Computers what?

History seems to be filled with examples of discovery due to serendipity, error, and exaptation. In an earlier post, I wrote about the accidental discovery of the penicillin group of antibiotics. This was both error, the scientist did not properly clean, and serendipity, in that instead of thinking “Shoot, that’s corrupted, let’s start over.”, and instead thought, “That’s interesting, I wonder why.” In a way, the pirate, author, and long-distance sailing enthusiast Christopher Columbus found the new world, aka the British West Indies, through error. Not the best at math. Don’t get me wrong, it was a great error, but an error non-the-less. While the common story of Isaac Newton getting assaulted by an apple is an exaggeration (Gefter, 2010), it was a falling apple that provided his moment of clarity, serendipity if you would, that led to the development of the field of Newtonian Physics. Now that’s something to strive for, having something named after you. Hopefully, something that

This week is basically a dream sheet for things that will never happen due to the proposition being that I had all of the time, money, and talent in the world; and let me tell you, I’ve got none of those. I have the talent of a potato really, and what I would do with just one free hour today that I’m not exhausted from the prior 23. Five categories are presented with ten ideas each. Let’s see what I come up with. Education: 1. Finish this doctorate. 2. Get a doctorate in Security. 3. Get a Juris Doctorate. 4. Learn German. 5. Learn Mandarin. 6. Learn to play the guitar. I actually bought one, and an amp, and teaching software. Turns out I have sausages for fingers. Still have it. 7. Learn to play the piano. Yes, I also owned a piano. Don’t have the finger dexterity I thought I did, that’s why I sold it and got a guitar. 8. I Doctorate in Microbiology from Darwin College at the University of Cambridge with a specialization in telomeres. 9. Learn Italian. 10. Learn Arabic. Jo

Forecasting and predicting in IT/Cyber can be difficult, but there is an aspect of this world that people consistently predict for with the goals being met. For those of you that care not to track silicon chip development and projections, Moore’s Law may be unfamiliar to you. Hoping in our time machine back to April 19th, 1965, in a section aptly called “The experts look ahead, Dr. Gordon Moore made a prediction that every two years the number of semiconductors that a measurable space can contain would double(Moore, 1965). It has been 56 years, and the law holds to this day. I personally made a prediction when pursuing my BS that Moore’s law would die due to eventually reaching a stage where the width of a wavelength of light used to cut the wafer would be larger than the cut needed. To me, what is most impressive is that not only did his prediction prove true in the short term, but has held up an insane amount of time when considering we are talking about IT development. IT changes f

The famed Walt Disney once said, “Here you leave today and enter the world of yesterday, tomorrow, and fantasy.” While he was not speaking about Cyber and IT, I believe he was speaking about one of his parks, it still holds when looking at how IT and Cyber may move forward. You look back at what has happened and the projection, see what you know tomorrow has in store, and fantasies about what the future is going to bring. We don’t call it fantasizing though, we call it projecting. In our fantasizing of the future, we have options such as scenario planning and traditional forecasting. Let’s compare and contrast these concepts. Also, it is no longer weather forecasting, it’s weather fantasizing, spread the word. First, in the words of my son, “What’s that?” So what is Scenario Planning? If you are (un)lucky enough to have had the opportunity to read Scenario Planning: A Field Guide to the Future by Woody Wade (Wade, 2012), the author would tell you on page 10 not to forecast the future

Throughout history there have occurred accidents that have brought wonderful ideas and technology into the world. These happy little accidents can seem insignificant, but have wonderful ramifications. A common snack that can be located in nearly every American kitchen, the potato chip, was an accident out of spite, and one of the more famous events is the accidental discovery of penicillin. Potato Chip As many things go down, the story of the potato chip may be more legend than fact. It states that in Saratoga Springs in the year 1853, there was a rather annoying customer in a restaurant (Breyer, 2017). This customer repeatedly returned the food that George “Speck” Crum had prepared back to the kitchen stating that patron was dissatisfied with the food. Upon the return of the food a third time and wishing to import his frustration onto the customer, Mr. Crum decided to maliciously slice the potato into small slivers, severely fried the Irish staple, and heavily salt the dish. This de

Hello all you cool cats and kittens! Hard to believe that Tiger King will be one year old come Saturday (March 20th). But that’s not the subject of this post. It’s “think tank methods.” In the Air Force, there is always a drive to innovate. Leadership has offered cash prizes, sometimes even five digits. It was based on the amount of money that the idea would save. Currently, there is a competition, started out called “Shark Tank” at the 694 ISS, Osan AB, and caught on. For legal reasons, the name was changed (Spark Tank), and it is now an Air Force wide program. There are some will know think tanks in the US. The ones I hear the most about seem to always be the political ones with The Heritage Foundation and Council on Foreign Relations immediately coming to mind. In a 2014 report, the author speaks to globalization, growth of international; actors, and democratization as current trends with these types of think tanks (McGann, 2015). But how do these think tanks work, and how can my