1840s – Byron’s daughter becomes world’s first programmer
Posted by: johnnyryan on: 9 July 2009
On 12 February 1812, Lord Byron, perhaps the most outrageous and disreputable of the English poets, took the floor at the House of Lords to begin his maiden speech. A bill had recently been introduced that would impose a death penalty in response to the Luddites, the textile artisans rioting in opposition to the industrial revolution and wreaking mechanized looms. Byron made his maiden speech in defense of the artisans and decried industrialization. It might seem odd then that Byron’s daughter should be in the avant garde of the next wave of disruptive technologies –computing. Odder still, considering the stereotype of programmers: Byron himself was a promiscuous bi-sexual, the most flamboyant figure of the romantic movement, constantly in debt, and ever surrounded by scandal. Yet his only legitimate daughter was a mathematical genius and would be remembered as history’s first computer programmer. Read the rest of this entry »
Quick note on ‘Openness’
Posted by: johnnyryan on: 23 June 2009
The word ‘Openness’ is attractive as the keystone of the book’s title. And yet it is controversial.
It may even be inaccurate. The ‘Open’ word as I am using it first came to me when I read interviews with Paul Baran in which he talked about two startling things: first, how RAND published his secret research because they believed it necessary to share it with the Soviets, and thereby limit the possibility of a nuclear conflagration; and second, Read the rest of this entry »
Silicon Valley Landmark: Zott’s and the packet radio test
Posted by: johnnyryan on: 9 June 2009
San Francisco features disproportionately in the history of the digital age. Yet despite the historical coverage it receives, little attention has been given to one of its landmarks, a small wood paneled tavern known as “Zott’s” – officially named “The Alpine Inn” Read the rest of this entry »
Models of state research spending: Vannevar Bush v Mike Mansfield
Posted by: johnnyryan on: 6 June 2009
A new statement from Ireland’s Science Advisory Counsel calls for an exploration of how “Ireland can maximise the revenue potential of its investment in STI”. The Irish Science Advisory Counsel is composed of senior figures in industry and research including Sean Baker of IONA and Roger Whatmore of the Tyndall Institute. The question coming to the fore is to what extent should Government direct strategic research funding to advance the national economic interest? Two examples worth examining for its pros and cons is the post war US model established by Vannevar Bush, and also the countervailing approach that embodied in the Mansfield Amendment introduced of 1969. Read the rest of this entry »
Internet growth before WWW
Posted by: johnnyryan on: 5 June 2009
Some figures on Internet growth from 1981 to 1993. This is growth in the Internet before WWW.
Date—-Hosts
08/81—213
10/85—1,961
10/89—159,000
10/93—-2,056,000
Caffeine Curve
Posted by: johnnyryan on: 28 May 2009
Credit to the original genius who drew this (not me)
Revision note for University of Cambridge Students on secret world intelligence topic
Posted by: johnnyryan on: 17 May 2009
This is a revision note I have drafted for final year pre exam revision for University of Cambridge undergraduates who were supervised by me on Militant Islamist Radicalization on the Internet.
Good luck, make use of this, and keep in touch!
The challenge now is to apply the Internet-focused information and approach from our sessions to practical questions on intelligence. Radicalization is a part of the topic on which you will be examined and can inform your approach to the Internet and intelligence post 9-11. This note, and more particularly the links included in it (make sure to read the links that are in bold), is intended to help you do this.
A. Challenges
B. Opportunities
i) OSINT & data mining
ii) intelligence reform & sharing
C. Where radicalization fits in
Concluding note
The tulip, NASDAQ, and the dot-com crash
Posted by: johnnyryan on: 13 May 2009
I’m studying the dot-com crash for the book… (the image is the Pets.com sock puppet)
From 1634-1637 a wave of enthusiasm and investment swept the Dutch Republic, the object of which was the tulip. At home, the tulip was becoming an important element of Turkish court culture, to the extent that the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire appointed a Chief Florist to his court. By the time tulip bulbs had made the long and expensive journey from Constantinople to Harlem they were more than simply a decoration or gardener’s diversion. The tulip gave off a whiff of the exotic East, and it became the collector’s item of the Dutch urbane. Extraordinary Popular Delusions And The Madness Of Crowds, a book written in the 1840s and probably not entirely accurate, depicts a pervading mania Read the rest of this entry »
Innovation in the shadow of the Nuke
Posted by: johnnyryan on: 10 May 2009
Researching my forthcoming book on the history of the ‘Net, I’m investigating the nuclear context.
By the mid 1960s the Air Force had upgraded its early nuclear missiles to use solid-state propellants. The new solid-state weapons brought the launch time down from eight hours to a matter of minutes. Yet while US missiles were becoming easier to loose on the enemy, the command and control systems that coordinated them were every bit as vulnerable as they had been.
A secret document drafted for President Kennedy in 1963 highlighted the importance of command and control. The report, produced by senior personnel from State Department, CIA, Air Force, and Navy, detailed a series of possible nuclear exchange scenarios. In all cases, nuclear exchange was not a simple ‘I hit you, you hit me’ matter. The President would be faced with ‘decision points’ over the course of at approximately 26 hours. One scenario described a ‘nation killing’ first strike by the Soviet Union that would kill between 30 – 150 million people and destroy between 30 – 70 percent of US industrial capacity. Yet even so, the President would have to act at three pivotal decision points.
The first decision, assuming the President survived the first strike, would be made at “0 H” (zero hour). 0 H marked the time of the first detonation of a Soviet missile on a US target. Kennedy would have to determine the extent of his retaliatory second strike. If he chose to strike military and industrial targets within the Soviet Union, respecting the ‘no cities doctrine‘, US missiles would begin to hit their targets some thirty minutes after Read the rest of this entry »
The MP3, its origins, and its impact
Posted by: johnnyryan on: 27 April 2009
Continuing on the music theme for my forthcoming book, and the disruption caused by the Internet to established industries…
In 1996, the song ‘Until it sleeps’ by Metallica became the first track to be illegally copied from CD, encoded as an MP3, and made available on the Internet by a user operating under the nickname ‘NetFrack’. NetFrack announced the revolution in music piracy to Affinity disk magazine, a diskette based news sheet circulated in the computer underground:
I’ve thought of the idea of somehow pirating, music. … The problem in the past … was HD [hard disk] space. … We eliminated the size constraints. We use a new format to compress our music. The MP3 format.
The development of the MP3 marked a pivotal moment in the history of the recording industry, ruining distribution and business models, and challenging the future of the major labels. This revolution, as with much else in the digital upheaval, started in the early 1970s. Read the rest of this entry »
Kleinrock on ARPANET chatter
Posted by: johnnyryan on: 18 April 2009
Researching my book on the history of the Internet, I asked Len Kleinrock three key questions yesterday. I asked him at what point it was clear that the early ARPANET – the forerunner to the Internet – became dominated by informal chatter between researchers. The answer was interesting.
The point at which it became abundantly clear to me that people-to-people communication was the dominant form of traffic carried by the internet was in mid-1972 shortly after email was introduced to the internet (network email was introduced in April 1972). Email traffic took over the traffic very quickly. Read the rest of this entry »
Maths – East & West
Posted by: johnnyryan on: 16 April 2009
I have been thinking about the following problem recently: Maths.
In 2001, the bipartisan Hart-Rudman Commission warned that the failure of math and science education posed a greater threat to American power than any conceivable conventional war in the new century. In his 2005 book, and in later postings on his site, the conservative US politician Newt Gingrich, who was on the Hart-Rudman Commission, warned that “American high schools are obsolete” Read the rest of this entry »
The Irish Times on The Next Leap
Posted by: johnnyryan on: 23 January 2009
The Irish Times calls The Next Leap “an excellent report … [which] deserves to be read and considered, especially right now, as the Government struggles to find a constructive way forward out of an economic morass”.
When the IIEA released my report, The Next Leap: Competitive Ireland in the Digital Era, in mid December, it seemed like a bad time to get press coverage. The Sunday Business Post picked it up, as did the Irish Independent. Today, a month later, The Irish Times has a long piece covering the report, and its better to have attention brought back to it now, as the economic doom and gloom deepens, than it would have been if the report had featured prominently in December, when people had not yet made the mental leap to the new economic situation in which we now know ourselves to operate in.
This is all very heartening – especially at a time when we are trying to build momentum behind the blog attached to the report http://nextleap.wordpress.com on which we are discussing with visitors what areas within the report to focus on further. Full text of the article is below Read the rest of this entry »
Review in IISS Survival journal
Posted by: johnnyryan on: 16 January 2009
- In: First book
- 2 Comments
Survival, the journal of IISS in London, has published a review of my Countering militant Islamist radicalisation on the Internet: a user driven strategy to recover the web in a bumper three book review article. Read the rest of this entry »
My profile on Wikipedia – a case study of three Wikipedia caveats
Posted by: johnnyryan on: 14 January 2009
I’m a little excited and a bit alarmed by my entry “Johnny Ryan (academic)” on Wikipedia. Knowing its subject (me), I can draw three caveats about Wikipedia content. Read the rest of this entry »
CB3 Communications – web 2.0 in zones of conflict?
Posted by: johnnyryan on: 23 December 2008
I have just accepted a role with CB3 Communications, a Cambridge-based consultancy run by a friend of mine, Jem Thomas. (I will be keeping my other position at the IIEA.) Read the rest of this entry »
Twitter
- johnnyryan: There is allot of movement in this year's E-readiness rankings. http://bit.ly/p6UB2
- johnnyryan: Byron's Daughter - world's first programmer http://tinyurl.com/l9ykom
- johnnyryan: @klillington why at Bletchley Park? If you're near Cambridge, give me a shout and I'll give you a tour...
- johnnyryan: Spacewar! http://www.wheels.org/spacewar/creative/SpacewarOrigin.html
- johnnyryan: Great vintage video of Lincoln Labs... http://bit.ly/4KJt
- johnnyryan: Robert McNamara has died http://bit.ly/aP8iw
- johnnyryan: Darth Lumberg? http://bit.ly/r0fFG
- johnnyryan: Have you completed your TPS reports? http://bit.ly/qr1o1
- johnnyryan: Down to 78k words. Need to get to 70k. http://bit.ly/QjIjf
- johnnyryan: This is where twitter really shows you what you're doing... http://twitter.com/IIEA (stream of events + workwise)
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