It's russian dolls all the way down

The acts of the mind, wherein it exerts its power over simple ideas, are chiefly these three: 1. Combining several simple ideas into one compound one, and thus all complex ideas are made. 2. The second is bringing two ideas, whether simple or complex, together, and setting them by one another so as to take a view of them at once, without uniting them into one, by which it gets all its ideas of relations. 3. The third is separating them from all other ideas that accompany them in their real existence: this is called abstraction, and thus all its general ideas are made.

John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690)

Be not the programmer that beats down my door...

``I think that it's extraordinarily important that we in computer science keep fun in computing. When it started out, it was an awful lot of fun. Of course, the paying customers got shafted every now and then, and after a while we began to take their complaints seriously. We began to feel as if we really were responsible for the successful, error-free perfect use of these machines. I don't think we are. I think we're responsible for stretching them, setting them off in new directions, and keeping fun in the house. I hope the field of computer science never loses its sense of fun. Above all, I hope we don't become missionaries. Don't feel as if you're Bible salesmen. The world has too many of those already. What you know about computing other people will learn. Don't feel as if the key to successful computing is only in your hands. What's in your hands, I think and hope, is intelligence: the ability to see the machine as more than when you were first led up to it, that you can make it more.''

Alan J. Perlis (April 1, 1922-February 7, 1990)

I do hope that the date of the quote doesn't deter from its importance.

Sssh, it's the truth

Work

Work

It turns out that people do in fact disappear, they die, they get ushered away into the secret recesses of government regimes. The Green Hornet project, named after one of the greater cryptographic processes in history, is an initiative to solve some of these things. Having received initial collaboration from Al Jazeerah, myself and Jason Norwood-Young (of 10Layer fame) were fortunate enough to be shortlisted in the African News Innovation Challenge. The sponsors flew us, and 39 other shortlisted projects up to Zanzibar for a weekend of networking, brainstorming and setting the stage for international collaboration.

The last 2 days have been a strenuous and brutal challenge, but while I'm intellectually punch drunk the stories that have been shared have been priceless.

Our Green Hornet project quickly found collaborators in the form of Karen Reilly of the Tor Project, and various news agency looking for ways to create secure networking channels between themselves and their sources. The level of bribery and corruption, particularly in countries like Nigeria where bribes are the expected form of business, is nothing short of mind blowing. Nation states are actively pursuing individuals in order to shut down the truth. In truth though, it's not just the governments. Fingers have been pointed to international companies like Vale too.

It started becoming evident that we were onto something when people were mentioning the Green Hornet project throughout their own discourses, on how it could play such an important part in what they were doing. It also quickly became evident just how poor current security structures were, through conversation with journalists around what they were currently doing. This included sending emails directly to the editor.

Part of the outcome from the last two days is for us to take the current technology stack, and find that fine line between usability and security. A large part of the problem is that people are all too willing to throw away their privacy based on ease of use. One of the things I forget far too readily is that people are not technical, and need tools that can interface with them, that they understand, in order to use them. Karen (yep, remember her, from Tor) has been pushing past our initial stack and focusing on a much larger project, where this platform could be finely, and easily, layered into several pre-existing infrastructures.

While, I'd like to thank the ANIC group for not only shipping this bunch of hacks and hackers to this remote paradise, to protect us from the thinking that takes place in our daily lives, but also for helping create the networks that will help build larger, sustainable projects, that help bring about liberty and freedom of data, but more importantly of people.

Play

Play

African New Innovation Challenge Finalists Announced

After being swamped with entries which far exceeded their expectations, ANIC have finally released the list of finalists to the world.

It seems that the names aren't up on the website yet, however I've added a link to their press release for download.

I feel honoured to have been part of the Green Hornet team, focusing on journalist confidentiality, which will be going through to the next round of the competition.

You can find the press release [here][1].

[1]: https://www.dropbox.com/s/82v0cu993afrxb3/ANIC Press Release - 2012 Finalists Announced.pdf?m

Know Thyself - γνῶθι σεαυτόν

I find "The Self" the most difficult metaphysical construct to deal with. Pre-conceptions and cognitive bias, a series of frames that we associate to a variety of anchors. We struggle and struggle, but trying to find an objective reality to make decisions about our own lives is impossible.

I grew up, or aged rather, in a family of entrepreneurs. I loved technology, and hit my personal stride around the same time as the .com boom. I read Red Herring, knew the insides of all the cool companies that were disrupting industries, basically I "got" what was going on in the internet space. Adding all these things together about 5 years back, I associated all the things that I loved with being entrepreneurial. It was easy to do, my friends run their own start-ups, I've always worked in start-ups, and my family runs several companies. Obviously I'm genetically and socially predisposed to startups. Yeah, well, I knew that about myself.

So here's the thing they don't tell technologists about start-ups: Start-ups are a lot of admin, a lot of work, and a lot of client interaction. Yeah, they can be fun, and you can play with cool tech, but if you've got yourself pegged as the "Business guy" or the "Sales guy" you're probably not going to get too near to it.

You see somewhere along the line I got hooked by the start-up line, and I figured myself an entrepreneur. I fell in love with the idea of starting companies for the sake of starting companies. The sharp ones that are reading this will immediately point out the complete paradox of creating something that has no intrinsic value, in order to create value. I now look at myself, 5 years down the line, knowing that I don't love what I do on a daily basis. Knowing that somewhere out there is something that I love, and knowing that I need to get there.

The trick is you don't know what you don't know, and you'll never get to taste unagi if you don't try interesting things. The trick is you also need to do what you love, be who you are, and be completely honest with yourself.

I am not a revenue generating salesman. I'm a tinkerer, a hacker, I like to play with toys and see what they do, how they work on the inside. Being this honest with myself was liberating, what I do with this information still seems a little overwhelming, but I'm young, and I've got my life ahead of me.