Group presentation recap #2 - "World without secrets"

Sadly today was our last class, which meant the final two in-class group presentations. The first of the two groups chose to review the book "World Without Secrets: Business, Crime and Privacy in the Age of Ubiquitous Computing" by Richard Hunter. Needless to say, at 35 minutes plus, this group's analysis was thorough. Considering this was also the second group to present this book, at this point I feel as though I could give a presentation on this book without even reading it myself.

This group of seven covered all the chapters, except 5 which was skipped, in depth. The chapters that caught my attention were 6, 7, and 8. I think this was primarily because the other chapters seemed kind of obvious or outdated, while a few universal and timeless themes ran through these aforementioned chapters. Both the ideas of Microsoft and Gartner Inc. colluding to fight the rise of open source software in 6 spoke to the nature of competition in a capitalistic society, and the concept of "Mentats" swaying a distracted general public in 7 & 8 had me thinking about bigger picture topics outside of my day-to-day existence.

I would like to see Mr. Hunter release a 2.0 version of this book. I say this from the standpoint that Professor Fry revealed to the class that the program Hunter used as an example throughout Chapter 2 - "Streets without secrets", that tells the story of how Tampa, Florida law enforcement officials used facial recognition camera and software technology to identify wanted offenders in public places, has been completely abandoned. In the 2.0 version, I would like to hear Hunter's thoughts on more recent developments such as the introduction of "talking cameras" in London for example. Or possibly his viewpoint on the upsurge of blogging and consequent downturn of traditional media sources such as newspapers.

In conclusion, I think the group did a great job at presenting the information provided by the book; however, I was disappointed by how dated much of the material seemed. Not any one's fault, just one humble observers opinion : )

Group presentation recap #1 - "Burn Rate"

This morning the first group did a fantastic job of reviewing the book "Burn Rate - How I survived the Gold Rush years on the Internet" by author Michael Wolff. After hearing this team's book review it sounds like the title should be changed to "Burn Rate - How I didn't survive the the Gold Rush years of the Internet."

Mr. Wolff's six month saga begins sometime mid 1996 and concludes by the end of the year. He tells his start-up company's, Wolff New Media, roller coaster story from a first person perspective. As CEO, it was Wolff's duty to raise funds to support his company that was "burning" through it's initial funding. The story sounds more like a soap opera than the story of a successful entrepreneur. Successful entrepreneurship is based on trust and solutions, unlike Wolff's fast talking, smoke and mirrors tactics.

The two things I appreciated most about this group's report were the broad timeline they presented concerning the development of the Internet (from 1992 to today) and their all-encompassing explanation concerning the details of this story. Additionally, the PowerPoint presentation was organized, easy to follow, and well paced.

While I cannot say that I will be picking this book up anytime soon, I can say it was entertaining to hear the story of such a schiesty individual, only because he ultimately failed. How he, or the publisher of this book, sleeps at night I will never know. I refuse to support authors and publishers who glamorize this kind of behavior. The story of Wolff writing himself a check, on the way out the door, is unbelievable. His life story is a sleazy one; shameless motives all in the search for a quick buck.