My Thoughts

2011-03-26T12:57:00.000-07:00

Do trust networks follow power laws? Apparently they should. They are governed by the two guiding factors of scale-free networks: growth, and preferential attachment. It is evident that when a new node joins the network, it tends to connect to the node having more links (the more trusted node) with a higher probability. A study by Guardiola, et al has found that the in and out degree distributions in trust networks follow power laws, with the network comprising of several clusters of widely varying sizes. Interestingly, they have also found that the cluster coefficients of those varying-sized clusters largely remain constant. That means that, even in a large cluster, all connected nodes of any single node have a high degree of connectivity with one another. If that is the case, to maintain power law characteristic, there has to be more or less uniform distribution of nodes in each cluster with low degree of connectivity. Does that say that each cluster has some nodes with low trust values, and if so, how does their trustworthiness change over time? It will be interesting to study how structures of trust networks evolve over time.

2011-02-22T10:14:00.001-08:00

The fact that some people still deny the imminent threat from cyberterrorism is surprising. In a recent article, Maura Conway argued that such a threat is highly unlikely in near future based on three assumptions: one, that the terrorists don’t have sufficient expertise and training in computing to launch a cyberattack; two, there is no glamour per se (no moving images to capture and show, etc.) in such an attack; and three, such an attack does not have the potential to be viewed as an attack, but has a higher chance of being hidden. Let’s talk about the first assumption. Data shows that about 2% of the Jihadis came from a computing background. But they have expressed a significant interest in using technology as a weapon for cyberattack. High degree of interest, coupled with strong motivation to succeed, is what is needed for pursuing the necessary skills and using them to launch an attack. And we cannot deny the consequences of such an attack given the unconditional acceptance of the power of technology. So the question at hand is should we wait until the terrorists gain sufficient expertise to launch the attack and then react to it, or should we act proactively under the assumption that the terrorists have shown significant interest in launching such attacks.
Regarding the second and third assumptions, I believe that’s more of a cultural issue. Whether glamour and propaganda are the driving forces of terrorist attacks is yet to be verified and should not be concluded from past few incidents.

2010-09-28T12:21:00.000-07:00

Commoditization of higher education
Over the years a practice has evolved to identify higher education as a commodity. This is a clear shift from viewing education as a greater good where knowledge is imparted from the educators to the students. More recently, degree programs are viewed as commodities that can be “purchased online” or “purchased from a shop”. Academic administrators have started talking about “selling a degree program as a packaged good”. How much beneficial is this to the society in the long run? “We should remember that colleges and universities are about a great deal more than measurable utility”, argued Drew Gilpin Faust, the President of Harvard. The argument identifies the fundamental problem – education cannot be commoditized and evaluated by measurable metrics. This brings us to another fundamental question – how much should we value online learning over traditional face-to-face knowledge transfer? How effective is online technology in transferring knowledge from faculty to students? This depends on how knowledge is defined. If we define knowledge as a set of tools and techniques to survive in the workplace, then online learning may be able to provide that knowledge. But if knowledge is defined as a “clear perception of truth” [Webster], then we must rely on the intellect of the faculty in imparting knowledge in a traditional face-to-face setting. “Human beings need meaning, understanding, and perspective as well as jobs, argued Faust, “the question should not be whether we can afford to believe in such purpose in these times, but whether we can afford not to”. And we must not treat education as a commodity because we cannot afford to.

2010-09-18T11:42:00.000-07:00

There’s been an ongoing debate on the future Internet architecture, whether there is a need of a clean-slate design or an evolutionary research. The proponents of the former approach argue that a clean-slate approach is necessary for “Internet’s continued evolution into a secure, reliable, and cost-effective infrastructure” (as argued by Jennifer Rexford). Let’s delve deeper into the single most significant cause behind Internet’s phenomenal popularity. As argued by Yochai Benkler in Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom, the evolution and popularity of the Internet is based on the concept of non-market economy, characterized by “decentralized individual action – specifically new and important cooperative and coordinate action carried out through radically distributed, non-market mechanisms that do not depend on proprietary strategies”. He called this “networked information economy”, which is displacing the industrial information economy. If we go with the clean-slate redesign approach with the constraint of keeping the cooperative social production model, will it be feasible to redesign a “secure and cost-effective” Internet free from regulations? Maybe not. So, the additional cost of redesigning the Internet architecture as compared to the value we will be getting out of it may not be significant.
On the other hand, with the evolutionary research, we can still maintain the cooperative social production model, and incrementally solve the problems at hand, with the fundamental constraint of incremental deployment.

2010-01-12T19:07:00.001-08:00

How much long term benefit do we have when we go online in the air? Recently, it has become a hype to use the wireless network in-flight. It’s more like “paying to get our communication compromised”. Airlines typically charge $10 - $12 per flight for using their wireless network. And what are we gaining? Doing business as usual. We can connect back to our organization’s network for information processing, communicate with colleagues and business partners, so far and so forth. What is the risk level? Well, it’s actually very high. Since it’s an open network, anyone connected to the network can capture our ongoing communications. And if it’s not encrypted over a secure tunnel or ssl, then our entire communication flow is compromised. Then there is the risk of shoulder surfing. We have no idea who the person is right next to us. As pointed out by Dr. Eugene Schultz in his consulting blog, we should take some precautions if we wish to go online in the air. More importantly, we should ask ourselves, do we really want to take all these hassles just to be online for a couple of hours?

2009-10-31T09:17:00.000-07:00

Finally, after ICANN is out of the control of US Department of Commerce, the Internet will be reaching out to billions of people across the globe which they can access using their mother tongue. Does that mean it’s a bad day for English language? Absolutely not. People who are arguing against non-Latin character domain names are simply missing the point that this is an important step to narrow down the digital divide. Imagine now a local business in Bengali can have a significant presence in the Internet reaching out to the local community without them having to learn English to buy online. And if the business owner wants to reach out to a broader community, she will buy the same domain name in English, or any other language she prefers. Of course, how many domain name an organization will have to buy and what will be the business model of domain registrars are open questions now and need to be debated. But this is a significant step towards internationalizing the Internet.

2009-09-27T11:04:00.001-07:00

In a recent interview, Chris Guttman-McCabe, vice president of regulatory affairs for CTIA, the wireless industry trade association, again iterates that the wireless industry should be outside the purview of net neutrality. This argument has been made by many in the past, including leading wireless service providers. They are clearly talking from their own point of interest. Why should Apple and AT&T be allowed to block Google voice in iPhones? Doesn’t that violate net neutrality? Will Verizon subscribers be allowed to download video contents only from Verizon video service, or will they be allowed to choose and download any video they like from any content provider? These are the broad questions that need to be addressed in net neutrality. And if the wireless industry is exempted from net neutrality because it is “different”, it will harm consumers in the long run and will clearly be detrimental to the advancement of research and development.

2009-08-28T08:02:00.000-07:00

Finally the Federal Communications Commission decided to launch an investigation into the wireless market. It was long overdue. FCC will ask for feedback on "cost-effective best practices in information disclosure from within the communications sector." That means all billing complaints and complaints about other service dissatisfaction will play a major role for the customers to choose a service, which is unfortunately missing now. FCC will also investigate the market competition from different perspectives. Whether it will be dealing with issues normally dealt with by the FTC is a long term question, and will have to be dealt at appropriate level. What the investigation is still missing is whether the wireless service providers are violating net neutrality. This question has come up more often in recent months, and specially after incidents involving Skype and other similar applications, it has become apparently clear that the issue needs some attention from appropriate authority.

2009-08-27T20:13:00.001-07:00

Can the popular notion of “content is king” be the basis of justification for not adopting net neutrality? It has been a popular line of argument by service providers to build high speed data lines, on a fundamental assumption that the users will be welcoming them and paying for them to get faster service on the Internet. How does that violate net neutrality? The basic question is whether the service providers should be allowed to enter the business of providing content, which clearly becomes a conflict of interest. Even more detrimental to the notion of net neutrality is the idea that service providers entering into business deals with content providers, preferring some contents over others. How does that affect the customers? If net neutrality is not adopted, service providers are free to set preference on selected contents (or contents from selected providers), which clearly violates the customers’ rights to access contents of their choice. If contents are tied to the service that they subscribe, that not only violates the notion of free and neutral Internet, but also violates the right to first amendment.
Coming back to the original question of whether the popular notion of “content is king” can be the basis of justification for not adopting net neutrality, we have to evaluate the underlying assumption of “content is king”. There has been an ongoing debate on whether content or the connectivity is the most important consideration, and people have argued that even if content has grown on the Internet over the years, the growth is slower than what has been speculated. And also the conjecture of the popularity of streaming media is now being questioned by scholars as the popularity of faster than real-time transmission is gaining momentum. So the argument of “phenomenal increase in content” put forward by the service providers to build high-speed networks, and subsequently using them to discriminate against customers and content providers, is fundamentally flawed, and is geared towards their business growth without much consideration of the well being of the society and the healthier growth of the Internet. This cannot and should not be the basis for rejecting net neutrality.

2009-03-22T11:37:00.000-07:00

Recently, there has been an increasing emphasis on the multipolar existence of the world. It has been emphasized by Samuel Huntington in coining the phrase "uni-multipolarity"; or as argued by Fareed Zakaria "...these core identities - deeper than the nation state - remain the defining features of life". Are these really core values? As for myself, being an Indian citizen, it's difficult for me to ignore the historical perspective of our glorious past in defining the "core values". Consider the rise of regional nationalism in India, based on language, culture, and worst even, religious separatism. We should not forget the unified glory of India's historical past, when no one questioned whether Emperor Ashoka was a Hindu or a Buddhist, or Emperor Akbar was a Muslim. As argued by Amartya Sen, these two were the greatest unifiers of India, who tried to bring the entire country together irrespective of cast or religion. Is Samuel Huntington's "clash of civilization" based on religious identity simply trying to make this multipolar existence even more acute?

2008-03-02T12:33:00.001-08:00

I am reading "The Next American Century" (Nina Hachigian, Mona Sutphen).
"Every pivotal power shares the goal of a non-nuclear North Korea that plays by the rules of the international community". Isn't it true that all countries should (must) adhere to the rules of international community? Has it been that way? Aren't we seeing preemptive and unilateral strikes, illegal use of chemical weapons in recent warfares, and unilateral declaration of independence? Are these "adhering to international laws"? Or is it that some countries are exempted from adhering to international laws, while "expecting" (and demanding) that others have to?

2007-01-04T14:31:00.000-08:00

It is this time of the year again; time to take a resolution, time to dream of achieving something, time to promise ourselves and others; many of these dreams will come true, some will remain unfulfilled.

This is a difficult time for the world; lot of hatred, oppression, and humiliation. May God bless us all. We should all unite against the killing of human beings in the name of God and religion; either by terrorists and religious extremists in the name of nationalism and religion, or by governments in the name of suppressing the terrorists. In both cases, the underlying hard fact is that innocent people get killed. Unfortunately, some of these acts get punished, others get praised!

2006-08-17T15:37:00.000-07:00

What are we living with........
In some parts of the world, year-old sentiment is being used as an excuse to carry out (and support) preemptive strike leading to wide-scale war. Is this what we live for today - war, humiliation, terrorism?

2006-06-11T19:49:00.000-07:00

In one part of the book (The World is Flat), the author argued that "no two countries that are both part of a major global supply chain will ever fight a war against each other as long as they are both part of the same global supply chain. Because people embedded in major global supply chains don't want to fight old-time wars anymore. They want to make just-in-time deliveries of goods and services - and enjoy the rising standards of living that come with that". This argument by the author is not very strong. War between two countries are fought with either a political motivation or mere frustration and humiliation of the government by some acts of active (or passive) terrorism. In both cases, common people (who are enjoying the rising standards of living that come with major global supply chains) are not making decisions whether to engage in war or not. Government and terrorists do not base their judgement on the economic well-being of the common people when carrying out either war or active terrorism.

2006-06-10T20:17:00.000-07:00

More thoughts...

Does the doctrine of Karl Marx have an indication that market-driven society (capitalism?) is the only way to eliminate all differences (religious, economic and social) in our society? Although Marx was a vocal critic of capitalism, he envisaged that capitalism would destroy all religious allegiances, leading to an inevitable struggle between capital and labor.

My thoughts

2006-06-10T18:13:00.000-07:00

I am reading "The World is Flat" by Thomas Friedman. The book is a very well-written in-depth account of how the world changed in the 21st century in the face of technological advancement and global offshoring and outsourcing. Some particularly interesting analysis are:
Companies are outsourcing jobs not primarily to cut costs, but to enhance innovation and speed up growth. In that sense, the term "outsourcing" should more appropriately be replaced by "sourcing".
From the perspective of the society whose jobs are being outsourced: people should look at the broader gain of the society as a whole, and not at the individual loss. They should prepare themselves to take up the challenge to face the global workforce and thus make themselves "employable". This comes with proper education and training.
Some of the obstacles to a frictionless global market are "institutions, habits, cultures and traditions that people cherish precisely because they reflect non-market values like social cohesion, religious faith and national pride". Anti-globalization activists believe that we may lose thses values if the world is flattened. Thinking from a broader perspective, this is not true; because, people can still maintain their religious faith and social values in a cohesive society (does flattened world necessarily mean a cohesive society?).