfully in their office environments. I’m ensuring to include a module on risks and shortcomings, but on the whole, the short course will be useful and interesting and worth the day’s investment.
I’m both optimistic about the utility of generative AI in certain settings and with the right guard rails but quite pessimistic about our capacity to properly safeguard against dishonest and downright dangerous use. I suspect we’ll even invent a category of terrorism based on the use of this technology.
This week I was asked for an interview to talk about cybersecurity in the broader context of the Caribbean and an incident that has shut down local government services for over a month now. It’s the second time in as many weeks that I have been on television. The first time I was petrified, but this time I was much more comfortable. I’d love to do this more often if the opportunity arises.
I need to start the writing up process for my paper that will be included in Vatel’s CIRVATH, which should be published towards the end of the year, should it be accepted. I’m looking forward to providing a research paper that is thought-provoking and useful to all that are in the hotel / travel & tourism sector. It requires a little consistency on my part, but I’m sure with a little effort, I’ll get it done.
A week ago or so, I applied to join another training course targeted at the economy of innovation but was not selected. I’m not too upset, but I do think I would have been a great candidate.
My cybersecurity newsletter didn’t go out. I got distracted, but I’d hope to do something about it this week. It needs a little editing and a little massage to get it into a state that I’d be happy publishing. My kryptonite is that I spend a lot of time reading, and there is virtually no end to the amount I find interesting. At some point, I need to start producing too. Soon come.
How could I finish this post without mentioning Apple’s big day?
Apple’s developer conference, WWDC, took place this week. The keynote presentation was on Monday, and we discovered their new augmented reality headset. Although to be fair to Apple, they didn’t use the terms virtual reality or augmented reality as far as I can remember. They positioned the device as a ‘spatial computer’. Essentially the replacement of your Mac / iPad or perhaps iPhone.
The hardware is really impressive, and clearly, Apple has thought deeply about it. For the moment, aside from an immersive laptop screen extension, I fail to see the killer app or the use case that shows me ‘why’ I need this.
Reading
My paper and book reading continues. I’ve mostly concentrated on finishing the penultimate book in the Foundation series that I managed to do last night.
I’ll be starting a couple of other “serious” books soon too.
Notably, I’ve just bought and downloaded a historical account of the transatlantic slave trade and Chattel slavery called “A world transformed: Slavery in the Americas and the origins of global power” by James Calvin.
I’ve also lined up “Get rich or lie trying” by Symeon Brown.
Of note
I recorded a new podcast episode with my friend Jean-François. I really enjoy these conversations, and I’d love to continue doing them. When you’re confronted with questions, you have to think quickly about your answers, which I really enjoy.
Much like last week, the week started on a bank holiday. I know there are a lot of them in May in France. However, unlike in other countries, the bank holiday days are fixed to the calendar day of the month. That means in practice, if the bank holiday falls on a weekend, the day off is taken on that day, and it is not moved to the following Monday like in the U.K.
To take advantage, we had friends over for lunch, and for their son to catch up with ours, they’re best friends. They’re both budding professional sports players, albeit in different sports, and they have been separated for a year whilst my son’s friend has been studying and training abroad. Next year it’ll be the same for my son, so it is important to celebrate and enjoy these moments together.
The UNCTAD training continued, and I finally finished the last module and passed the course with an average of over 80%. That is not bad for someone new to the subject. Admittedly, it’s not in my daily wheelhouse, but I found the information useful, and it has rounded my view on international trade.
I haven’t worked as much on the research paper I had been asked to write, but I plan to catch up this week. The priority was the UNCTAD training as it had a hard deadline, which was vital for me to mobilise the energy to complete the task. However, I spent much time reading academic papers on AI, ChatGPT and other LLMs in the HR industry and general productivity use in businesses. There’s already a lot of material out there. Some with questionable conclusions and others with outright listicle-like compositions. Still, they help gauge the feeling out there.
This was done, again, to a deadline, as I have been asked to teach a couple of training courses on the use, background, and usefulness of LLMs in business. I’ll be training a couple of small groups this month, and I’m looking forward to giving the participants a good overview and some food for thought.
I’ve virtually completed the writing for a newsletter post on cybersecurity. I haven’t finished it, and it’ll need a bit of trimming and editing, as well as some new topic injection, but I think I’ll be able to do it this week. I miss writing for the newsletter and getting that buzz out of writing something a little longer than brief paragraphs to satiate a personal need. So, fingers crossed, I’ll get around to it, despite having a fairly busy week ahead.
My exercise has continued, and I’ll be off for a run after I finish writing this evening. I felt much better on the last run and can already see a difference in my heart rate and how I feel while running. At least I don’t feel like I’m about to die immediately like I did at the start.
Reading
I’m still reading Foundation’s Edge and enjoying it, and there’s only one book I haven’t read in the series after this, Foundation and Earth. Unfortunately, due to some stupidity on my part, I read the two books that followed Foundation and Earth already, reading them out of step. Oh well. At least I read them.
The other books I mentioned last week are all still on the go, and I’ll be making inroads, no doubt, during the week.
I’ve also read academic papers on sports injuries, training and flexibility. I’m trying to get as much scientific evidence as possible to see how I can help my son progress. Rather than leave things to chance, professional sports require evidence and experience. I can bring some of that research to the table and hopefully contribute to building a better athlete than just leaving it to develop without guidance.
Of note
Next week will see Apple’s introduction of a totally new platform if the rumours are to be believed. Essentially, Monday is the keynote presentation of their Worldwide Developers Conference or WWDC. At 13h ET, they’re live-streaming the keynote and will talk about the new things slated to be available over the coming year or so. This year’s talk is about an xR product that leapfrogs all the VR/AR devices introduced previously to a resounding ‘meh’ from the public.
Apple rarely invents new things. Instead, it tends to look at what’s come before it and do it properly, answering the question of what problem this is solving. Up until tomorrow, all of these products have been the very definition of solutions looking for a problem.
I can’t quite see the problem that needs fixing with strapping a computer and a couple of screens to one’s face, but I’m staying open-minded for now.
That said, I think this is going to tank initially. I think it is too early —the world still isn’t ready for Glassholes— and I think it is a rushed product without need.
I’m trying to kickstart this mini-project to help me document and reflect on my life. So apologies from the outset if this is not interesting or even boring for you. In reality, it is more for me and complementary to a personal journal that is, for obvious reasons, private. So why put this out in public? I guess it’s like trying to have a personal coach or supervisor forcing me to write more.
You see, I like to write. If I’m honest, I think writing is one of those things in my life that I’ve always wanted to do but never had the self-belief that I could. From an early age, I had it kicked out of me during school, exacerbated by my inability to focus enough in class. I struggled at school despite having the intellect to do well, but I didn’t have the skill set to get on at school with classmates or the faculty. I got through it but by the skin of my teeth. So this is an attempt to force me to document my week(s) in broad strokes—nothing too detailed or personal. My objective is for it to serve two purposes, 1) to have a document to look back on, giving me an overview of what I was up to, and 2) to force me to develop consistency to finish my crap.
If there is one Achilles Heel that I have to contend with, I have to have superhuman perseverance to complete anything that is not immediate or simple and fast to do. It’s not that I’m incapable of finishing things. However, the mental effort required to complete the mundane stuff is so hard that it fatigues me quickly. That is, if I can muster up the necessary effort to start what I need to do!
So I’ve started, and I intend to continue, despite it being utter rubbish at this stage. Hopefully, I can motivate myself enough until it becomes something better and something I look forward to doing.
I’ll spare a long introduction in the future, but I needed to put it down and get it out there. So please indulge/forgive me.
My week
Last week started on a Bank Holiday, much like today is, coincidentally. In the French West Indies, abolition of slavery day is a bank holiday. A day in which people reflect on the legacy of Chattel slavery. In Martinique, that day is the 22nd of May. The decree to ‘end’ slavery was signed on the 27th of April 1848. However, it took time for official documents to reach the Caribbean and be enacted on the islands. I’ll most likely reflect upon this subject again as I have a particular interest.
Moving on, I continued the UNCTAD training course I signed up for —a short course on international merchandise trade statistics. I’ve been doing it for a couple of weeks and find it quite interesting. Learning about how countries gather information on trade and merchandise flows is much more complex than I had imagined. It’s not directly related to my work, but it’s a field of interest that adds to what I’m learning and researching. It is a subject that is of importance in the Caribbean, hence why I’m taking the time to delve into it.
My 15-year-old son is a world-class athlete in the making. This puts a lot of stress on his body, and we had to visit a dermatologist doctor to burn off a particularly nasty verruca on his foot. It’s getting better but might need more treatment. It got me thinking about all the effort and hardship sports players at the top of their game must go through. In silence. In pain. In desperation. Alone. Spare a thought for that player you chastised for screwing up and try to imagine how hard it has been for them to get to where they are and to maintain that level. I suspect most people have absolutely no idea how difficult it is.
The rest of the week was spent reading and researching for two projects I’m working on. One is a paper for the business school academic journal that will be published this year. It’s ostensibly about web3 (whatever that is?), and I’d like to publish it. I’d love to make it a regular thing too. Getting back to the purpose of this blog, the constant uphill battle to concentrate and motivate myself to write is partly why I’m publishing this.
The other project is a labour of love that I believe can make a difference in the Caribbean in a small but important way. Our idea (as I’m partnering with someone else) is to publish research-grade papers to those who need or want them but may not be able to pay for them or have the necessary access to them. I think the difficulty is more about the motivation to do the work without having the financial resources to write without having a salary. Would transforming the project into an academic-type non-profit project seeking a grant be better than bootstrapping something that will inevitably be difficult to sell? Analysis paralysis, I suppose. But that’s how my brain works.
I’ve also tried to get back to regular exercise and started a zero to 5k running program. I feel a little better having exercised. It’ll likely take longer than the program timeline, but I hope to stay on track as best as possible. The trick is finding a way to corner me enough to provoke the desire to exercise. For example, this Saturday, I took advantage of my son’s training session to run/walk for 30 minutes. It’s not a lot, but it is a start, and I can see the benefit in heart rate and recovery, even after only 3 or 4 sessions over the last few weeks.
Again consistency.
If there is a word that defines my life, it is consistency. I am trying to be more consistent. I hope this contributes.
Reading
I’ve just finished Jean-Louis Gassée’s self-published Grateful Geek. I particularly enjoyed the book and read it in short time. Much like the Monday Notes he puts out regularly. If you’re a fan of tech, I’d recommend the book.
I’m continuing to read the Foundation series, something I’m a little ashamed to admit I didn’t read a long time ago. I’m not quite sure why, but I couldn’t get into it the first time I picked it up. I’m thoroughly enjoying it this time around, however.
I recently finished Player One by Douglas Coupland. One of my favourite authors. It didn’t disappoint.
There’s a number which is called Dunbar’s Number. It’s around 150 or so.
It’s a significant number in that it seems to indicate that, as humans, we are incapable of having a meaningful discussion and keeping personal links with other humans if we have to do that for a group larger than this number.
Think about how many friends you have, no not Instagram acquaintances, real friends? Now think about how many of them you can keep in touch with in a meaningful way. It’s probably much less than Robin Dunbar’s suggestion.
I’ve started to see discussions about having a much more sociable social network, prompted by not just Elmo’s destruction of Twitter but the abject fatigue surrounding the use of social media that sucks you dry and intentionally disconnects you emotionally from a human being on another smartphone. Connecting more people was supposed to bring us together. Instead, it has succeeded in doing the exact opposite. For example, suggestions discuss limiting follows and followers to around 300 people or so and making them mutually agreed upon.
I don’t know the solution, and I don’t think it is Mastodon in its current guise. Still, I think it is a good starting point for people, organisations, institutions and even governments to see how they can build more community rather than more division.
Community centres and youth clubs were everywhere before. They weren’t perfect, nor do I expect Social Media to be. But I think there’s an opportunity to build something more localised and connected simultaneously. And that is what I think the value of something like Mastodon may inspire.
Unless you’ve been hiding, in a coma, or purposefully ignoring Social Media, you will have seen the explosion of the use of GPT-3 through a website called ChatGPT.
The above is a transcription of what transpired when the model was used for interactions of a health-related matter.
Quite extreme and clearly nothing a human would do —sociopaths notwithstanding.
Please read the article to get the context. It’s not that long and is quite informative about some of the risks of Large Language Models (LLMs).
Writing a paper for an International journal resulted in a better understanding and stopped me in my tracks.
Excuse the rambling. This is written in the true sense of blogging, and it started life as a short blog post idea, transforming into this, for what it’s worth. So I decided to cross-post it here first. I’ll publish it verbatim on my blog soon. That blog is another outlet for my brain, and not exclusively about matters digital.
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I wrote a paper proposal for an international hotel industry journal sometime last year. My proposal was accepted, and I started writing in earnest. The paper had a deadline, and I was on track to finish on time, which is extremely rare for me. Sadly, that went south as I progressed and began to formulate a more complete picture of the technology I was writing about and its origins.
The title was:
Is Web 3.0 the next great opportunity in tourism?
The introduction goes like this:
Since the advent of the commercial internet, businesses in the travel and tourism industry have harnessed technology to promote their destinations. Some early tourism websites tried, in vain, to replicate the marketing materials traditionally used to promote destinations, mainly hotels.
This “copy and paste” methodology was seriously limited due to the underlying factors that meant that media-rich websites were near unusable for those with dial-up internet at 56kb/s and invisible for the majority who had not yet become connected to the internet. These simplistic lists of hotels and tourist attractions displaying available amenities neither incited nor informed potential visitors.
Broadband’s wide deployment and adoption enabled a new generation of technologies that would later be named Web 2.0. These technologies allowed media-rich websites to be developed. Many hotel websites today not only market properties in attractive ways but also allow potential visitors to reserve rooms, pay for their stay, and in some cases, simplify check-in and check-out, all achieved automatically without any interaction with reception staff. Today, many of the technologies of Web 2.0 allow hotels to generate first-party data for use elsewhere in their business. For example, for marketing, demand generation or even stock control. It allows benchmarking against other hotels within the same group or in comparison to similar competition. The distinction is important, and it separates these businesses from others that operate through travel agencies, typically providing little or no valuable data for such purposes.
Today, we are at an inflexion point where technology is evolving rapidly, and the adoption is accelerating and becoming more democratised. Technologies like Blockchain, Augmented/Virtual Reality, digital money (through tokens and CDBCs), and the metaverse can allow businesses in the travel and tourism industry to take advantage of this shift. It enables better value and faster client discovery. For example, several key performance indicators, such as the technology acceptance model (TAM), perceived usefulness (PU) and perceived enjoyment (ENJ), showed how virtual reality helped maintain potential visitor interest in destinations cut off by the pandemic and how that technology affected the tendency to visit the actual site (TenAS) (El-Said and Aziz, 2021).
This paper will discuss these technologies and how they may be harnessed so that visitors and non-visitors alike can be incited to visit destinations around the globe, thus generating value for the tourism industry.
Do the new technologies of the Metaverse and web3 provide opportunities for the tourism industry?
Specifically, the following research questions will be addressed:
What are the new technologies, and how are they used?
What are the opportunities and risks associated with this technology?
How can the tourism industry best utilise this technology to its advantage?
The paper’s structure was pretty classic in that there is an introduction (see above), a discussion on what web3 is, a literature review, and a discussion ending with conclusions. All sections are researched and backed up with examples and references.
A lot of it has already been written. Sadly, I started this at possibly the worst possible time for the technology, as it coincided with when web3 began to be exposed for the smoke and mirrors it turned out to be.
I couldn’t faithfully finish the paper as I was becoming increasingly sceptical about the fundamentals of web3, its purported merits and far-right origins. How could I write such a paper and stand by it when I didn’t believe or support most of it?
I have always been crypto sceptical, but I have kept an open mind on blockchain tech and have publicly said so on several occasions here and as a guest on various podcasts. No longer. I’m no longer much of an enthusiast about it.
How did I get here?
Writing a paper is nothing like writing a blog post or firing off a simple observation on social media. For one, papers are generally peer-reviewed before publication. That process starts at the proposal phase, and my proposal didn’t pass on initial inspection, requiring some changes to be considered for publication. Peer review is brutal. If someone doesn’t like or agree with you, they’ll tell you straight and point out why with facts, observations and references as to where you are wrong. When diving deep into a subject, you can quickly build a cognitive bias and eventually see things that aren’t necessarily there or see something that you wish was there (wish casting). During peer review, this is spotted and called out almost immediately.
Secondly, as I researched deeper into the world of web3, I found more things that I couldn’t agree with. It made me uncomfortable and left me dealing with cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonances never end well. One example of the things I was struggling with was the criminal amounts of energy wasted by one of the most useless technologies ever conceived. Blockchain. Without getting into the technical details, some blockchains use what is termed Proof of Work. Linked is the Wikipedia article on what that is. Take the time to read it. Reread it if you have already. I refer to it as Proof of Waste, as I have concluded that it is a more accurate term. Blockchains waste disgraceful amounts of energy on slow validations that could easily be done with existing database technology for a fraction of the cost and an order of magnitude faster.
Yes, I know that the new shiny kid on the block is Proof of Stake, and its energy consumption is vastly reduced. But it also goes directly against a central tenet of web3, decentralisation. Proof of stake puts power into the hands of the most invested (as in money). That sounds very distributed and democratic to me. The EU has recommended that Proof of Stake be used instead of Proof of Waste, threatening an outright ban on it. Only one high-profile cryptocurrency has completed the move to Proof of Stake, taking over eight years in the process.
But here’s another aspect that many seem to have misunderstood. Blockchain is directly against the law in the EU, as outlined in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Of the advertised “advantages” of blockchain is immutability. Blocks are Immutable, i.e., permanent. This is illegal in the EU because the GDPR mandates that people have the right to correct errors and rectify false information through due process. Blockchain doesn’t (can’t) do that. Data on the chain is not erasable. Likewise, illegal. Blockchain prevents ledger data from being deleted. That data is part of the chain. Break the chain, and you break the system.
Then there’s the whole thing of NFTs or Non-Fungable Tokens. What a scam! Personified recently by a certain DT, camply cosplayed up as various imaginary Superheros, and a grift so big it could probably be seen from space.
For the paper —getting back to the subject— I’d thought about how destinations and hotels could mint tokens and sell them as souvenirs. I still quite like the idea and think it has some merit, but the ecosystem is not yet there. Regulation is missing. How do you display them? Can you resell them? What governs gains, losses, and value? Do people really want to virtue signal they’ve been to Bali in this way? How do you prevent grifters and scammers?
For the moment, NFTs are essentially simple pump-and-dump scams that prey on the unsuspecting, the vulnerable, and the plain stupid. I don’t think that is a morally acceptable way to run a business. But then again, I’m not a thief.
On the energy aspect, with energy costs rising and no near-term solution to the impending climate crisis, any project that adds to the planet’s burden should be considered illegal. Yes, you can say that my words here are useless and use energy wastefully in their production, distribution (email) and reading. That’s true. But wake me up when this uses the amount of energy of a small European country, and I’ll gladly stop. Wake me up when the sum total of all the WordPress blogs on the internet reaches the same energy levels as that wasted by Bitcoin to “prove” your magic bean is worth something. And don’t forget that there are literally hundreds of thousands of other magic beans out there too!
They presented some of the systems they’d built and yep, we were impressed. Then, with the startup CTO in the room, one of my fellow engineers asked the key question: “All these systems, are there any that wouldn’t work without blockchain?” The guy didn’t even hesitate: “No, not really.”
The above is taken from a blog post by Tim Bray (AWS). Pro blockchain or not, you should read it as it nicely sums up blockchain’s uselessness.
Even more sinister…
Back to the paper. During my research, I happened upon the following book:
By far the majority of interest in Bitcoin came from technologists and those who follow and admire the work of technologists. To those of us who were watching Bitcoin with an eye toward politics and economics, though, something far more striking than Bitcoin’s explosive rise in value became apparent: in the name of this new technology, extremist ideas were gaining far more traction than they previously had outside of the extremist literature to which they had largely been confined. Dogma propagated almost exclusively by far-right groups like the Liberty League, the John Birch Society, the militia movement, and the Tea Party, conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones and David Icke, and to a lesser extent rightist outlets like the Fox media group and some right-wing politicians, was now being repeated by many who seemed not to know the origin of the ideas, or the functions of those ideas in contemporary politics. These ideas are not simply heterodox or contrarian: they are pieces of a holistic worldview that has been deliberately developed and promulgated by right-wing ideologues. To anyone aware of the history of right-wing thought in the United States and Europe, they are shockingly familiar: that central banking such as that practiced by the U.S. Federal Reserve is a deliberate plot to “steal value” from the people to whom it actually belongs; that the world monetary system is on the verge of imminent collapse due to central banking policies, especially fractional reserve banking; that “hard” currencies such as gold provide meaningful protection against that purported collapse; that inflation is a plot to steal money from the masses and hand it over to a shadowy cabal of “elites” who operate behind the scenes; and more generally that the governmental and corporate leaders and wealthy individuals we all know are “controlled” by those same “elites.”
David Golumbia continues to outline how Bitcoin embodies extremist ideologies through Cyberlibertarianism and Internet Exceptionalism frameworks. Simply put, governments should not regulate the internet, and the internet is different and can’t be governed by mere mortals that don’t ‘get it’. This is in line with the extreme right’s ideology, which has brought us to world war, mass ethnic killings, and, more recently, the genuine possibility of a wholesale destabilisation of society. Linking these ideas to the Tea Party, the John Birch Society and conspiracists like David Icke and Alex Jones, the book does an excellent job of showing how the definition of “freedom” is less clear when you question it more robustly. Presciently, he mentions how some public figures do not necessarily outwardly declare their adherence to these ideologies but have demonstrated just that. Elon Musk is one such specimen. There are others, but take note of the ongoing (December 2022) train wreck at Twitter for context. Another article cited in the book is that of Langdon Winner (1997). A must-read, in my view, in which is discussed a personality not talked about much outside Silicon Valley. Ayn Rand. She’s a darling of Silicon Valley but was almost certainly a sociopath. If you have access to the BBC, watch “All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace” to better understand her and her effect on the Silicon Valley mindset and culture.
To these people, freedom always seems to mean the freedom to do “what I want”, without regard for others.
The Politics of Bitcoin is short —70-odd pages— but I highly recommend it. If you are from a technical background, like me, this will provoke thoughts and perhaps challenge some of your preconceived ideas about tech in the 21st Century. You don’t have to agree, but disagreeing through knowledge is infinitely better than a position to the contrary through ignorance.
Final thoughts
The tourist industry is already under scrutiny for its environmental effects, from ecosystem-damaging hotel developments to carbon waste (mostly travel). I didn’t want to be the author of a paper that promotes or encourages damaging consequences through needless and scam-enabling technologies like crypto and NFTs. Especially not just because it is “cool stuff”. I didn’t want to be part of a group that ignorantly legitimises innovation to extinction.
There may be a future for NFT-type spin-offs once regulation and other parts of the ecosystem are ready, and blockchain might evolve to become genuinely useful. But I suspect that evolution to look remarkably similar to database technology we’ve had for decades.
This experience was enlightening, and I wouldn’t change it for the world because it helped me come to a better, more nuanced understanding. In the near future, I may propose a different paper, although I suspect it might not be accepted. We’ll see.