What are you Whispering?

Social networks expose us. They attach our names to our every photo and written thought. And we seem to kind of like it that way. We can't get enough of tooting our own horns.

Or can we?

There's a new social network in town that promises something the Facebooks and Twitters of the world cannot: anonymity. Whisper is "a FREE, anonymous social platform for people who want to creatively share and connect with others over experiences, feelings, thoughts and dreams that they can't communicate anywhere else," according to a press release from the company.

The site allows users to post 'secrets' or thoughts anonymously, through the use of pictures with bold eye-catching quotes at the top, much like internet 'memes' – which are described as units for carrying cultural symbols or ideas that virally spread across the internet. So, people can "heart" and reply to your posts with their own stylized messages.

The sentiment on Whisper is serious and thought provoking, and the content is often the kind of thing individuals would not want to shout about in public. The look is similar to the long-running PostSecret website, but Whisper has features which make it more of a social network.

Whisper has 4 million devoted users — the average user opens the app eight times each day. In its two year history, the app has received 2.8 billion page views. Each day, hundreds of thousands of whispers are uploaded each day, which are filtered by a team of 70 full-time moderators located in Manila.

Although a deep secret written in a funky font over a provocative picture hardly classifies as a "whispering," there is something very provocative about being able to say what you feel without fear of judgment or scrutiny from your friends or family. Is this the next artsy step up from SnapChat or just another way of sending dirty pictures over the Internet? And this time to anyone and everyone.

Is this your new social network? Are you already on it? Comment below…

The Conscious Internet - Part IV: Running Free

A while back a wrote a short article titled "the Conscious Internet" concerning the development of AI and computer technology in regards to the Internet. The article is written with a very philosophical approach to the subject, but handles real life facts. It has long been my intention to publish it here on the blog, but I just haven't gotten around to doing so. Until now ...

Here's part 4 of 8. You can find the previous chapter here. Happy reading, and please comment below.

Running Free

The second of November 1988 a young man named Robert T. Morris Jr. wanted to play a prank. He was a graduate student at Cornell University, and in the spirit of school competitiveness, he released a simple program on the Internet, a so called “worm”. The coding was modest; all the program did was to copy itself until the host computer ran out of memory and crashed. With the opus in hand, Morris hacked into rivalry school MIT’s computer network and unshackled his creation. Using a loophole in the operating system Unix´s network settings, Morris was able to bypass security measure and gain access to the core of the computer. Arriving at its destination the program began multiplying itself, blocking up memory, and thereby rendering the computer useless. When it was done with the first computer, Morris had told the worm to move on to the next neighboring computer, and repeat the process. What Morris had not taken into effect however was that in this case the neighboring computer was to be any computer hooked up to the Internet.

The process took less than a second to perform and within a few hours the chaos was evident. When Morris saw his creation escaping out of his control he immediately contacted a friend at Harvard to help him contain the issue. They quickly sent mail to major US servers, cautioning them of the worm and trying to convince them to shut down. But their warnings were already stacked up in the wake of the worm, and the plead was never even delivered. At that moment the worm had already destroyed more than two thousand servers, as well as over ten thousand computers, some of which belonged to NASA, the BRL, and MIT.

It took teams of programmers numerous weeks to sanitize all the affected computers, and the web was left inoperative for several days. What had started as a practical joke amongst two rivaling top universities, quickly escalated to the largest IT-devastation known to man. The total cost for the fabrications was estimated to be more than $53 000, and Morris himself was convicted to three years on probation, 400 hours of community service, and $10 050 in fines. Morris had negligently tripped over Pandora’s Box, and despite of all his programming skills and knowledge, he was unable to close it.

Suppose now that Morris´s worm was designed with another purpose. Instead of crippling the computers it came across, it would simply copy the contents of that computer and information back to a main hub. Morris would then have created a global network, where he personally controlled all the information that passed through it. A central computer system controlling most governing entities in the US; all-knowing and aware of any minute impact to the network – sound familiar? Today, such cataclysmic event may be regarded as far fetched. Improved anti-virus protections, higher encryptions, and better firewalls should prevent this type of disaster from ever occurring again. This is true to an extent; increased security measure has made it increasingly difficult to hack major system, however, at the same time, the algorithms used in viruses have also improved, placing this virtual arms race neck to neck.

... continues in Part V: Deciphering the Logic

The Conscious Internet - Part III: HAL 9000

A while back a wrote a short article titled "the Conscious Internet" concerning the development of AI and computer technology in regards to the Internet. The article is written with a very philosophical approach to the subject, but handles real life facts. It has long been my intention to publish it here on the blog, but I just haven't gotten around to doing so. Until now ...

Here's part 3 of 8. You can find the previous chapter here. Happy reading, and please comment below.

HAL 9000

Since the dawn of inventions, man has strived to improve and ease the utilization of all his tools and creations, something that holds true also for computers, and for the Internet. Programmers spend hours in front of computer screens, slaving to create more user-friendly interfaces, all in an attempt of mimicking human communication and interaction as closely as possible. This, in combination with a wealth of science fiction movies, gave birth to the expression Artificial Intelligence, which has become a dominating force behind modern day computer development. Making computers smarter, able of understanding and helping the user, is now the cutting edge in modern computer marketing.

In reality the computers are not at all smart, but rather the logic we fill the computers with. Programs can be scripted to learn new actions, thereby inventing its own solutions to problems, but this is not without its own limitations. A computer will always follow the strict set of laws and regulations dictated by its’ code, and therefor lacks the ability to endlessly come up with new angles and strategies. This results in the fact that computers, faced with the simplest of problems, will be incapable of solving a given task simply because it falls outside of their main programming. Man, on the other hand, is an irrational and unpredictable being, capable of creating new and illogical adaptations to most anything. This is why chess-guru Garry Kasparov managed to beat the super-computer Deep Blue, in their first set of match ups. Even though Deep Blue had been programmed with every chess move known to man, and had counter action strategies for all of them, Kasparov’s mind used innovative, previously unseen strategies, that the computer did not know how to counter.

But in the same second Kasparov made his move Deep Blue analyzed it, broke it down into its components, and devised strategies for it, making the move obsolete. The same move could never be used twice by Kasparov, resulting in Deep Blue finally beating the old chess wizard, the second time they met. In his strive to master the computer; Kasparov was in essence just training it.

... continues in Part IV: Running Free

The Conscious Internet - Part II: A New Day Dawns

A while back a wrote a short article titled "the Conscious Internet" concerning the development of AI and computer technology in regards to the Internet. The article is written with a very philosophical approach to the subject, but handles real life facts. It has long been my intention to publish it here on the blog, but I just haven't gotten around to doing so. Until now ...

Here's part 2 of 8. You can find the previous chapter here. Happy reading, and please comment below.


A New Day Dawns

The step from movie to reality has however, time and time again, been proven to be a giant leap. This is especially true when it comes to science fiction. A walking, talking and fighting robot may be a thing of the future, but the essence of Terminator, the Internet sibling called “SkyNet”, may be closer to us than we think.

The building blocks for our modern day Internet were laid back in the sixties by no other than the US Department of Defense. The branch Advance Research Project Agency, ARPA for short, had since the end of WWII been researching and developing methods to quickly get large amounts of information from the general stab distributed to the front lines. The goal was to be able to relay exact and detailed information such as positions, maps and pictures, without having to risk the necks of countless couriers. The Soviets had already launched the Sputnik so the race for positioning oneself as the dominant monitoring eye in the sky was already lost. The war had to been won on the earth. Instead for linking the stars, the ARPA started experimenting with coupling different computers together, and then trying to run calculations on one computer remotely from the other. So the first computer network was born – ARPANET.

But limitations in contemporary technology halted the developers, and ARPANET barely made it of the drawing board. It would be an additional ten years before the ideas of an internet truly surfaced again. This time it was from the realm of the academic world. Lack of funding moved the ARPANET project from military aspects into the top universities of the US, who breathe life into the thoughts once again. The idea remained the same, to quickly and securely send information from one university to another, but the approach had changed. Scientists from MIT, Stanford and UCLA managed, under close supervision from ARPA, design an operating system capable of sharing the collective memory of the connected servers, a so called “Time-sharing” system. The concept borrowed from the thought behind the vacation homes with the same name, where several tenants collectively owns an apartment and thereby reserves the right to said apartment for a limited period of time. In a similar way, the programs were run on the computers, one at a time, sharing the collective strength of all the connected computers. Instead of having the computer run one program at a time, from start to finish, the new operating system allowed for switching in between programs, and by doing so letting several programs simultaneously share the memory´s total capacity. This allowed, for the first time, for a setup of servers capable of coping with the enormous data stream created by a network of computers, without crashing or processing the information for ages. The modern Internet as we know it was born.

... continues in Part III: HAL 9000

The Conscious Internet - Part I: Judgment Day

A while back a wrote a short article titled "the Conscious Internet" concerning the development of AI and computer technology in regards to the Internet. The article is written with a very philosophical approach to the subject, but handles real life facts. It has long been my intention to publish it here on the blog, but I just haven't gotten around to doing so. Until now ...

Here's part 1 of 8. Happy reading, and please comment below.

Intro:
Over the years the Internet has grown into a custom of our everyday life. It exists today, unchecked, as the largest medium of all information agencies, and has with its power seized an important status in our social scheme. If you’re not on the net, you don’t exist.

Nevertheless it seems as if we are only on the threshold of its entire potential. If we regard the independence of a mind as the origin of cognition, then the Internet emerges as an entirely new entity. Is there a possibility that a conscious Internet could somehow be created, and if so, could it be by our own human negligence? Is the essence of "mind" really shared by all, or is there a danger in assuming that wisdom is esoteric?

Judgment Day

“Three billion human lives ended on August 29th, 1997. The survivors of the nuclear fire called the war Judgment Day. They lived only to face a new nightmare: the war against the machines.”

Many probably recognize the dark prophecies that are presented to humanity in the beginning of the cult movie Terminator II. Man lets technology run amok and the war against our own creations is upon us. The masters have in an instance gone from commanders to prey. The Terminator franchise is built on the premise that the US government builds a colossal network of computers called SkyNet. SkyNet´s main purpose is to replace soldiers on the battlefield, and instead pilot drones to do the fighting, thereby saving humans lives. The network is connected to the entire US defense force, controlling everything from stealth bombers to submarines, in order to perform flawless, unified and inhuman strikes.

But SkyNet is also built as a huge data warehouse for continuous ascertaining and adaption. Along its travels through the web, it collects information from other data bases and storage centrals it passes, relaying the information back to its own mother hub for analyzing. Through this process, SkyNet grows ever larger and more powerful, learning new ways to adapt and solve problems from every corner of the Internet. On the 29th of August 1997 SkyNet circles back around the web, discovering itself and thereby learning about its own existence - SkyNet becomes self-aware. Technicians monitory SkyNet immediately react and try to shut down the main terminal, but it is too late. SkyNet reacts, as any other conscious being would when threatened by termination, and launches a counter attack with all available means by its disposal. Within minutes nuclear warheads rain down on earth, and man’s doom begins.

... continues in Part II: A New Day Dawns

Twitter to please advertisers

The Social media micro-blogging site has released a new special tool for advertisers which allows them to see what users are tweeting about in regards to TV. This then allows them to target their ads more specifically to users who are discussing particular shows.

This is mainly focused at the TV industry and specifically any networks wishing to create greater interest in live events and shows. Twitter has already forged partnerships with networks like CBS as well as sports leagues like the NFL. 

It has already been shown that TV ratings will boost based when a show starts to trend on the site. This is why targeted TV show ads can raise interest in other shows which may be similar to the one the user is already watching and commenting on.

I recently wrote about the then upcoming launch of TWTR (the Twitter stock) and how Twitters model probably was going to change in order to incorporate more ads; this seems to be the first step to please the new shareholders. Naturally Twitter has had this platform in the pipe for a long time, but it is interesting to see that this is the route they are going to take to start making that all important revenue.

Already Twitter is getting more and more connected with other forms of media, especially the TV. One of the really cool partnerships there includes a linked button with Comcast. This allows Comcast customers who use Twitter to set recording reminders based on Tweets about certain shows.

The interface is easy and intuitive; check it out below. I think this may be the first step in a Tweetsplosion on the Internet.

https://business.twitter.com/start-advertising

 Are you a business owner ready to advertise using Twitter? Leave us your comments below.