Tag Archives: computers

Codebreaking: Humans are the weakest link

Posted on October 21, 2007 by stalker

People are the weakest link in all computer systems. We hear about the best cryptography money can buy: integrity checking, sender/receiver identity authentication, digital signatures, and then someone leaves a list of passwords on a post-it note stuck above a … Continue reading →

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Human-computer interaction: Can you see what it is yet?

Posted on June 21, 2007 by stalker

The recent furore over the 2012 Olympics Logo reminds me of how people react to the user interfaces they find on everything they interact with, from websites to washing machines. If an interface, like a logo, is well-designed, no one … Continue reading →

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Semiotics: It’s a sign!

Posted on May 24, 2007 by stalker

A structural engineer once told me that he would always win pictionary if he was teamed with another engineer. Structural engineers have a symbolic language of their own and use it, normally in the workplace, to communicate more accurately. To … Continue reading →

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Is the future of techology to be found in fiction?

Posted on May 5, 2007 by stalker

When Jurassic Park was on at the cinema, I remember laughing out loud with a couple of my computing mates when the young girl, Lex, looks at a computer screen and says: “It’s a UNIX system. I know this.” At … Continue reading →

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Are computers making us stupid?

Posted on March 1, 2007 by stalker

In 1996, I listened to Lofty Zadeh, the daddy of fuzzy logic, give his keynote speech at the ‘Artificial Intelligence in Design’ conference, Stanford University. He described the excitment of artificial intelligence in the 1950s and how Marvin Minsky, father … Continue reading →

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