Tuesday, February 26, 2008
An Army of Davids
I'm behind in the reading for this week due to moving to a new apartment, but from what I've read thus far I've really enjoyed reading this book. I certainly intend to retroactively read the rest of the book as I'm certainly captivated. Perhaps the section that I have found the most interesting is that of the Pack v. the Herd.
I wrote a comparative analysis paper this past summer on the cyberterrorism strategies of the United States and England. I argued the point that both countries needed to mobilize their citizenry to fight the war on terror (online and offline). During the 7/7 UK train bombings a passenger's camera phone became the first private image ever licensed by the Associated Press. The government asked all citizens to provide these types of images and videos too. Instead of asking people to recount their memories of a tramatic experience, which may be skewed by false cognition, the images are concrete and give additional angles that the CCTV network were unable to provide to law inforcement. My other thought about the online citizen army related to the white hats. If private citizens saturate the Internet with fake radical Islamic websites than those sites which are run by terrorists would be harder to find and lose some of their value. Before Napster was deemed an illegal tool and pulled off the market by the Supreme Court the record companies began to publish fake music MP3s with varying file names. Their theory was that if for every 1 illegal MP3 of a song that is available by a user if the record companies post 20 MP3s under the filename of a song in their library but with only dead air, then users will become frustrated with Napster and stop using their service.
About beucracries v. small group, I started to think about the FEMA response to Hurricane Katrina. As basic of a necessity of sending bottles of water to the Houston Astrodome, where the refugees were being sent, the government took days...but the Target Corporation took hours. Both are beucracies but a private sector institution was able to respond quicker because of reduced layers of beucracy and a supplychain in place to make the shipments possible. Citizens, like those on 9/11 in the NYC waterways were able to mobilize just as easy. In "The Tipping Point" Malcom Gladwell spoke about the power of small groups too. I am starting to see a trend here...I like trends.
So, it's getting late and I'm having trouble following the Ohio democratic debate between Obama and Clinton and write this so I closing on the "I like trends" remark.
I wrote a comparative analysis paper this past summer on the cyberterrorism strategies of the United States and England. I argued the point that both countries needed to mobilize their citizenry to fight the war on terror (online and offline). During the 7/7 UK train bombings a passenger's camera phone became the first private image ever licensed by the Associated Press. The government asked all citizens to provide these types of images and videos too. Instead of asking people to recount their memories of a tramatic experience, which may be skewed by false cognition, the images are concrete and give additional angles that the CCTV network were unable to provide to law inforcement. My other thought about the online citizen army related to the white hats. If private citizens saturate the Internet with fake radical Islamic websites than those sites which are run by terrorists would be harder to find and lose some of their value. Before Napster was deemed an illegal tool and pulled off the market by the Supreme Court the record companies began to publish fake music MP3s with varying file names. Their theory was that if for every 1 illegal MP3 of a song that is available by a user if the record companies post 20 MP3s under the filename of a song in their library but with only dead air, then users will become frustrated with Napster and stop using their service.
About beucracries v. small group, I started to think about the FEMA response to Hurricane Katrina. As basic of a necessity of sending bottles of water to the Houston Astrodome, where the refugees were being sent, the government took days...but the Target Corporation took hours. Both are beucracies but a private sector institution was able to respond quicker because of reduced layers of beucracy and a supplychain in place to make the shipments possible. Citizens, like those on 9/11 in the NYC waterways were able to mobilize just as easy. In "The Tipping Point" Malcom Gladwell spoke about the power of small groups too. I am starting to see a trend here...I like trends.
So, it's getting late and I'm having trouble following the Ohio democratic debate between Obama and Clinton and write this so I closing on the "I like trends" remark.
// posted by Jason Langsner @ 9:36 PM 
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