Though I often find myself on the opposite side of the "Futurist vs. Historian" divide from SACEUR, Admiral Stavridis - I cannot ignore what interests such an obviously curious, inventive, and fertile mind.
During one of his presentations last week at the West2010 Conference, mostly focused on the cyber side of the house, was a PPT slide with a recommended reading list.
Worth your time to ponder, methinks.
BTW - he advertised once again that he needs friends. Pay the good Admiral a visit - and tell him CDR Salamander sent you!
1 hour ago
9 comments:
I'm already a very respectful friend :)
Phib,
"Cuckoo's Egg" is one of the best books ever written about the Internet. A great technical mystery well-told. It's also a superb tutorial on computer networking in general. Highly recommended. Toffler's books are also interesting for their assesment of trends and predictions about the future.
If these four books aren't enogh for you, I put the 80 books on the EUCOM reading list on Listmania
http://amzn.com/l/R2RXMKRPE1JV3E
and
http://amzn.com/l/RZ0XYQHUL7C51
Read the cuckoo when it first came out and the intarwebs were pretty new. Now that my mac has 100x the unix goodness of the mainframe he was tracking down the billing problem on, I should go back and reread.
I saw Stoll on C-SPAN booknotes and he was (is?) the stereotype of a Berkeley hippie, but the book is quite entertaining, esp when he gets freaked out when the TLA guys show up to help.
Totally off topic:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/02/08/rep-murtha-dead/
Murtha died today at 77. And the Marines from Haditha nodded their heads
In my last Navy job, wrote a review of a Toffler tome (Revolutionary Wealth) for the boss headed to a discussion group. Was wondering when I'd have a chance to recycle...
"Applying Tofflers’ conceptual framework to the organizational/institutional nature of today’s Navy, a quick reading of the book does not give a lot of ground for optimism.<span> </span>The Navy is a second-wave creation, an institution that--as every other 2<sup>nd</sup> wave example Toffler cites in government, education or elsewhere--is rooted in the demands of its industrial past for mass, standardization and specialization.<span> </span>Those industrial artifacts are in the very fiber of the Navy’s being, from the “uniforms” it wears, to the hierarchical ranks, rates and designators that define members’ relations and interactions, to the “command and control” it exercises over itself.
He draws a contrast between industrial and knowledge-based systems.<span> </span>The KB system is non-linear, relational, promiscuous, portable, compressible (using symbols), and liquid (in the sense of liquid capital—able to react quickly to changes in the market).<span> </span>The limits that 2<sup>nd</sup> wave institutions like the Navy impose on knowledge and information flow are bureaucratic and legal constructs.<span> </span>They are not fundamental to the nature of a knowledge-based system and in fact often times at odds with it.
Hence the culture clash between systems and platforms in the SCN debate.<span> </span>Hence the debate between combat and info systems.<span> </span>Hence the struggle with multi-level security."
In Cuckoo's Egg non-fiction book, the point was: watch out for BUFFER OVERFLOWS ! Bad types can take over your computer on a net. So, now it is coming up on 30 years later, and guess which giant software company is still pushing out fixes each month , because BUFFER OVERFLOWS can permit someone to take control of your computer.
It will take MICROSOFT maybe another 30 years to figure out how to write safe software. Until, then, we are ALL paying for MS not reading and heading that Cuckoo's Egg book.
Because I can't help myself, I believe he also said Small Wars Journals and the Naval Institute blog are a part of his online reading list.
I am sure good Adm. is lurking here sometimes too...
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