A Chip On Her Shoulder

Notes 1st 4 Sections

Notes, References, and threads by section

Notes on nodes:

Values of Notes

  1. One theme of this novel is that students and professionals often have not studied much, if anything, in the history of computing. Well, there’s a lot of history, going back to the Victorian era and wars aplenty. Here, we focus mainly away from Silicon Valley.
  2. Most notes here point to an explanation of an historical moment or a technology. Others are autobiographical. Some explain the novel’s hypothetical transformation and its ramifications.
  3. Several topics have expanded explanations we call “threads”: Accessibility including synthetic speech; Risks including failures; Reasoning, the logic paradigm and 1980s competition; and Tidbits of history, mostly wars.

    4. Sources for Notes

    1. Wikipedia is usually a solid resource but occasionally suffers from gender or national biases.
    2. Links are made only to sources likely to remain public. Members of IEEE and ACM have digital libraries. This author is a lapsed IEEE and ACM former editor and writer.
    3. Alas, excellent course notes often do not persist as programs and faculty come and go. Also some links are so long that truncation occurs.
    4. Searches for references usually started with DuckDuckGo in browsers to avoid advertising and tracking then sometimes used a specialized Google search tool we give away.
    5. Google Scholar provides a valuable context for important references, including citations, related articles, sources for text versions. Thanks, Google. Example: Google Scholar for ‘test data selection’.
    6. Podcasts that contain hours of historical interviews are: “History of Computing”; “Internet History”; “CommandLine Heroes”; and “Cyber”. Find these using a podcasts app, such as Icatcher for Apple IOS.

      7. Uses for Notes

      1. Computer science textbooks often have lengthy technical history that mentions founders and ideas that build the subject. But, these fail to capture the impacts and personalities that did the real work, had the fun, and suffered the losses. Many notes here could be offered as “odd moments” interjections during classroom discussions to complement faculty personal experiences. The web site will have a section for historical contributions of our readers.
      2. Some notes are autobiographical confessions for events and characters implanted in the story.
      3. Following are theme of “risks”,
        • the wonderful world of social media led to the avarice of capitalism;
        • synthetic speech used by people with vision loss is also a harbinger of terrorism;
        • accessibility pinpoints web vulnerabilities ;
        • “Consequential Reasoning” suggests a lost branch of computing, blamed on international competition, also unsuited to how modern students think, but maybe a cause for complexity and harm;

          • Notes on Section 1: Living Data

          Chapter 1.1 Beautiful Data

          1. (Fiction) ( The 2017 CumuLinker Reformation changed the Web to 1) protect private living data and (2) improve the mood of the country. The wearable Whisperer is new CumuLinker technology under evaluation in 2019. C-A-L-M (for “Conversation As Language Moderation” is a set of practices that introduce and accelerate productive interactions.
            The theory that explains the history and ill effects that led to the CumuLinker Revolution is known as surveillance capitalism.

            • Read more in Thread on CumuLinker Reformation (protected) .
            • Surveillance capitalism theory by Shoshana Zuboff examines economic and social issues since the Dawn of the Web. a must listen or read!

              • ,

            • Ada Byron Lovelace inspires modern women in computing with her Victorian era deed thinking. She lived a short life interacting technically and socially with famous industrialist Charles Babbage. Often hyped as “the first programmer”, her thinking employs “representation” that foreshadows modern computing and mathematical knowledge that stimulated Babbage’s experiments. Her detailed analysis of Babbage’s Analytic Engine was written at age 26 while maintaining a growing family and without any acknowledged professional status.

              –::
              Casey is influenced by the representation of data about living people as the currency of surveillance capitalism. She is awed by how well Lovelace and Babbage worked together as portrayed in her biographies.

            • The IBM 1620 computer was simple enough to trust to an undergraduate for mathematical exploration and IT administration.
              • IBM 1620 description …
              • Autobiographical note) Hours and hours and hours at the 1620 console at Ohio Wesleyan University in the 1960s launched this author into the computing field. Learning Fortran and assembly code was one capability gained, but the lingering lesson was how to get through the period of muddled code while re-engineering a compiler. Every computing student should experience this practical growth and learn from failure and exhaustion as a foundation for team programming, software process, verification/validation, documentation, and other skills taught as “Software Engineering”. Coding is an athletic activity that reveals strengths and weaknesses and preferences and affinity with machines.
                In memory of Robert L. Wilson, Mathematics Department Chair, Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware Ohio.

              .

            • “Spaghetti code” describes programs troubled by languages that forced control flow into and out of statements, making it hard to understand programs.
            • The Trickster mythological figure describes the US elected leader in the period of this novel in 2019.

              Disrespectful references to the Trickster are intended and a meaningful way to explain the fragile society before and during the 2017 CumuLinker Reformation, with after-effects to be seen.

            • ‘Risk’ Is a theme of the novel and a central force in computing, as well as life in general.
              • Terminology this novel tries to follow (from New Media Dictionary:
                • A “threat” is An indication of impending danger or harm, also “to inflict” or the agent for harm”.
                • “risk” means the possibility of suffering harm or loss.
                • a “hazard” is a source or situation with potential for harm.
              • Read threads about risks and software failures(protected) .
              • “Threat-caster” is a professional and personal characteristic often associated with the mythological “Cassandra” which is protagonist Casey’s root name. ‘book ‘Warnings’ by Richard Clarke describes incidents of threat-casting.

              • Chapter 1.2Casual Algorithms

              1. (Fiction) CumuLinker does Life Replay” using purloined private data plus public available information to produce a chronology that reads as if written by a journalist. Events might focus on geography, profession, family, health, or other stories that fit the occasion. Life Replay can also be used for personal introspection, e.g. professional review or interactions with another specific person.
              2. Algorithmic cruelty” occurred in reality in 2014 when Facebook surprised a parent with his recently deceased child’s picture.

                3. Chapter 1.3 Colorful times

                1. Text contrast is an important aspect of accessibility for people with low vision. It applies to all visual readers controlled by settings usually embedded in schemes operating as CSS for (Cascading Style Sheets) in Browsers. The readability factors for text contrast are specified and can be validated according to Web standards. This vulnerability is an example of a messy Web and a culture of complexity that supports an industry of developers, now expanded by penetration testers and bug bounty handlers.

                  2. Chapter 1.4 Seeing Things Differently

                  1. Sally and Casey became acquainted at a (Wikipedia) Fifth Generation conference in Japan. Learn more in Thread Reasoning about Fifth Generation and Prolog.
                  2. (Autobiographical) Sally’s loss of vision leads to standard practices learned as “vision rehabilitation”. She has written a manifesto for accessibility and maintains a blog remarkably like this author’s early experience.
                    “As Your World Changes blog.
                  3. The Apple iPhone is the primary communication, reading, gaming, and translating instrument for many people with low vision and enough $$$.
                    AppleVis.com tutorials and tips on using iPhones with VoiceOver speech and magnification
                  4. (Fiction) Casey has been invited for a special role under the Science Frontiers funding program. This is modeled after the National Science Foundation where a dozen researchers discuss, rate, and summarize submitted proposals and budgets. “Scientific Merit” and “Social contribution” and “Diversity” are traditional criteria. It is assumed that killer problems will be solved eventually or cast into a different scientific program. Negativity, as in “should never be used” or “cannot be verified” or “will introduce hazards” or “was done 20 years ago” are not included in recommendations that might reduce overall funding among competitive programs. Risks and threats could be assimilated into the review process.

                    5. (autobiographical) Or, so, it seemed to this reviewer until 2010. Funding for social, possibly negative, consequences had separate sources including nonprofit’s and other foundations.

                  5. A counter-example to threat aversion is NSF-funded CyberPhysical Systems about (Wikipedia) on Cyber-physical system.
                  6. (Fiction) Speculate about the Pink Page Rampage in Threads on CuuLinker (protected)and Section 6 through podcast-style interviews. CumuLinker Reformation riled up beneficiaries of surveillance capitalism, especially Silicon Valley employees. A protest is organized through the dark side of software and a specific vulnerability in web page design.

                    7. Chapter 1.5 Lessons Learning

                    1. Here is a summary of preceding Chapters and the protagonist’s planning for the following journey.

                      2. Notes on Section 2 “Threats Get Real”

                      Chapter 2.1 Risky Speaking

                      1. “Vocal terrorism” was predicted openly in 2007. Incidents have yet to be reported in 2022.
                      2. Speech technology is a mature industry with millions of users.

                        3. Chapter 2.2 Internet Down!

                        1. Internet outages are common but not cohesively described.

                        2. An Internet outage map
                        3. Code Red nationally manages emergency notification for regions and cities. not to be confused with sugary drinks or cyber alerts. …

                          4. Chapter 2.3
                          Consequential Reasoning

                          1. “Consequential Reasoning” is a coined term for using logic as the basis for computation within a process of documentation and analysis that drives the logic into programs then actions that make sense to humans.

                            2. Notes for Section 3 “Another Chance”

                            Chapter 3.1 Whisperers Meetup

                            1. Whisperers contain private data inter-connected with another person’s data in the physical sphere of a CumuLinker CALM moment. For example, CumuLinker recognizes that Gavin is a person Casey has tracked by Google search upon occasions. A body reader can sense attention vectors that amplify the personal historical connection with some type of haptic motion. CumuLinker can strengthen that attention-getting signal with settings that relate to time and place or community membership or family connectivity.
                            2. The CumuLinker vault of private data accumulated over history is rich in connectivity that amplifies human memory. Casey has tracked Gavin by his books and institutional affiliations. Gavin may have tracked Casey by location or hearsay about her interactions in their peer learning community.
                              • The (Wikipedia) “Quantified Self” aka Personal Quantification Movementillustrates motives that are now realized in mobile devices.

                                • Chapter 3.2 Lives Unfold

                                1. The location and institution are modeled after the Wang Institute of Graduate Studies, 1982-1987, Tyngsboro Massachusetts. Its Software Engineering Master Degree curriculum migrated to to Carnegie-Mellon Software Engineering Institute.
                                2. The “Massachusetts Miracle” period produced the mini-computer generation from companies: Wang, Digital, Apollo, Data General,These companies also had a cadre of part-time students in a gradually organizing discipline called “software engineering”. The culture of the time is displayed in Tracy Kidder’s “Soul of a New Machine”. …

                                  3. (Autobiographical) Benefactor , inventor of core memory, founder of Wang Labs, Doctor An Wang. was the most prolific, generous, idealistic, and fun executive I encountered in the computing industry. Ditto for the students, especially Elizabeth Shanahan, later President of the Society of Women Engineers and Dan Liggett, software cost entrepreneur.

                                  Chapter 3.3 Mature Branching

                                  1. A premiere Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) peer learning networkhas many models for peer learning.
                                  2. “Saging and Aging” directs attention to opportunities that build on life experience and courses on any topic someone knows about.
                                  3. Carolyn Heilbrun, Columbia University professor and author of Kate Fansler mysteries sums up aging in “book Last Gift of Time”.

                                  4. Bumper Sticker Computer Science — I forgot why I use this lin
                                    , but it’s fun.

                                    5. Notes for Section 4 “Nuclear Shadows”

                                    Chapter 4.1 Getting Acquainted

                                    1. Los Alamos National Laboratory was site for visit and fictional tour.
                                    2. Wildfires 2011 threaten LANL.
                                    3. Example of a Wildfire app

                                      4. Chapter 4.2 Dining On History

                                        Marilyn aspires to a role like

                                      1. security journalists Julia Angwin, now the Markup, author of “Dragnet Nation”.
                                      2. IBM Watson Success on Jeopardy used logic programming.
                                      3. “Mathematics Written on Sand” by W Kahan motivated floating point standards after exhibiting errors in scientific calculators.


                                      4. Parnas analysis of Reagan missile defense                                         started discussion of software responsibility.

                                        5. Scott Rosenberg commentary explains the context.

                                      5. Risks digest of failures in computing starting in 1981 continues documentation and discussion.
                                      6. Usenet was the primary discussion support network before Web Time and later migrated into Google groups.
                                      7. Computer Professionals for Software Responsibility (CPSR) had advocated for social and military causes starting in the 1980s as described in

                                        8. Browsers give warnings and privacy errors here…

                                        Babbage Institute CPSR oral history by Severo Ornstein.

                                      8. Lynn Conway engineering research, and academic careers followed a transsexual path and contributed to VLSI Revolution (Wikipedia).
                                      9. Hopper on Letterman explaining her nanosecond and Navy tours of duty working on COBOL.
                                      10. women educator oral histories . Women and the Future of Computing, video by Anita Borghelped originate goals and institutes for women in computing, including the annual Grace Hopper event.
                                      11. Sputnik and the Eisenhower Administration and Sputnik beeps from JPL
                                      12. Televised software safety case, Therac 25, radiation deaths initiated the “software safety” field from Google Scholar.
                                      13. “Total information awareness” reaction to 9-11
                                      14. Bug bounty programs, such as Fire Fox offered new career opportunities.

                                        15. Computer History Museum

                                        <LI Oxbridge

                                      15. unsure

                                        16. Notes on Section 4.3 “Team 3G Forms”

                                        1. Total Information Awareness project
                                        2. FOIA Effects of TIA
                                          /OL>

                                          3. Notes, References, and threads by section

                                          Notes on nodes:

                                          Values of Notes

                                          1. One theme of this novel is that students and professionals often have not studied much, if anything, in the history of computing. Well, there’s a lot of history, going back to the Victorian era and wars aplenty. Here, we focus mainly away from Silicon Valley.
                                          2. Most notes here point to an explanation of an historical moment or a technology. Others are autobiographical. Some explain the novel’s hypothetical transformation and its ramifications.
                                          3. Several topics have expanded explanations we call “threads”: Accessibility including synthetic speech; Risks including failures; Reasoning, the logic paradigm and 1980s competition; and Tidbits of history, mostly wars.

                                            4. Sources for Notes

                                            1. Wikipedia is usually a solid resource but occasionally suffers from gender or national biases.
                                            2. Links are made only to sources likely to remain public. Members of IEEE and ACM have digital libraries. This author is a lapsed IEEE and ACM former editor and writer.
                                            3. Alas, excellent course notes often do not persist as programs and faculty come and go. Also some links are so long that truncation occurs.
                                            4. Searches for references usually started with DuckDuckGo in browsers to avoid advertising and tracking then sometimes used a specialized Google search tool we give away.
                                            5. Google Scholar provides a valuable context for important references, including citations, related articles, sources for text versions. Thanks, Google. Example: Google Scholar for ‘test data selection’.
                                            6. Podcasts that contain hours of historical interviews are: “History of Computing”; “Internet History”; “CommandLine Heroes”; and “Cyber”. Find these using a podcasts app, such as Icatcher for Apple IOS.

                                              7. Uses for Notes

                                              1. Computer science textbooks often have lengthy technical history that mentions founders and ideas that build the subject. But, these fail to capture the impacts and personalities that did the real work, had the fun, and suffered the losses. Many notes here could be offered as “odd moments” interjections during classroom discussions to complement faculty personal experiences. The web site will have a section for historical contributions of our readers.
                                              2. Some notes are autobiographical confessions for events and characters implanted in the story.
                                              3. Following are theme of “risks”,
                                                • the wonderful world of social media led to the avarice of capitalism;
                                                • synthetic speech used by people with vision loss is also a harbinger of terrorism;
                                                • accessibility pinpoints web vulnerabilities ;
                                                • “Consequential Reasoning” suggests a lost branch of computing, blamed on international competition, also unsuited to how modern students think, but maybe a cause for complexity and harm;

                                                  • Notes on Section 1: Living Data

                                                  Chapter 1.1 Beautiful Data

                                                  1. (Fiction) ( The 2017 CumuLinker Reformation changed the Web to 1) protect private living data and (2) improve the mood of the country. The wearable Whisperer is new CumuLinker technology under evaluation in 2019. C-A-L-M (for “Conversation As Language Moderation” is a set of practices that introduce and accelerate productive interactions.
                                                    The theory that explains the history and ill effects that led to the CumuLinker Revolution is known as surveillance capitalism.

                                                    • Read more in Thread on CumuLinker Reformation (protected) .
                                                    • Surveillance capitalism theory by Shoshana Zuboff examines economic and social issues since the Dawn of the Web. a must listen or read!

                                                      • ,

                                                    • Ada Byron Lovelace inspires modern women in computing with her Victorian era deed thinking. She lived a short life interacting technically and socially with famous industrialist Charles Babbage. Often hyped as “the first programmer”, her thinking employs “representation” that foreshadows modern computing and mathematical knowledge that stimulated Babbage’s experiments. Her detailed analysis of Babbage’s Analytic Engine was written at age 26 while maintaining a growing family and without any acknowledged professional status.

                                                      –::
                                                      Casey is influenced by the representation of data about living people as the currency of surveillance capitalism. She is awed by how well Lovelace and Babbage worked together as portrayed in her biographies.

                                                    • The IBM 1620 computer was simple enough to trust to an undergraduate for mathematical exploration and IT administration.
                                                      • IBM 1620 description …
                                                      • Autobiographical note) Hours and hours and hours at the 1620 console at Ohio Wesleyan University in the 1960s launched this author into the computing field. Learning Fortran and assembly code was one capability gained, but the lingering lesson was how to get through the period of muddled code while re-engineering a compiler. Every computing student should experience this practical growth and learn from failure and exhaustion as a foundation for team programming, software process, verification/validation, documentation, and other skills taught as “Software Engineering”. Coding is an athletic activity that reveals strengths and weaknesses and preferences and affinity with machines.
                                                        In memory of Robert L. Wilson, Mathematics Department Chair, Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware Ohio.

                                                      .

                                                    • “Spaghetti code” describes programs troubled by languages that forced control flow into and out of statements, making it hard to understand programs.
                                                    • The Trickster mythological figure describes the US elected leader in the period of this novel in 2019.

                                                      Disrespectful references to the Trickster are intended and a meaningful way to explain the fragile society before and during the 2017 CumuLinker Reformation, with after-effects to be seen.

                                                    • ‘Risk’ Is a theme of the novel and a central force in computing, as well as life in general.
                                                      • Terminology this novel tries to follow (from New Media Dictionary:
                                                        • A “threat” is An indication of impending danger or harm, also “to inflict” or the agent for harm”.
                                                        • “risk” means the possibility of suffering harm or loss.
                                                        • a “hazard” is a source or situation with potential for harm.
                                                      • Read threads about risks and software failures(protected) .
                                                      • “Threat-caster” is a professional and personal characteristic often associated with the mythological “Cassandra” which is protagonist Casey’s root name. ‘book ‘Warnings’ by Richard Clarke describes incidents of threat-casting.

                                                      • Chapter 1.2Casual Algorithms

                                                      1. (Fiction) CumuLinker does Life Replay” using purloined private data plus public available information to produce a chronology that reads as if written by a journalist. Events might focus on geography, profession, family, health, or other stories that fit the occasion. Life Replay can also be used for personal introspection, e.g. professional review or interactions with another specific person.
                                                      2. Algorithmic cruelty” occurred in reality in 2014 when Facebook surprised a parent with his recently deceased child’s picture.

                                                        3. Chapter 1.3 Colorful times

                                                        1. Text contrast is an important aspect of accessibility for people with low vision. It applies to all visual readers controlled by settings usually embedded in schemes operating as CSS for (Cascading Style Sheets) in Browsers. The readability factors for text contrast are specified and can be validated according to Web standards. This vulnerability is an example of a messy Web and a culture of complexity that supports an industry of developers, now expanded by penetration testers and bug bounty handlers.

                                                          2. Chapter 1.4 Seeing Things Differently

                                                          1. Sally and Casey became acquainted at a (Wikipedia) Fifth Generation conference in Japan. Learn more in Thread Reasoning about Fifth Generation and Prolog.
                                                          2. (Autobiographical) Sally’s loss of vision leads to standard practices learned as “vision rehabilitation”. She has written a manifesto for accessibility and maintains a blog remarkably like this author’s early experience.
                                                            “As Your World Changes blog.
                                                          3. The Apple iPhone is the primary communication, reading, gaming, and translating instrument for many people with low vision and enough $$$.
                                                            AppleVis.com tutorials and tips on using iPhones with VoiceOver speech and magnification
                                                          4. (Fiction) Casey has been invited for a special role under the Science Frontiers funding program. This is modeled after the National Science Foundation where a dozen researchers discuss, rate, and summarize submitted proposals and budgets. “Scientific Merit” and “Social contribution” and “Diversity” are traditional criteria. It is assumed that killer problems will be solved eventually or cast into a different scientific program. Negativity, as in “should never be used” or “cannot be verified” or “will introduce hazards” or “was done 20 years ago” are not included in recommendations that might reduce overall funding among competitive programs. Risks and threats could be assimilated into the review process.

                                                            5. (autobiographical) Or, so, it seemed to this reviewer until 2010. Funding for social, possibly negative, consequences had separate sources including nonprofit’s and other foundations.

                                                          5. A counter-example to threat aversion is NSF-funded CyberPhysical Systems about (Wikipedia) on Cyber-physical system.
                                                          6. (Fiction) Speculate about the Pink Page Rampage in Threads on CuuLinker (protected)and Section 6 through podcast-style interviews. CumuLinker Reformation riled up beneficiaries of surveillance capitalism, especially Silicon Valley employees. A protest is organized through the dark side of software and a specific vulnerability in web page design.

                                                            7. Chapter 1.5 Lessons Learning

                                                            1. Here is a summary of preceding Chapters and the protagonist’s planning for the following journey.

                                                              2. Notes on Section 2 “Threats Get Real”

                                                              Chapter 2.1 Risky Speaking

                                                              1. “Vocal terrorism” was predicted openly in 2007. Incidents have yet to be reported in 2022.
                                                              2. Speech technology is a mature industry with millions of users.

                                                                3. Chapter 2.2 Internet Down!

                                                                1. Internet outages are common but not cohesively described.

                                                                2. An Internet outage map
                                                                3. Code Red nationally manages emergency notification for regions and cities. not to be confused with sugary drinks or cyber alerts. …

                                                                  4. Chapter 2.3
                                                                  Consequential Reasoning

                                                                  1. “Consequential Reasoning” is a coined term for using logic as the basis for computation within a process of documentation and analysis that drives the logic into programs then actions that make sense to humans.

                                                                    2. Notes for Section 3 “Another Chance”

                                                                    Chapter 3.1 Whisperers Meetup

                                                                    1. Whisperers contain private data inter-connected with another person’s data in the physical sphere of a CumuLinker CALM moment. For example, CumuLinker recognizes that Gavin is a person Casey has tracked by Google search upon occasions. A body reader can sense attention vectors that amplify the personal historical connection with some type of haptic motion. CumuLinker can strengthen that attention-getting signal with settings that relate to time and place or community membership or family connectivity.
                                                                    2. The CumuLinker vault of private data accumulated over history is rich in connectivity that amplifies human memory. Casey has tracked Gavin by his books and institutional affiliations. Gavin may have tracked Casey by location or hearsay about her interactions in their peer learning community.
                                                                      • The (Wikipedia) “Quantified Self” aka Personal Quantification Movementillustrates motives that are now realized in mobile devices.

                                                                        • Chapter 3.2 Lives Unfold

                                                                        1. The location and institution are modeled after the Wang Institute of Graduate Studies, 1982-1987, Tyngsboro Massachusetts. Its Software Engineering Master Degree curriculum migrated to to Carnegie-Mellon Software Engineering Institute.
                                                                        2. The “Massachusetts Miracle” period produced the mini-computer generation from companies: Wang, Digital, Apollo, Data General,These companies also had a cadre of part-time students in a gradually organizing discipline called “software engineering”. The culture of the time is displayed in Tracy Kidder’s “Soul of a New Machine”. …

                                                                          3. (Autobiographical) Benefactor , inventor of core memory, founder of Wang Labs, Doctor An Wang. was the most prolific, generous, idealistic, and fun executive I encountered in the computing industry. Ditto for the students, especially Elizabeth Shanahan, later President of the Society of Women Engineers and Dan Liggett, software cost entrepreneur.

                                                                          Chapter 3.3 Mature Branching

                                                                          1. A premiere Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) peer learning networkhas many models for peer learning.
                                                                          2. “Saging and Aging” directs attention to opportunities that build on life experience and courses on any topic someone knows about.
                                                                          3. Carolyn Heilbrun, Columbia University professor and author of Kate Fansler mysteries sums up aging in “book Last Gift of Time”.

                                                                          4. Bumper Sticker Computer Science — I forgot why I use this lin
                                                                            , but it’s fun.

                                                                            5. Notes for Section 4 “Nuclear Shadows”

                                                                            Chapter 4.1 Getting Acquainted

                                                                            1. Los Alamos National Laboratory was site for visit and fictional tour.
                                                                            2. Wildfires 2011 threaten LANL.
                                                                            3. Example of a Wildfire app

                                                                              4. Chapter 4.2 Dining On History

                                                                                Marilyn aspires to a role like

                                                                              1. security journalists Julia Angwin, now the Markup, author of “Dragnet Nation”.
                                                                              2. IBM Watson Success on Jeopardy used logic programming.
                                                                              3. “Mathematics Written on Sand” by W Kahan motivated floating point standards after exhibiting errors in scientific calculators.


                                                                              4. Parnas analysis of Reagan missile defense                                                                                 started discussion of software responsibility.

                                                                                5. Scott Rosenberg commentary explains the context.

                                                                              5. Risks digest of failures in computing starting in 1981 continues documentation and discussion.
                                                                              6. Usenet was the primary discussion support network before Web Time and later migrated into Google groups.
                                                                              7. Computer Professionals for Software Responsibility (CPSR) had advocated for social and military causes starting in the 1980s as described in

                                                                                8. Browsers give warnings and privacy errors here…

                                                                                Babbage Institute CPSR oral history by Severo Ornstein.

                                                                              8. Lynn Conway engineering research, and academic careers followed a transsexual path and contributed to VLSI Revolution (Wikipedia).
                                                                              9. Hopper on Letterman explaining her nanosecond and Navy tours of duty working on COBOL.
                                                                              10. women educator oral histories . Women and the Future of Computing, video by Anita Borghelped originate goals and institutes for women in computing, including the annual Grace Hopper event.
                                                                              11. Sputnik and the Eisenhower Administration and Sputnik beeps from JPL
                                                                              12. Televised software safety case, Therac 25, radiation deaths initiated the “software safety” field from Google Scholar.
                                                                              13. “Total information awareness” reaction to 9-11
                                                                              14. Bug bounty programs, such as Fire Fox offered new career opportunities.

                                                                                15. Computer History Museum

                                                                                <LI Oxbridge

                                                                              15. unsure

                                                                                16. Notes on Section 4.3 “Team 3G Forms”

                                                                                1. Total Information Awareness project
                                                                                2. FOIA Effects of TIA
                                                                                  /OL>

                                                                                  3. Notes, References, and threads by section

                                                                                  Notes on nodes:

                                                                                  Values of Notes

                                                                                  1. One theme of this novel is that students and professionals often have not studied much, if anything, in the history of computing. Well, there’s a lot of history, going back to the Victorian era and wars aplenty. Here, we focus mainly away from Silicon Valley.
                                                                                  2. Most notes here point to an explanation of an historical moment or a technology. Others are autobiographical. Some explain the novel’s hypothetical transformation and its ramifications.
                                                                                  3. Several topics have expanded explanations we call “threads”: Accessibility including synthetic speech; Risks including failures; Reasoning, the logic paradigm and 1980s competition; and Tidbits of history, mostly wars.

                                                                                  Sources for Notes

                                                                                  1. Wikipedia is usually a solid resource but occasionally suffers from gender or national biases.
                                                                                  2. Links are made only to sources likely to remain public. Members of IEEE and ACM have digital libraries. This author is a lapsed IEEE and ACM former editor and writer.
                                                                                  3. Alas, excellent course notes often do not persist as programs and faculty come and go. Also some links are so long that truncation occurs.
                                                                                  4. Searches for references usually started with DuckDuckGo in browsers to avoid advertising and tracking then sometimes used a specialized Google search tool we give away.
                                                                                  5. Google Scholar provides a valuable context for important references, including citations, related articles, sources for text versions. Thanks, Google. Example: Google Scholar for ‘test data selection’.
                                                                                  6. Podcasts that contain hours of historical interviews are: “History of Computing”; “Internet History”; “CommandLine Heroes”; and “Cyber”. Find these using a podcasts app, such as Icatcher for Apple IOS.

                                                                                  Uses for Notes

                                                                                  1. Computer science textbooks often have lengthy technical history that mentions founders and ideas that build the subject. But, these fail to capture the impacts and personalities that did the real work, had the fun, and suffered the losses. Many notes here could be offered as “odd moments” interjections during classroom discussions to complement faculty personal experiences. The web site will have a section for historical contributions of our readers.
                                                                                  2. Some notes are autobiographical confessions for events and characters implanted in the story.
                                                                                  3. Following are theme of “risks”,
                                                                                    • the wonderful world of social media led to the avarice of capitalism;
                                                                                    • synthetic speech used by people with vision loss is also a harbinger of terrorism;
                                                                                    • accessibility pinpoints web vulnerabilities ;
                                                                                    • “Consequential Reasoning” suggests a lost branch of computing, blamed on international competition, also unsuited to how modern students think, but maybe a cause for complexity and harm;

                                                                                  Notes on Section 1: Living Data

                                                                                  Chapter 1.1 Beautiful Data

                                                                                  1. (Fiction) ( The 2017 CumuLinker Reformation changed the Web to 1) protect private living data and (2) improve the mood of the country. The wearable Whisperer is new CumuLinker technology under evaluation in 2019. C-A-L-M (for “Conversation As Language Moderation” is a set of practices that introduce and accelerate productive interactions. The theory that explains the history and ill effects that led to the CumuLinker Revolution is known as surveillance capitalism.,
                                                                                  2. Ada Byron Lovelace inspires modern women in computing with her Victorian era deed thinking. She lived a short life interacting technically and socially with famous industrialist Charles Babbage. Often hyped as “the first programmer”, her thinking employs “representation” that foreshadows modern computing and mathematical knowledge that stimulated Babbage’s experiments. Her detailed analysis of Babbage’s Analytic Engine was written at age 26 while maintaining a growing family and without any acknowledged professional status.–:: Casey is influenced by the representation of data about living people as the currency of surveillance capitalism. She is awed by how well Lovelace and Babbage worked together as portrayed in her biographies.
                                                                                  3. The IBM 1620 computer was simple enough to trust to an undergraduate for mathematical exploration and IT administration.
                                                                                    • IBM 1620 description …
                                                                                    • Autobiographical note) Hours and hours and hours at the 1620 console at Ohio Wesleyan University in the 1960s launched this author into the computing field. Learning Fortran and assembly code was one capability gained, but the lingering lesson was how to get through the period of muddled code while re-engineering a compiler. Every computing student should experience this practical growth and learn from failure and exhaustion as a foundation for team programming, software process, verification/validation, documentation, and other skills taught as “Software Engineering”. Coding is an athletic activity that reveals strengths and weaknesses and preferences and affinity with machines. In memory of Robert L. Wilson, Mathematics Department Chair, Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware Ohio.
                                                                                    .
                                                                                  4. “Spaghetti code” describes programs troubled by languages that forced control flow into and out of statements, making it hard to understand programs.
                                                                                  5. The Trickster mythological figure describes the US elected leader in the period of this novel in 2019.Disrespectful references to the Trickster are intended and a meaningful way to explain the fragile society before and during the 2017 CumuLinker Reformation, with after-effects to be seen.
                                                                                  6. ‘Risk’ Is a theme of the novel and a central force in computing, as well as life in general.
                                                                                    • Terminology this novel tries to follow (from New Media Dictionary:
                                                                                      • A “threat” is An indication of impending danger or harm, also “to inflict” or the agent for harm”.
                                                                                      • “risk” means the possibility of suffering harm or loss.
                                                                                      • a “hazard” is a source or situation with potential for harm.
                                                                                    • Read threads about risks and software failures(protected) .
                                                                                    • “Threat-caster” is a professional and personal characteristic often associated with the mythological “Cassandra” which is protagonist Casey’s root name. ‘book ‘Warnings’ by Richard Clarke describes incidents of threat-casting.

                                                                                  Chapter 1.2Casual Algorithms

                                                                                  1. (Fiction) CumuLinker does Life Replay” using purloined private data plus public available information to produce a chronology that reads as if written by a journalist. Events might focus on geography, profession, family, health, or other stories that fit the occasion. Life Replay can also be used for personal introspection, e.g. professional review or interactions with another specific person.
                                                                                  2. Algorithmic cruelty” occurred in reality in 2014 when Facebook surprised a parent with his recently deceased child’s picture. Inc Facebook incident of algorithmic cruelty Facebook apologized for algorithmic cruelty.

                                                                                  Chapter 1.3 Colorful times

                                                                                  1. Text contrast is an important aspect of accessibility for people with low vision. It applies to all visual readers controlled by settings usually embedded in schemes operating as CSS for (Cascading Style Sheets) in Browsers. The readability factors for text contrast are specified and can be validated according to Web standards. This vulnerability is an example of a messy Web and a culture of complexity that supports an industry of developers, now expanded by penetration testers and bug bounty handlers.

                                                                                  Chapter 1.4 Seeing Things Differently

                                                                                  1. Sally and Casey became acquainted at a (Wikipedia) Fifth Generation conference in Japan. Learn more in Thread Reasoning about Fifth Generation and Prolog.
                                                                                  2. (Autobiographical) Sally’s loss of vision leads to standard practices learned as “vision rehabilitation”. She has written a manifesto for accessibility and maintains a blog remarkably like this author’s early experience. “As Your World Changes blog.
                                                                                  3. The Apple iPhone is the primary communication, reading, gaming, and translating instrument for many people with low vision and enough $$$. AppleVis.com tutorials and tips on using iPhones with VoiceOver speech and magnification
                                                                                  4. (Fiction) Casey has been invited for a special role under the Science Frontiers funding program. This is modeled after the National Science Foundation where a dozen researchers discuss, rate, and summarize submitted proposals and budgets. “Scientific Merit” and “Social contribution” and “Diversity” are traditional criteria. It is assumed that killer problems will be solved eventually or cast into a different scientific program. Negativity, as in “should never be used” or “cannot be verified” or “will introduce hazards” or “was done 20 years ago” are not included in recommendations that might reduce overall funding among competitive programs. Risks and threats could be assimilated into the review process. (autobiographical) Or, so, it seemed to this reviewer until 2010. Funding for social, possibly negative, consequences had separate sources including nonprofit’s and other foundations.
                                                                                  5. A counter-example to threat aversion is NSF-funded CyberPhysical Systems about (Wikipedia) on Cyber-physical system.
                                                                                  6. (Fiction) Speculate about the Pink Page Rampage in Threads on CuuLinker (protected)and Section 6 through podcast-style interviews. CumuLinker Reformation riled up beneficiaries of surveillance capitalism, especially Silicon Valley employees. A protest is organized through the dark side of software and a specific vulnerability in web page design.

                                                                                  Chapter 1.5 Lessons Learning

                                                                                  1. Here is a summary of preceding Chapters and the protagonist’s planning for the following journey.

                                                                                  Notes on Section 2 “Threats Get Real”

                                                                                  Chapter 2.1 Risky Speaking

                                                                                  1. “Vocal terrorism” was predicted openly in 2007. Incidents have yet to be reported in 2022.
                                                                                  2. Speech technology is a mature industry with millions of users.

                                                                                  Chapter 2.2 Internet Down!

                                                                                  1. Internet outages are common but not cohesively described.

                                                                                  Chapter 2.3 Consequential Reasoning

                                                                                  1. “Consequential Reasoning” is a coined term for using logic as the basis for computation within a process of documentation and analysis that drives the logic into programs then actions that make sense to humans.

                                                                                  Notes for Section 3 “Another Chance”

                                                                                  Chapter 3.1 Whisperers Meetup

                                                                                  1. Whisperers contain private data inter-connected with another person’s data in the physical sphere of a CumuLinker CALM moment. For example, CumuLinker recognizes that Gavin is a person Casey has tracked by Google search upon occasions. A body reader can sense attention vectors that amplify the personal historical connection with some type of haptic motion. CumuLinker can strengthen that attention-getting signal with settings that relate to time and place or community membership or family connectivity.
                                                                                  2. The CumuLinker vault of private data accumulated over history is rich in connectivity that amplifies human memory. Casey has tracked Gavin by his books and institutional affiliations. Gavin may have tracked Casey by location or hearsay about her interactions in their peer learning community.

                                                                                  Chapter 3.2 Lives Unfold

                                                                                  1. The location and institution are modeled after the Wang Institute of Graduate Studies, 1982-1987, Tyngsboro Massachusetts. Its Software Engineering Master Degree curriculum migrated to to Carnegie-Mellon Software Engineering Institute.
                                                                                  2. The “Massachusetts Miracle” period produced the mini-computer generation from companies: Wang, Digital, Apollo, Data General,These companies also had a cadre of part-time students in a gradually organizing discipline called “software engineering”. The culture of the time is displayed in Tracy Kidder’s “Soul of a New Machine”. …

                                                                                  (Autobiographical) Benefactor , inventor of core memory, founder of Wang Labs, Doctor An Wang. was the most prolific, generous, idealistic, and fun executive I encountered in the computing industry. Ditto for the students, especially Elizabeth Shanahan, later President of the Society of Women Engineers and Dan Liggett, software cost entrepreneur.

                                                                                  Chapter 3.3 Mature Branching

                                                                                  1. A premiere Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) peer learning networkhas many models for peer learning.
                                                                                  2. “Saging and Aging” directs attention to opportunities that build on life experience and courses on any topic someone knows about.
                                                                                  3. Carolyn Heilbrun, Columbia University professor and author of Kate Fansler mysteries sums up aging in “book Last Gift of Time”.
                                                                                  4. Bumper Sticker Computer Science — I forgot why I use this lin , but it’s fun.

                                                                                  Notes for Section 4 “Nuclear Shadows”

                                                                                  Chapter 4.1 Getting Acquainted

                                                                                  1. Los Alamos National Laboratory was site for visit and fictional tour.
                                                                                  2. Wildfires 2011 threaten LANL.
                                                                                  3. Example of a Wildfire app

                                                                                  Chapter 4.2 Dining On History

                                                                                  1. security journalists Julia Angwin, now the Markup, author of “Dragnet Nation”.
                                                                                  2. IBM Watson Success on Jeopardy used logic programming.
                                                                                  3. “Mathematics Written on Sand” by W Kahan motivated floating point standards after exhibiting errors in scientific calculators.
                                                                                  4. Parnas analysis of Reagan missile defense started discussion of software responsibility. Scott Rosenberg commentary explains the context.
                                                                                  5. Risks digest of failures in computing starting in 1981 continues documentation and discussion.
                                                                                  6. Usenet was the primary discussion support network before Web Time and later migrated into Google groups.
                                                                                  7. Computer Professionals for Software Responsibility (CPSR) had advocated for social and military causes starting in the 1980s as described in Browsers give warnings and privacy errors here… Babbage Institute CPSR oral history by Severo Ornstein.
                                                                                  8. Lynn Conway engineering research, and academic careers followed a transsexual path and contributed to VLSI Revolution (Wikipedia).
                                                                                  9. Hopper on Letterman explaining her nanosecond and Navy tours of duty working on COBOL.
                                                                                  10. women educator oral histories . Women and the Future of Computing, video by Anita Borghelped originate goals and institutes for women in computing, including the annual Grace Hopper event.
                                                                                  11. Sputnik and the Eisenhower Administration and Sputnik beeps from JPL
                                                                                  12. Televised software safety case, Therac 25, radiation deaths initiated the “software safety” field from Google Scholar.
                                                                                  13. “Total information awareness” reaction to 9-11
                                                                                  14. Bug bounty programs, such as Fire Fox offered new career opportunities. Computer History Museum Oxbridge
                                                                                  15. unsure

                                                                                  Notes on Section 4.3 “Team 3G Forms”

                                                                                  1. Total Information Awareness project
                                                                                  2. FOIA Effects of TIA
                                                                                    /OL>

                                                                                  slger

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