Jeff Jonas

Santa's Surveillance Operations Center Enjoys Big Gains in 2008(*)

While everyone knows Santa maintains the most invasive, robust, 7x24x365 data surveillance operation in existence against mankind as a whole; nonetheless, far from being called under scrutiny or criticized by privacy advocates, this operations center grew dramatically and saw vast improvements in accuracy throughout the 2008 calendar year.

Santa’s insatiable appetite to know who’s been good and who’s been naughty is the motivatation for doing such a meticulous job collecting and analyzing data on every individual.  As with any surveillance operation there are always a variety of gaps in time for which one cannot account for the behavior and location of an individual.  However this surveillance gap closed to some degree this year.  Jolly lucky for Santa, when certain airlines began refusing cash for in flight sales in lieu of credit cards, Santa’s ability to see that someone had indulged in binge drinking on a flight is now possible.  Other gains in 2008 were seen in many areas including, more phones with GPS and cameras, parking garages only accepting credit cards ... making one’s anonymous presence in that location more difficult. 

Of course, Santa is benevolent.  So, virtually no one has a problem with Santa’s surveillance operation and related data centers.  

Also worthy of mention; the Santa's data governance and overall IT security must be extraordinary as there continue to be zero reports of a breach.   (If there were a breach the operation would have had to make a public disclosure -- as mandated by law -- duh!)

And on an unrelated note, if I were to make a prediction, the notion of giving people who have been naughty a piece of coal in their stocking is possibly a policy that needs to be reconsidered … for obvious reasons.

(*) Forward looking statements contained in this report are opinion only and should not be counted as facts or performance predictions.

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Six Ticks till Midnight: One Plausible Journey from Here to a Total Surveillance Society

Large Hadron Collider: The End Of The World As We Know It?

If someone asked you in 2007 to estimate the likelihood that Morgan Stanley, WaMu, Countrywide, Merrill Lynch, Wachovia and other titans of financial services would fall to their knees within a year … what odds would you have made?  Might the experts have said “impossible?”

In 2007 I asked a physicist and executive associated with the Large Hadron Collider what the odds were this little black hole they hope to create actually gets out of control (hungry and eats Earth).  The answer: “very unlikely.”

So here is a thought for the day: What if our Earth math and assumptions used to determine “frequency of rare events” in financial markets happens to be the same kind Earth math and assumptions used to determine the risk of playing with black holes?

Wouldn't it be funny if us earthlings never have time to realize all the existing black holes in the universe are really just the residual evidence of other civilizations which had advanced enough to build their own colliders.

D’oh.

On a more serious note … they are looking for yet undiscovered particles that come from the near-light speed collision.  What intrigues me is this: what kind of sensor strategy does one use when one doesn’t know exactly what one is looking for?  That is cool!

RELATED LINKS:

YouTube: end of the world?, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)

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The World is Not a More Dangerous Place

USC School of Cinematic Arts, "Imagine the World in 2050"

In April, 2008 five IBM scientists including myself appeared at the USC Film School on a panel discussing what the world would look like in 2050. Picture here.

The general topic was “putting the science back in science fiction.”

We each had five minutes to articulate how technologies might affect us in the year 2050. The rest of the session was dedicated to Q&A. I presented a newly crafted hand-drawn PowerPoint deck entitled “Macro Trends and What They Mean for 2050.” 

In summary, I made these observations about the future:

1. Big advances are generally not the result of any single technology but rather the result of combinations of technologies.

2. Good news: The world continues to become less dangerous. Today, we live longer than any time in the history of man – and this trend will continue. More here: The World is Not a More Dangerous Place.

2050 Prediction: Your doctor is 102 and this is not weird.

3.0 Fewer people can create much more, much faster … and more easily.

3.1. The bad news is faster death: Today, it takes less than 50 people and less than $100,000 to manufacture – and infest humans with – the reanimated 1918 Spanish Influenza virus. Some estimates place the death toll of such an event at 160 million people. That is an awful lot of death for relatively little cost and effort. More here: More Death Cheaper in Future.

3.2. The good news is faster wealth: On the other side of the coin, wealth can now be created faster than ever. For example, Marc Zuckerberg of FaceBook went from zero to over a billion in net worth in under three years. More here: Ludicrous Speed Billionaires.

2050 Prediction: Your 14-year-old neighbor makes $10B from their bedroom.

4.1. Surveillance societies are not only inevitable, irreversible … but more importantly they are irresistible! You love location-based services on your phone and you will love RFID chips in your sunglasses so you can find them if you lose them. More here: Six Ticks till Midnight: One Plausible Journey from Here to a Total Surveillance Society. 

4.2. Sensors become ubiquitous … not due to governments … rather this is caused by commercial enterprises as they compete for consumers who are eager to adopt any and all technologies that help them optimize their lives. More here: Ubiquitous Sensors? You Have Seen Nothing Yet.

4.3 Ubiquitous sensors result in countless piles of data. But to make real sense of this data it must be commingled. As such, these piles of data will have a tendency to converge into one pile of data. More here: More Data is Better, Proceed with Caution.

5. When disparate information is stitched together context emerges – much in the same way individual puzzle pieces are difficult to make sense of in isolation. Point being, the more puzzle pieces that can be associated, the greater the overall picture emerges. This stitched-together data will be stored in a pre-assembled form, in very large databases, ready for use. But unlike today, the enormous power of such “information in context” will not be in the hands of a few privileged (e.g., multi-billion dollar organizations) … in the future, such capabilities will live in the “network cloud” and be available to the masses. With such, the future will not be like Tom Cruise in the movie “Minority Report” where he stands in front large screens and searches for data using his hands to navigate. Nope, that would be old school.

2050 Prediction: Collective intelligence will locate what you need to know … and tell you!

To bring this prediction to life I presented the following example: The collective intelligence system in the network cloud will know the precise geo-coordinates of where you are physically standing right now. As well, imagine if it is also amassing data related to the current activities of migratory birds. While at one moment these two data sets may have no nexus … the moment a sensor presents some wind speed data to the collective intelligence system … this new data point being the puzzle piece that connects your location data and the birds’ migratory data. The cloud then will immediately push real-time relevant insight to you, the consumer. In this case, you are told to “jump to the right one foot.” Seconds later, to the your delight, a bird poop falls from the sky … splats on the ground … exactly where you were standing! 

6. When collective intelligence serves you and your doctor … you are going to love it. But when it serves the police looking at you … you are going to hate it. 

7. And that is the truth about the future … it’s going to be love/hate. 

Here is a related news story:

C|Net – Imagining the Tech World in 2050

Here is a related 7 minute YouTube video:

Imaging the World of 2050

My Broken Neck: A 20 Year Anniversary

TWENTY YEARS AGO TODAY … I broke my neck in a car accident which rendered me a complete quadriplegic for a short while. The only reason I am alive today, with relatively full functionality, is thanks to some stranger who saved my life and then disappeared without a trace.

On Leap Day 1988 in San Mateo, California I went on a BMW test drive. The salesman was driving. He was showing off the handing capabilities of the car on back roads. He lost control as we approached a turn which resulted in us plowing into a dirt embankment at what was estimated at 63 miles per hour. I was in the rear seat behind the driver – in a seatbelt, without an airbag.

While my seatbelt secured my body, my head continued to travel forward at 63 miles per hour. This resulted in a C2 spinal fracture (the same break that Superman’s Christopher Reeves experienced). I ended up sitting there in the car – each hand resting palm down on each leg, perfectly placed. Unable to hold my head up, I starred towards my lap fully aware we had crashed and to boot realized I was totally paralyzed and unable to breathe (as my hanging head blocked my wind pipe).

I had always wondered as a kid what would be the final minutes of thinking if you knew death was imminent. So there I sat staring at my hands slowly changing color from that of the living to that of the dead. And so it seemed this day would end my 23 years of Earthly habitation.

I do not know how many minutes I was forced to witness my slow death … more than a few minutes for sure and less than six for sure.

My door flies open, and only my door. An Asian man leans into the car and looks up into my face and says "Can you breathe?" I lip synch "No" … three times.  He says "Do you want me to lift your head?" So, I lip synch "Yes" once. He proceeds to hold my head up in a hyper-extended fashion with perfection … as if medically trained. Once my head is extended I find I can breath. Move? No. Breathe, yes!

He holds my head in position with his arms fully extended for nearly thirty minutes until the ambulances arrive (heads are heavy and the fact this person could maintain this position for so long is in itself a miracle). Had he tried to rest or settle my head to assist the others in the car I would, without a doubt, be dead or a quadriplegic today.

The paramedics step in and take possession of my head.

Then … poof this savior disappears! No sign of him.  No witnesses, no reference in the police report.  Nothing.

The doctors told my parents I would most likely be paralyzed for life. No one told me that though … and so, despite this prognosis ... I recovered.

And recover I did - over the next four or five months, although not fully. To this day, I suffer from a very rare condition called Brown-Sequard Syndrome. In short, the center of my spinal cord in the vicinity of the C2 vertebrae is now dead. As a result, the right side of my body has a very lower ability to sense hot, cold, and pain. And the nervous system on the left side of my body is hypersensitive and I have a noticeable degree of muscle atrophy on the left side as my brain does not talk to all of those muscles anymore.

Lucky? Yep.

Does such an accident reorient one to the value of life and priorities? True, although oddly this new think only lasted about six months!

What are my thoughts about death now? Every day since February 29th, 1988 has been an extra day.

Regrets? I only wish I could locate and thank the person who saved me. Maybe he wonders what came of my condition and if he had done the right thing. My parents, my children, my girlfriend, and I would like to convey our thanks.

Dear Mr. Stranger: Thank you.

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Virtual Reality: There Is No Place Like Home

Increasingly over the last year, I have been asked to share my thoughts about virtual worlds (e.g., Second Life and World of Warcraft).  After repeated provocation, I took a peek into these interactive 3D La-La-Lands to see what is up.  Here are a few of my core conclusions:

1.    Virtual realities will end up consuming the attention of a substantial number of humans and this will happen more quickly than most may think.
2.    Data synchronization between the real world and virtual worlds will increase the relevance of virtual worlds.
3.    Along with the eyeballs of transacting consumers will come increased corporate investment thus driving more relevance and more growth.
4.    Investors in virtual world physics re-engineering will possess a distinct advantage in virtual worlds.
5.    As with any tool, a very small percentage of the population will use virtual worlds for criminal activities.

Here are a few details related to these points.

Virtual reality: soon serving the masses.  As these alternate worlds become more immersive (i.e., ability to hold ones attention when in the virtual space) and accessible (think One Laptop Per Child), I think it is possible that a half billion people show up.  How soon?  In six to ten years – maybe faster.  Why?  Because there are a lot of people on Earth that would rather exist in a synthetic world as opposed to their real world.  Hmmm … shanty town, nagging spouse, or insurmountable odds versus a stimulating environment with near limitless potential to reinvent oneself.

Cross-reality synchronization.  Imagine taking heat sensors in a real-world data center and publishing these into a virtual space which is physically configured like the real data center.  The difference being that the immersed person can now physically visualize the temperature distribution in the data center.  This is already being done.  Then move something in the physical world and it moves in the virtual world at the same time, automatically.  I wouldn’t be surprised if this is already happening in some context, somewhere.  As well, the inverse: There is supposedly a fellow who has an island in Second Life with a surveillance mechanism implemented that sends him a real-world email or text message whenever someone steps foot onto his island.  Long story short, if one wants to look at something specific, if the real and virtual worlds are synchronized, it’s going to be cheaper, faster and will burn less carbon if one takes the virtual option.

Real economic growth in unreal worlds.  Have you heard about the real estate developer in Second Life that has made $1,000,000 (real) US dollars?  True.  Linden dollars, the monetary unit in Second Life, have their own currency exchange to US dollars called the LindeX – a currency market apparently moving millions of dollars a month between the virtual and real worlds.  Point being, if a billion people show up in virtual spaces, each on average spending only eleven cents ($0.11) a month – this amounts to a real growth market which will trigger further industry investment.  Consequently: more people arrive. 

Virtual world physics re-engineering.  Through serendipity, careful study, and/or experimentation it is possible to develop capabilities within virtual reality that other participants, or in some cases even the creator, cannot fathom.  The first such instance I heard of five or six years ago involved a player who figured out he could climb walls by mounting deactivated explosive devices on a wall.  Placing one above the other, the avatar cleverly scaled the wall.  He climbed so high that he moved beyond the rendered space … into a region of the game where all that was visible was texture-less grid lines.  In a more recent example, in Second Life an individual created a covert listening device the size of a single pixel -- then placed this pixel inside some object.  Later when the object was near a conversation, all communications were echoed to a third party unbeknownst to the victims.  Prior to this event many players in Second Life would not have considered this possible.  Game physics re-engineering is also happening in World of Warcraft (where it is called "Theorycraft").  In this virtual world, one expert explained it to me this way “[we are] unwrapping the mathematics and developing a perception of space and time in relation to the virtual world, that determines which combination of attacks or defenses have the greatest efficacy.”  This info is then shared with colleagues in password protected chat rooms.  Using this knowledge delivers extraordinary advantage, namely lethality per second optimizations, hence the importance of keeping this specialized knowledge to a privileged few as long as possible.  By the way, let’s not forget that we are re-engineering the physics here on Earth in a similar manner.  Heck, ten thousand years ago, who would have conceived of the possibility that spaceships could be devised to take man to the moon and back! 

Tools are tools.  Are virtual spaces dangerous?  Well, is a phone, the Internet and email dangerous?  Nope, not for the most part, in fact the opposite, as the social and economic values of these technologies far outweigh the consequences of misuse.  Sure bad actors will continue to use the best tools they can get their hands on too.  And with this behavior, as more bad actors show up … the folks paid to “protect” us will venture into these virtual spaces in an effort to detect and preempt.  Hence some of my quotes in this recent Washington Post story “Spies Battleground Turns Virtual.”

And finally, how will you know virtual worlds are starting to collide with your own real world?  Watch for this sign: someone wants to chat with you while showing you something and they explain the best way to do this efficiently is for you to “step in” [to the virtual world that is].

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Ghost in the Machine?

Information Incontinence

I was on a call the other day working on a family project when the other party asked for my cell phone number. I handed it over on two conditions: (1) she throw it away after the project was completed, and (2) I made her swear to not enter my cell phone number into any computer. Immediately following this conversation my girlfriend overheard me muttering, "Computers are dangerous." Let me explain.

When it comes to preventing information leakage … the best rule is:  "Don’t ever let the data be placed into digital form."

Then for extra protection it is best not to ever speak it.  And, in coming years, it will be best not to ever think it either. (See P300 post below)

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Ludicrous Speed Billionaires

Just wanted to point out that the speed with which organizations can go from zero to multi-billion dollar valuations is unprecedented.

Would love to see the graph of old school business velocity compared to today’s modern marvels like Google, Facebook, and YouTube.

If this trend continues, there is going to be the day where a company will open its doors for business and then do hundreds of millions in revenues in the first year.

And with this … we will see new billionaires being made in days not years.

Think China.

Van Halen, Risk Management and Breaking the Law (Allegedly)

One of the freedoms we have is the freedom (ability) to knowingly bend or break a law.

While in New York this week, I discovered that Van Halen was playing Madison Square Garden Tuesday, November 13th! Back in the day when I used to play guitar, Eddie Van Halen was like a super hero to me. Unfortunately, the concert was sold out.

Sold out or not – I decided I was going, one way or another. After checking Craigslist without luck and checking with the hotel concierge who found a pair for $1400.00, I decided to take matters into my own hands.

9:02pm - Madison Square Gardens

I arrived at the curbside with a load of cash on hand looking for a scalper. The police were everywhere. I stumble immediately into an interesting character who claims to have one ticket. When I ask him how much, he says $350. I say "deal!" And with great disregard for scalper laws and the countless police all about, I pulled out my wad of $20 bills and counted them off … all in plain sight.

Allegedly, of course.

I inspect the ticket for signs of being a forgery and accept it. He pockets the cash, and then pulls out his wallet while saying "I have something else for you." I briefly wondered if I had lucked into an undercover policeman! Nope, handing me his card he says "Call me anytime you want a ticket here." Then he says, "Heck for the price you just paid, I'll walk you to the front door."

9:15pm – I'm in the concert!

Allegedly.

More Death Cheaper in Future

The difficulty and cost of delivering death and mayhem are dropping so fast, there will come a time in which the ill-will of a few evil men could ruin the day for millions.

Technological advances in physics, engineering and biology coupled with the Internet and the dynamics of Web 2.0 have contributed to unprecedented social progress and overall improvement of the human condition. In many ways … and in most places … it is better now than ever before; hence my recent post "The World is Not a More Dangerous Place." At the same time, these same phenomena are accelerating the lethality potential per unit of human effort.

Example 1: The difficulty required to build and deliver the first few 10-kiloton nuclear devices in the 1940’s involved 130,000 people and cost two billion dollars ($23B in 2007 dollars). Today, graduate students are building viable detonation systems … albeit lacking the enriched uranium or plutonium. But unlike the 1940’s when enriched uranium did not exist – every ounce having to be produced – today this nuclear material exists in stockpiles all over the world.

Example 2: Recent biological advances have made it possible to reanimate the 1918 Spanish Influenza. Did I say "possible?" Sorry, I meant to say "this has already been done!" Between a couple of tissue samples left over in a military hospital and a deceased Alaskan Eskimo preserved in the permafrost, the virus has been successfully reconstructed and its DNA sequenced. Researchers then proceeded to inject this virus into mice with the human immune system. The result – unprecedented death – the most deadly flu virus ever tested. [story here] While nuclear material is hard to acquire, I was told the DNA sequence of the 1918 Spanish Influenza was already in the public domain. Hard to believe, so I asked a friend in the biological community for a copy of this DNA sequence. So it appears that I now have a copy on my laptop, but what would I know!

While advances in technology are a big part of this trend, other factors contribute as well including population density, dependence on mobility, the tightly coupled interdependencies in which the world operates (e.g., from just-in-time supply chains to your just-in-time access to cash and food) and media-driven sensationalism. Factors such as these have a force multiplying and amplification effect even upon traditional means for mayhem. For example, consider the death and mayhem created by Malvo and Muhammad, the two Washington DC-area gunmen. They were able to turn an investment of a few thousand dollars (car, gas, gun, bullets) into an instrument of terror which not only killed a number of people but also created so much panic the regional economy lost an estimated half a billion dollars ($500,000,000).

And so it seems, as time marches forward fewer people are able to create more damage cheaper and faster.

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Social Engineering of Hotel Maids – Win Some, Lose Some

I travel a lot.

Picture this. The hotel front desk recreates my room key so I can get back into my room. Because I forgot what room number I was in, I have them remind me. When I get to the room I find my key does not work. I hate it when this happens. It happens often enough that I know the fastest solution is to have a conversation with a maid to bypass the system. So that is what I did.

After some convincing dialog with a maid – "poof" – I am in the room (no name, no ID, no nothing). Not the first time I have done this, and for the record a rather easy affair.

I step over some luggage, see some pink running shoes, notice a container of watermelon chunks and other clutter. I remove a purse and towel from the chair at the desk so I can sit there and connect my laptop to the Internet and get some work done. Let’s just say I was hyper-focused.

I work about 45 minutes and from time-to-time consider getting naked and climbing into bed for a short nap until my girlfriend returns.

My cell phone rings and it is my girlfriend. I tell her I am in the room. She proclaims that is not possible because she is in the room.

Like a nightmare – as I scan the room, nothing is familiar. That is not our luggage. We don’t own shoes like that. The purse and towel I moved from the chair, I’ve never seen them before either!

Well, let’s just say I tensed up!

Gone in sixty seconds.