Let’s be clear: I do not know how to hack a computer.

However, with the release of a new Firefox extension, any schmo like myself could access your information stored as “cookies” fairly easily.

And I did – I put my hand in the cookie jar, kind of.

There were clear ethical dilemmas, but sans malice and for the sake of research, I was ready to try and hack my peers. I downloaded Firesheep, which was not difficult, and tested it on two Wi-Fi networks on campus: UCLA_WIFI and UCLA_WEB.

Eric Butler, the programmer of Firesheep, introduced the extension last month at ToorCon, a hacker conference for security experts.

Firesheep is Butler’s attempt to push sites such as Facebook, Twitter and even Google to protect their users against one of the oldest and simplest ways of hacking – session hijacking.

But after trying the application on both UCLA networks, the only login information I was able to capture was my own. The short answer about my self-hacking exercise is that I needed to be on a local insecure network.

While my attempts at hacking were unsuccessful, it was useful to see which social networking accounts of mine could be sidejacked, from Amazon and Facebook to Twitter and Yelp.

Session hijacking, or sidejacking, is not a new problem. Firesheep just makes it accessible to everyone in a graphical way.
“If you can download music, you can install this,” said Peter Schultze, systems administrator in the computer science department.

That said, I would hesitate to say that anyone who can use a computer can automatically make sense of the extension. Because Firesheep is not endorsed by Mozilla, it is only available from a third-party site, making it less convenient to add to Firefox.

Most online services use a process of encryption indicated by “https://” to protect your user name and password upon log-in.

But social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter send data exchanges in unencrypted, plain text.

The post-log-in text data, called “cookies,” signal that you have logged in and allow you to continue using the site without asking for your information again. Because the data is being sent back and forth unencrypted post-log-in, the information is readily available to anyone looking for it.

“It requires more server capacity (to encrypt post-log-in), which would require more money,” Schultze said.

Butler may be trying his hand at “hacktivism,” or hacking for a presumably good cause, according to his blog.

“This approach to exposing vulnerabilities has a very old history in computer science and engineering,” said Leah Lievrouw, a professor in the UCLA Graduate School of Education & Information Studies.

Hacktivists attempt to privately expose the security holes in software and notify the vendor to create updates or patches to fix the vulnerability.

While hacktivism usually has political ends, it’s important to distinguish that goal from a market-driven approach to bug-finding, Lievrouw said.

“The responsible ones first contact the vendor and give them a certain amount of time for a response before publishing the exposure. The bigger idea is that, in the long term, it’s better for the common good,” Schultze said. “However, (Firesheep) goes a bit beyond the common hacktivism. Here, someone brings out a very easy-to-use tool for many people to expose a known vulnerability.”

While Butler’s approach may seem unethical, the alternative may be worse.

“In a situation like this one, I don’t think it’s more ethical to wait. It’s very fair if there’s a segment of the public that is vulnerable to this and may not be as sophisticated to protect themselves, ” Lievrouw said.

There are various ways to protect yourself. On campus, there are three basic solutions: use a counter extension, connect to the UCLA_SECURE Wi-Fi network or use UCLA’s virtual private network.
Using another Firefox extension such as Blacksheep will notify you when someone is accessing your cookie information. However, that’s the extent of protection.

Connecting to UCLA’s only secure Wi-Fi network on campus will require you, in both Mac OS X and Windows 7, to go into your network preferences and set up an account with your Bruin OnLine user name and password.

Finally, to connect via UCLA’s VPN, you will need to download two things: a program to use to connect, most likely Cisco’s VPN client, and a configuration file.

“It may seem like scaremongering, but to demand change, especially in the market, you do it with public demand,” Lievrouw said. “Firesheep was aimed at a dozen or so of the most popular sites. If you want to make a big demonstration, you choose the biggest target.”

“Pics or it didn’t happen,” is generally a joke. But really, if an event happens and there are no photos on Facebook, did it really happen?

Humans have terrible memories. Robots and computers generally have terrific memories.

Documenting and quantifying things help us by giving concrete reassurance, ensuring that whatever we’re doing is optimized.

Numbers and the act of quantifying provide the opaqueness where our flimsy memories only provide a foggy recollection.

Now, with the help of Facebook, all of your friendships are neatly delineated on one page.

Last week, Facebook began introducing its latest feature, “Friendship Pages.” This new option allows you to see all public data between two people on one page, including wall posts, comments, photos, events attended and mutual friends.

“Memory is not entirely voluntary. Things happen, and you just remember it. We often forget things, but Facebook says, ‘You have a record of it here,’” said Benjamin Karney, a professor of social psychology who also studies change and stability in relationships.

Users can view the pages of themselves and a friend, but they can also view any page as long as they are friends with one of the users and have permission to view both profiles.

This feature doesn’t create any new content. Instead, it aggregates and displays existing data in a consolidated way.

Quantifying our relationships in this way can be endearing.

“It gives me a fun and meaningful glimpse of the friendship between two people I know,” Facebook engineer Wayne Kao wrote on the Facebook blog.

I tend to use Facebook more to interact with friends who aren’t immediately accessible in real life.

Facebook allows relationships to transcend geographic and temporal boundaries, said Yunxiang Yan, a professor of anthropology who focuses on social change and development.

“(But) intensive face-to-face interaction may also be required. Both types are necessary in contemporary life,” Yan said.

With Facebook, it’s not strange to have networks of hundreds or maybe thousands of people.

“Facebook allows you to have this huge and complex network, one that used to require you to be a highly active and social person.

Fifty years ago, you’d be famous to have a network like this,” Karney said.

It’s normal to track memories; we’ve all written in a journal at one point or another or have looked through photo albums and scrapbooks. But what happens when this process is automated and aggregated so easily? Does this new way of quantifying friendships change the underlying nature of friendships?

“Did the telephone or printing press change the nature of relationships? No. Not in any profound way. It’s just another highly efficient way of communication. Fundamentally, our need to belong and our desire for companionship remains. Your need for a good friend still remains,” Karney said.

It’s important to note that our friendships – yes, offline friendships – should be supplemented, not supplanted by our online interactions.

“This might be the first step in forming deeply rooted and longer lasting relationships through commitment. If Facebook helps people escape from commitment, it goes nowhere,” Yan said.

Once I foolishly thought that liking computers meant I could and should be a computer scientist. Half of two programming classes later, I sought refuge in the social sciences.

Since that lapse in judgment, I decided to overcompensate by reading about everything tech-related to stay in the loop.

It’s not the hardware that excites me per se, though I will never turn down a good-looking device. Nor is it the software; I’m an admiring observer when it comes to both. What does excite me comes from what I know as a consumer and user of both of the above.

Technology in all its form, but especially the Internet and computers, is wired in daily life and study. From anthropology to economics to psychobiology, a connection can always be made.
Think of this as your weekly connection.

This column won’t tell you how to code the next Facebook, for I don’t know anything past “Hello World!” (the first thing you learn in any programming class), but it will try to illustrate how new and existing platforms, programs, and playthings will affect our collective behavior.

To inaugurate this column, I contacted two former professors of mine. One taught a seminar on Google; the other, by about three degrees of separation, helped create the Internet.

Asked what new developments or trends in technology they were most excited about, both mentioned the behemoth and ultimate curator of the Internet: Google.

Google has been extending its reach beyond search engine functions, dabbling in automobiles, alternative energy and television.

Earlier this month, The New York Times reported on Google’s modified Toyota Prius, which was spotted along Highway 1 driving itself. The car uses a series of sensors to navigate the streets and artificial-intelligence software to make decisions based on its surroundings.

“(Automated cars) won’t happen overnight,” said Martin Greenberger, the IBM chair in computers and information systems at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. “But what’s possible to achieve are worth paying attention to, especially as safety comes up as an issue.”

Robot cars have the potential to react faster and drive more efficiently than humans can. Implementing this technology could double the capacity of roads by allowing cars to drive closer together. While autonomous cars are far from appearing on the highways en masse, there is a strong safety incentive to eventually mass producing them.

As Google tests what’s possible in autonomous driving, the result “will influence the shape of personal transportation in ways that’s a little bit hard to draw the picture currently,” Greenberger said.

Yet there are many road blocks to implementing self-driving cars in the technical and legal realms.

Not to outdo itself on the streets with self-driven cars, Google took it to the shores and announced its partnership with Good Energies to invest a proposed $5 billion for offshore wind farms along the Atlantic Seaboard.

With the system’s 350-mile backbone cable, to be called the Atlantic Wind Connection, the states along the East Coast would be able to use and store turbine energy. There are clear environmental and economic benefits, but there are also bureaucratic and political hindrances. The project is still unfolding but worth following.

The last in this trio of Google pursuits is the initial release of Google TV, the latest attempt to integrate traditional cable, satellite and broadcast TV with video from YouTube or Netflix, alongside Web content.

“(Usually) you have a successful model and you continue, but in tech, it changes. Google knows how to do these things,” said John Richardson, professor and associate dean of UCLA’s Graduate Division in Information Studies. Richardson also teaches a Fiat Lux seminar on Google.

Google as a home entertainment platform may be confusing because it’s both hardware and software that could be integrated with your TV. Rather than channeling in on the specifics, imagine the Google search bar returning online video and live TV results in addition to Web results. By combining TV with the Web, the traditional entertainment system becomes interactive.

Smart phones have augmented our expectations of a cell phone and have changed the way we interact with mobile devices.

“TV has really worked its way right into the fabric of society. … In the longer term, (Google) could alter the way we use TV,” Greenberger said.

If TV is the next frontier to be revolutionized, I better get one soon.

What’s the home page of your browser? Whatever it is, that window is a subtle window to your accumulated interests or your way to get the news and, by a long shot, maybe even your appreciation for a faster load time.

Those interests we’ve amassed, the collective memory and general knowledge bank, have been developed and delivered from the top down. Facts used to be taught in school by rote. If someone deemed something important, it was important.

Now, the Internet is killing general knowledge. Why memorize state capitals and stanzas when you can look them up?

OK, I lie. I don’t think the Internet is killing general knowledge. I do think that there is a balance between the skills to look up a fact and knowing the fact itself.

Strive for that balance because general knowledge and the collective memory constantly change. Once cultural references are relegated to cultural relics.

Take, for example, Minerva – no, not Professor Minerva McGonagall or the Half-Life 2 mod – Minerva, the Roman goddess of wisdom who is, coincidentally, on our state’s seal. Minerva was born fully grown from the brain of Jupiter, similar to how California moved quickly from independence to annexation by the United States.

In contrast, we all have a long history, including Minerva and California, which we have to objectively view in its entirety to determine and develop our own beliefs.

I was listening to “This I Believe,” a broadcast on National Public Radio based on Edward R. Murrow’s radio show by the same name in the 1950s. Naturally, I wondered what it was that I believed.

When we were young, it was easy to have convictions. The sky was blue. Rocks were hard. In contrast to the absolute way we thought about people, events and ideas when we were younger, everything is more nuanced now – nuanced by our different backgrounds, interests and circumstances.

I believe in change – not of the Barack Obama variety, just change.

We are perpetually depositing a coin in our knowledge bank every day. Learning facts is not a means to an end; it’s a continuous cycle. It’s a lifelong accumulation of experiences, the people you’ve met and, of course, things you were taught.

The inclination to scapegoat the Internet for the dumbing down of society is easy. When the Egyptian god Thoth invented writing and offered it as a gift to the king of Egypt, the king said the “invention will produce forgetfulness” and “(equip) your pupils with only a semblance of (wisdom), not with truth.” When Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press, the same cries were heard.

Now, just as Thoth and Gutenberg had before, the Internet has dissolved and democratized the whole structure of knowledge.
The fountain of information has exploded – take advantage of it. We have the power to change how we digest knowledge, how we get the news and what news we get. We are no longer vassals ingesting information fed to us.

I had a humbling conversation with a columnist the other day. While deliberating on a column idea, I hastily suggested he write about the search for knowledge in the study of philosophy, to which he retorted, “OK, that’s weaksauce. The search for knowledge is an imperative of every major.”

So, my modest advice to you:

• Read a newspaper everyday, preferably this one because it’s free and it’s about you.
• Question everything and think critically. Don’t just passively absorb everything you’re taught – not because what you’re reading or hearing is wrong, but because you will stand to gain more by knowing why or why not.
• Talk to everyone, but listen more.
• Be curious. Always.

Knowledge is important because you cannot think critically and creatively without knowing a wide range of basic facts. How we connect and manipulate those facts are the foundations of thinking – and that’s what we’re here to learn.

You have the power to achieve that balance between knowledge and skill. You can change the home page of your browser.

And if you must know, my home page is blank – I appreciate the faster load time.

Imagine: It’s 2059. You’re in the Guiyu of Guangdong Province, China, strolling the streets. The air is crisp and the grass green. The cafe-lined streets are littered with people chatting and typing away on their laptops.

Actually, at this rate, the only thing Guiyu will be littered with is electronic waste, or e-waste, an umbrella term for discarded electronic devices.

Instead of the idyllic image of Guiyu above, the town is the main center of exported e-waste, in China.

The benefits of computers are obvious, but we often overlook the environmental costs and increased e-waste. For instance, it was Earth Day on Wednesday, and I’ll bet that we all used our computers without a thought of where they’d eventually end up.

As Jim Puckett, founder of the Basel Action Network, a recycling watchdog group, said in a statement, “It just so happens that the most benign part of a product’s life cycle is when it’s sitting on your desk. That happens in rich countries. The ugly parts of the life cycle, the dirtier parts, the production and the waste, happen in developing countries.”

An alarming 50 to 80 percent of American e-waste is exported to developing countries, driven by economic benefits and often in violation of international law.

It is counterintuitive to send emerging countries a defunct bundle of lead, mercury and cadmium wrapped in wires coated with highly toxic plastic and expect them to prosper. Nascent countries should not serve as virulent dumping grounds for our trash.

The emergence of netbooks – which are cheaper, smaller laptop computers – will dwarf efforts at regulating e-waste. The proliferation of netbooks means more people will be able to afford them. Efforts to bring computing technologies to developing countries calls upon these pillars of affordability to increase accessibility.

However, netbook consumers aren’t made up of the growing middle class or those who are buying a computer for the first time.

As of November 2008, 70 percent of netbook sales occurred in Europe – presumably to those who wanted an additional, more portable computer.

Netbooks range from about $200 to $400; that’s nearly a third of the price of a regular laptop computer, which ranges from about $600 to $1200.

Last month, AT&T offered customers in Atlanta and Philadelphia a netbook for only $50 if they signed up for an Internet service plan.

These low-priced computers will increase competition and drive prices down, but they will also drive up production and – in the long run – create more e-waste. Netbooks will stimulate a culture of disposable electronics.

This notion of planned obsolescence has already been cultivated with the rapid consumption of iPods, which are updated every year or two. It seems illogical to fix your iPod if it’s cheaper to buy a new one.

Hopefully, you won’t have to make a decision about recycling your computer anytime soon, but when you do, there are options. The Goodwill branch in Southern California offers a free computer recycling and donation program.

If you are considering purchasing a computer, check whether the company has a “take-back” program and, if so, where they will take back your computer to recycle. Dell, Lenovo and Toshiba all offer completely free take-back programs for computers. Hewlett-Packard, Apple, and Asus (laptops only) will take back some products for free. The quest for computing accessibility and affordability does not have to be synonymous with increased production and e-waste.

I’ve always wanted to be a meteorologist.

The forecast? Cloudy. Well, the technological forecast, anyway. The next big Internet innovation is cloud computing.

In this case, the “cloud” represents the intricacies of all of the interconnected computers on the Internet. Cloud computing is a way to store your data on the Internet and make it accessible anywhere, through any computer.

The simplest example of cloud computing is e-mail, which I believe I can safely assume we’re all familiar with. All of your data is stored online on servers, or the “cloud,” rather than your hard drive. Other Web-based services such as YouTube and Flickr use cloud computing.

There are numerous benefits to cloud computing. Due to the increasing bandwidth available online, cloud computing allows more complex programs and software to be accessed online, similar to how Google Docs operates. Also, because all data is stored in the “cloud,” you can not only use software, but also access your documents and photos that were on your desktop online. This higher degree of availability of software allows cross-platform use across Macs, Windows and Linux. It also increases the mobility of information, since you can access your software and data through any Web browser, essentially eliminating the need for ownership of multiple programs or a personal computer.

Cloud computing is important on a large scale because the Internet has created a global platform. However, only 16.5 percent of the global population has a computer, and just 23.8 percent have Internet access. Developing countries can take advantage of this technology because it removes the reliance on owning a personal computer. The process of renting applications with borrowed or cheaper computers makes computing easy and affordable. Similar to the cost benefits of renting a car, cloud computing makes computing power a pay-as-you-go enterprise and makes it available to the masses.

One particular application that stands out is Nivio, a company based in Geneva that was founded by 25-year-old Sachin Duggal. It is an online desktop program that uses cloud computing technology, allowing access to the Windows XP interface and all of your data through any computer connected to the Internet.

I believe in cloud computing and Nivio because the target audience is not people living in developed nations, but rather the developing nations. This will make computing more affordable in the future.

On a continent such as Africa, which only accounts for 3.4 percent of the online global population, a technology like Nivio could be a step toward increasing education levels and infrastructure by connecting it to the rest of the world – something that is desperately needed.

The World Economic Forum has recently awarded Nivio and Duggal the Technology Pioneer Award for 2009, an honor given to visionary companies that will have a world-changing impact on society and businesses. Nivio is in good company with past recipients of the prize: Google in 2002 and the Mozilla Corporation in 2007.

Benefits aside, there are obvious risks and stigmas involved with storing sensitive data through a third party. Especially in America, where there is a strong emphasis on privacy, ownership and personalization, cloud computing services will have to emphasize the benefits to overcome initial reluctance.

In the long run – when we trust the cloud – the personal computer will become less relevant and cheaper, which is beneficial to everyone.

On its Web site, Nivio states, “It is only a matter of time before the PC is just a browser (as) browsers are … incorporated into more consumer devices every day from TVs to game consoles.”

However, cloud computing is still in its early stages. For now, it seems that a mix of cloud and non-cloud or hard-drive computing will be the best route. We’ll see how my weather report fares.

In the spirit of the World Wide Web’s 20th birthday last Friday, I’d like to celebrate my favorite thing on the Web right now: Twitter.

On the surface, it is deceptively simple. It’s a social network and a micro-blogging tool in which you exchange 140-character updates with your “followers.” These blurbs are publicly visible by default, but can be restricted to just your friends.

Critics deride Twitter as a fad and label users as bandwagon followers, but what they fail to note is the value in its real-time search feature and extensive uses. When my Internet was deathly slow, I went on Twitter and found that Time Warner’s Los Angeles servers were down due to hacker attacks. Not even Google can match those instantaneous results yet.

The more obvious comparison is with Facebook’s status updates. With Facebook’s new design and concept curiously similar to Twitter, why should you bother with Twitter?

Despite Facebook’s new emphasis on conversation, it is still essentially a closed network, while Twitter is the opposite. What you share on Facebook is restricted only to your friends, while Twitter updates are displayed on a live public time line.

Twitter’s search feature makes use of this real-time information and enables a two-way exchange creating shared experiences of big events, such as President Barack Obama’s inauguration. It’s like a big couch for the world to watch TV on.

If the Internet is the “Global Village,” then Twitter is its coffee shop. It is an open forum that encourages the exchange of news and ideas, functioning as another channel of communication.

“On Twitter, it’s strictly about the content you put out. The emphasis is more on content and subject matter,” said Patricia Wayne, a second-year comparative literature student. “It’s about conversation now. Fast conversation.”

Twitter ensures the availability of fact and opinion. It’s another tool to broaden your network, your perspective and your ideas. It’s with these that you are able to inspire and spread your knowledge. And because Twitter is still evolving, it caters to a wide range of interests.

If you’re a celebrity fanatic, you’ll find celebrities such as Jimmy Fallon, Snoop Dogg, and Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore active on Twitter. If celebrities are willing to divulge their thoughts, daily foibles, complete with pictures, paparazzi are basically rendered obsolete.

Two guys met Shaquille O’Neal through his Twitter. After receiving a Tweet from Shaq saying he was at a diner in Phoenix, the guys, skeptical, drove to the restaurant.

Sensing kindred spirits around, Shaq sent out a Tweet inviting anyone else in the diner to say hi. The guys did. Following the meet-up, Shaq Tweeted, “To all twitterers, … we r from twitteronia, we connect.” Thanks to Twitter, fans and a famous athlete were able to connect in the real world.

If you’re a politico, there are many members of Congress who are Twittering. Their Tweets provide a candid look at our elected representatives, allowing an unprecedented level of exchange between politicians and their constituents.

“The best part is being able to directly talk to Missourians about my day without reporters editing!” Sen. Claire McCaskill said in a Tweet.

If you’re a news junkie, you probably enjoy the constant flow of information and can appreciate the speed at which it’s delivered. David Schlesinger, the editor-in-chief of Reuters, recognizes the potential of Twitter.

In a Silicon Alley Insider post, Schlesinger wrote, “I’m using Twitter to live Tweet things that interest me and to give a more personal take on what’s going on. I think it’s important to try it. … I took great pleasure in beating the wire!”

If you’re an L.A. local, you may want to follow Kogi BBQ, a Korean barbecue taco truck that constantly Tweets its location and attracts block-long lines of customers. Earlier this week when Lebron James was on campus working out at the Wooden Center, someone spotted him and sent out a Tweet.

In the same way that coffee shops serve as a center of social interaction, Twitter is doing the same – it provides users a place to talk, read, entertain or muse to pass the time.

This column was also featured in UWire.

The information highway just got a little more crowded. There are now more than 1 billion people on the Internet, according to comScore, an Internet research firm. The Internet’s democratization of information has made a seemingly infinite amount of knowledge easily accessible. However, this also has its pitfalls.

Vint Cerf, one of the fathers of the Internet, wrote, “The notion that the world’s knowledge is literally at your fingertips is very compelling and is very beguiling.”

The question remains: Is the Internet making us stupid?

In an article in The Atlantic, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Nicholas Carr argues that the Internet has negatively altered our way of understanding information because of the lack of “deep thinking” that comes from “deep reading.” In effect, our attention span has hit entropy, spiraling down into uncertainty.

Carr faults the Internet for feeding our inclination to skim. But this skimming is not detrimental; it has allowed us to gather main points – and thus read – more quickly. Attention span isn’t solely based on how long you can tolerate reading nuanced articles on esoteric subjects. With all the information that’s available, trying to absorb all of it is a rather futile notion. The more important task is to become filters of essential and relevant information.

Martin Greenberger is the IBM chair in computers and information systems at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, a senior fellow at the Milken Institute and president of the Council for Technology and the Individual. Greenberger said, “The use of the Internet can serve to supplement and enhance literary reading rather than supplanting it. TV is what numbs the mind, not Google or the Internet. They are interactive and stimulative. They should encourage deeper reading, not discourage it.”

Growing up as an only child, I plowed through crosswords and word searches – maybe this is what cultivated my ease and finesse with the Internet and Google. However, I cannot wholly deny my deficit in attention span, though I’d rather call it my relentless curiosity. Some people use the Internet for purely frivolous things, but it has helped others to thrive. New skills are evolving. The Internet facilitates finding connections and understanding surrounding context, which requires a more active kind of attention.

It’s not just what you know that makes you intelligent but rather the ability to pull all of those pieces together and see the relationship. Albert Einstein didn’t invent the individual parts to E=mc2. The parts already existed; Einstein just saw them in a particular light, understood the parts and made a connection.

Using the Internet is like solving a crossword puzzle. It is an analytical activity that requires you to define the parameters of your search, choose which results best answer your query then judge the validity of the information by seeking more sources or more information. This active pursuit of information engages important cognitive circuits in the brain, based on a study by the UCLA Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. Gary Small, a professor at the Semel Institute and director of UCLA’s Memory and Aging Research Center, concluded, “Internet searching engages complicated brain activity, which may help exercise and improve brain function.”

When you look up a location via GPS or look up a word online, the context is lost. However, Web sites like Wikipedia have hyperlinks – trails of related information that preserve the lost context in a new form. When browsing an article online, hyperlinks are sprinkled across the page, linking to other related articles and pages.

Sharon Traweek, an associate professor in the UCLA department of history, elaborated. “Different Internet search engines lead us into many new kinds of links between ideas and people,” Traweek said. “Searching at YRL shows us what the Dewey Decimal System juxtaposes. Trolling the sale bins at a bookstore or scanning course reading lists can reveal other patterns. Exploring various classification systems is useful for thinking.”

Wherever you begin, hyperlinks allow exploration to more information, building on your knowledge base.

In this way, there are endless opportunities to learn in a Web 2.0 generation. Small also notes, “Brains are developing circuitry for online social networking and are adapting to a new multitasking technology culture.” The premium put on engagement and participation allows a new way of contributing and learning. The more minds that are exposed to new and great works, the more inspiration and ideas are bred and discovered.

Just ask yourself: How many Wikipedia pages have you read for fun, and how many different newspapers from across the world are you reading? This diversity and wealth of information and opinion has made us more knowledgeable and about a variety of things – successfully turning us into “cultural omnivores,” a term used by Tak Wing Chan and John Goldthorpe, two researchers from Oxford University.

The Internet has become an extension of ourselves. While every individual may not be getting smarter, collectively, we are.

A billion down, 5 billion to go.

This column was also featured in UWire.

During a visit to the tech hub that is Silicon Valley, Barack Obama, the biggest geek to hit the White House since Al Gore, touted a new position in White House if he were elected: Chief Technology Officer. But with the economic state of our country still volatile, the little-known CTO appointment seemed irrelevant.

Au contraire; it is very relevant if we want to regain our economic strength and be competitive again in a continually globalizing world.

Obama should be actively searching for a person to fill this role immediately. There has been speculation surrounding appointments of Vint Cerf, Google’s “Chief Internet Evangelist,” Amazon CEO Jeffrey Bezos, and Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems. The difficulty lies in choosing someone who is skilled in the technology field, but also has administrative abilities.

While the specifics of the job have not been revealed, Obama’s “Blueprint For Change” briefly outlined this completely new CTO’s role to “ensure that our government and all its agencies have the right infrastructure, policies and services for the 21st century.” If you’ve ever visited a government site, you will be immediately reminded of the simple sites made in the ’90s. Beneath the antiquated sites is the seemingly anachronistic way of manually filing data and records. This is probably why the Sept. 11 hijackers were issued green cards even as the FBI was investigating them.

However, this CTO role is vital to all areas, not just to Web sites and digitizing records. The CTO would not only exist to improve efficiency of the government’s use of technology, but also evaluate how our country’s economy can benefit from investment in technology infrastructure and research and development. Whether the CTO position will be a cabinet-level position or an advisory role is critical in defining the direction of technology in Washington.

This year, the United States was ranked 15th out of 30 nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a ranking determined by broadband development, speed and price. The U.S.’s rank has been falling since 2001 – no coincidence that George W. Bush took office that year. This is pathetic for the country that has innovated countless technologies. When the government invests in science and technology, as it did with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, our country produces great things: namely, the Internet. Not only would a stronger emphasis on technology fuel innovation, it would create more jobs – something much needed given that the current unemployment rate is 7.2 percent, the highest since 1993.

It’s clear than that the nations who make broadband a priority by integrating across agencies and putting resources behind the plan succeed more than those that don’t. In South Korea and Japan, government support was pivotal to its broadband success. In Japan, the chairman of the Information Technology Strategy Council outlined a plan to make Japan the “world’s leading IT nation” by 2005. They succeeded. New technology emerges from serious research and serious research needs government backing.

This emphasis on technology is not new to our president-elect, whose campaign capitalized on the social networking capabilities of the Internet. Anyone can submit policy ideas to his campaign Web site and the change.gov Web site set up for his transition to the White House. Changes like these are what Washington needs. Washington needs to be more like the Internet: accessible, fast, and transparent.

Life, inclusive of technology, politics, and everything else, is a beta – it can only get better. The future of technology and access to information need to go in the right direction, one that squanders apathy and resolves human conflict. That starts with appointing the right person for this new CTO position and making sure that the US takes advantage of the technology at our feet.

This column was also featured in UWire.

Don’t be evil – as the Google mantra goes. Or at least, be a little evil for the greater good.

Immediately after Google’s introduction of their new project, Google Flu Trends, the Cassandra cries roared from privacy groups. Cassandra was given the gift of prophecy by Apollo, yet cursed so that no one would believe her predictions. This is no Cassandra, though; and there is certainly no privacy infringement disaster on the horizon.

Google Flu Trends takes aggregated search queries such as “flu-like symptoms” and graphs them on a map showing areas where those queries are high, hopefully giving early warning of possible outbreaks. While Google Flu Trends isn’t able to give us specific information like the number of outbreaks or which strain is circulating, it is unmatched in its speed and accuracy. The information is current and updated on a daily basis; whereas the US Centers for Disease Control can take up to two weeks to collate official information. Google compared its collected statistics against five years of figures from the CDC, which has a network of 1,500 doctors across the nation who provide weekly reports on the statistics of patients complaining of flu-like symptoms.

The project’s positives far outweigh the petty privacy concerns. However, shortly after the release of Google Flu Trends a week ago, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, as well as other privacy groups, issued statements of concern for individuals’ privacy.

In analyzing the general public’s reaction to Google Flu Trends, two distinct groups emerge: one that feels that this will only create more hysteria and fear, and one that embraces the information and views it as an opportunity to prevent the spread of an infectious disease. The former promotes individual privacy above information for the community and ignorance above information. Any tool can be misused, but that doesn’t mean we should excuse it completely.

Maybe EPIC isn’t the Cassandra in this story, but Google is. To predict looming catastrophes for preventative measures is not to create fear and set the disaster in motion. Alan Atkisson, in his book “Believing Cassandra,” writes, “too often we watch helplessly, as Cassandra did, while the soldiers emerge from the Trojan horse just as foreseen and wreak their predicted havoc. Worse, Cassandra’s dilemma has seemed to grow more inescapable even as the chorus of Cassandras has grown larger.” The chorus of privacy groups is beyond the pale. Collective intelligence may be impalpable now, but Google’s collaboration with health and the Internet is progress, evil or not.

It was these same privacy advocacy groups that prompted Google to link its privacy policy on its homepage this past July where Google clearly outlines how it “anonymizes” and collects the aggregated data. Google makes logs anonymous by changing bits in a stored IP address while keeping the cookie. This process makes it less likely that the IP address can be linked back to the cookie. Because it relies on these methods of “anonymizing” and aggregated data, information cannot be used to identify individual users. In fact, individual data would be useless because data like this are only meaningful across large populations of Google search users. But this collection of aggregated search queries is nothing new. Google Trends is another feature of Google that collects top search queries daily and ranks them. If you were to look at the popular search queries on Nov. 4, you will find terms such as “McCain’s concession speech” or “Did Prop 8 pass?”

There is always an unwritten exchange when we make the decision to use Google. Of course they collect our data – this process is one of the founding pillars of Google. Earlier this month, the company took further steps to protect user privacy by shortening its previous 18-month IP address retention policy to nine months, while still retaining utility of the data and being mindful of user privacy.

However, if you are still concerned about privacy and worry that your search queries will brand you with a scarlet “F” – there are alternatives. Use a public computer. On a public computer, your IP address and cookie are irrelevant. If you would like to search at home, there is a Firefox extension called NoScript that will block Google Analytics from collecting your data. However, at home when you generally do not have control over your IP, deleting cookies routinely will break the link between your information and your IP address.

This alarmist reaction to Google Flu Trends, which aims at informing the public and more effectively using our resources, seems paltry compared to the bevy of civil liberties that have been violated in the name of fighting terrorism. I’d much rather EPIC investigate the Patriot Act than Google.

This column was also featured in UWire and UC Davis’ The Aggie (PDF).