Month: February 2013
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First Principles for Fostering Civic Engagement via Digital Technologies: #1 Know Your Community
Over the first few months of my Fellowship at CITP, I have had the pleasure of meeting with a number of people from academia, non-profits, for-profit companies and government to discuss the role of digital technologies in fostering civic engagement. In a series of blog posts, I plan to set out ten principles that local…
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The State of Connectivity in Latin America: from Mobile Phones to Tablets
Ten years ago, issues like e-health, e-education and e-government were more products of wishful thinking than ideas with a real possibility of being implemented in most Latin American countries. Conversely, the present moment has become a turning point for the region in terms of connectivity. Government policies, markets and non-profit initiatives are contributing to improve…
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A Reivew of Oral Arguments in McBurney v. Young: State FOIA and State Rights
Yesterday, I attended oral arguments in the Supreme Court case of McBurney v. Young, which I have previously written about. The case involves two different petitioners who were denied access to state records under a Virginia “freedom of information” law that limits such access to Virginia residents only. McBurney is a former Virginia resident who…
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Computer science education done right: A rookie’s view from the front lines at Princeton
In many organizations that are leaders in their field, new inductees often report being awed when they start to comprehend how sophisticated the system is compared to what they’d assumed. Engineers joining Google, for example, seem to express that feeling about the company’s internal technical architecture. Princeton’s system for teaching large undergraduate CS classes has…
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Presidential Commission on Election reform – good news & bad
In his State of the Union address, President Obama stated: “But defending our freedom is not the job of our military alone. We must all do our part to make sure our God-given rights are protected here at home. That includes our most fundamental right as citizens: the right to vote. When any Americans –…
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"What we've got here is failure to communicate"
Since the historic snow storm, “Nemo,” deposited a NOAA-certified 40 inches of snow on my hometown of Hamden, CT, I have been watching from afar to see how the town and its citizens are using a combination of digital technology, the traditional telecommunications network, and mass media to communicate in the aftermath of the storm.…
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Ed Felten elected to National Academy
The National Academy of Engineering announced today that Edward W. Felten, professor of computer science and public affairs, and director, Center for Information Technology Policy, Princeton University, Princeton, N.J., has been elected to the National Academy “For contributions to security of computer systems, and for impact on public policy.” From the NAE’s announcement: Election to…
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Making Excuses for Fees on Electronic Public Records
I wrote a letter to Judge Hogan, the recently appointed Director of the Administrative Office of the US Courts. I wanted to make the case directly to him that the courts should do the right thing — and that what they are doing right now is against the law. I was assured by his colleagues…
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Basic Economics of Bitcoin Mining
Arvind wrote yesterday about the availability of chips that do super-fast Bitcoin mining. I want to follow up by unpacking the economics of Bitcoin mining, to see what the effect of the new chips will be, and more generally what the future of Bitcoin mining looks like.
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Bitcoin grows up, gets its own hardware
The big news in the Bitcoin world is that there are several Bitcoin-mining ASICs (custom chips) already shipping or about to be launched. Avalon in particular has been getting some attention recently. Bitcoin mining moved long ago from CPUs to GPUs, but this takes it one step further. The expectation is that very soon most…