Technical Sensoriums: A Speculative Investigation into the Entanglement and Convergence of Surveillance and Technology

Surveillance and technology are among the most prevalent phenomena in the developed world, the proliferation of which is abetted by an ever increasing profusion of products and services extending the competencies of these capabilities into new opportunities and markets worldwide. More significantly, this momentum is leading to a convergence of these disparate competencies towards a common techno-surveillant milieu. Yet much of what is written and theoretically understood about these topics (singularly and collectively) fails to provide for a unified accounting that anticipates either the trajectory or the heterogeneous forms of this converging phenomenon. This projects sets out to excavate why our understanding of techno-surveillance is so myopic. Following the evidence, I assert that this short-sightedness is not simply the result of methodological shortcomings. Rather, most researchers of surveillance and technology are blinded by philosophical presumptions (primarily grounded in epistemology) that exclude the kinds of questions (largely ontological) they must ask to go deeper in their investigations. This study examines the archaeological detritus of an early techno-surveillant system, the characteristics of which are typical of the kinds of systems that have come to challenge researchers about the implications of their analyses. Based on this analysis, this study proposes an ontological model, which I call ontigeny that is consistent with the evidence and helps to explain the heterogeneity of techno-surveillance, as well as its potential trajectories

The Limits of Command and Control

This thesis examines the role of the human operator in command and control systems designed and developed for the US Air Force during the 1950s and 1960s. As understood within the discourse of defence research, command and control involved the efficient capture and management of information from the battlefield in the pursuit of a particular military strategy. The digital computer, although then still very much the highly protean object of military-industrial-university research networks, was repeatedly proposed as a crucial technology that would allow for greater and more accurate control of the battlefield. I explore the discursive terrain occupied by the human operator through an analysis of two command and control systems, selected for their significance in employing digital computers to automate previously manual military practices. Firstly, I examine the operational principles established for Air Force crews in the SAGE system deployed in the late-1950s, tracing their elaboration within a series of psychological studies of stress led by psychologists at the RAND Corporation. In the absence of an actual Soviet invasion, SAGE crews fought simulated air wars while the effectiveness of their collective performance was systematically quantified. The second case study turns to the US Air Force's 'anti-infiltration' programme that targeted and bombed convoy routes used by the North Vietnamese Army to deliver supplies into South Vietnam. I focus on the role played by photo interpreters and systems analysts in the collection and verification of data used to confirm so-called 'vehicular activity' and 'truck kills'. In histories of Cold War technopolitics, both of these case studies have frequently been presented as exemplars of the application of a quantitative, computational rationality to the planning and conduct of military strategy. However, for all the extensive discussion in this literature about the central role of digital computers in automating parts of these systems, there still remained human operators who clearly played a significant, if seemingly recessive, role in their day-to-day functioning. My discussion of these case studies is based on close textual analyses of 'grey media'---the technical and administrative writing produced within bureaucratic institutions such as the US military and its defence research contractors. I foreground the effects grey media had on structuring and standardising specific operational practices, and consequently how it delimited the respective roles played by the human operator and the machine in the production of information about the battlefield. Drawing on a Foucauldian understanding of power as it functions through institutional discourse, I argue that the human operator was instrumental in codifying and authenticating information generated by and for the computer. This varied from the regular re-structuring of data in machine-readable forms, to the longer-term tasks of quantifying the strategic effectiveness of the system. Far from simply making the processing of information more efficient, these computerised systems were enmeshed in a vast and contradictory 'regime of practices' in which manual work proliferated. I contend that in order to fully grasp how digital, networked technologies have reshaped the field of possibility in war, foregrounding the grey, recessive role played by the human operator is vital

The Silent Arms Race: The Role of the Supercomputer During the Cold War, 1947-1963

One of the central features of the Cold War is the Arms Race. The United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist republics vied for supremacy over the globe for a fifty-year period in which there were several arms races; atomic weapons, thermonuclear weapons and various kinds of conventional weapons. However, there is another arms race that goes unsung during this period of history and that is in the area of supercomputing. The other types of arms races are taken for granted by historians and others, but the technological competition between the superpowers would have been impossible without the historically silent arms race in the area of supercomputers. The construction of missiles, jets as well as the testing of nuclear weapons had serious implications for international relations. Often perception is more important than fact. Perceived power maintained a deterrent effect on the two superpowers. If one superpower suspected that they, in fact, had an advantage over the other then the balance of power would be upset and more aggressive measures might have been taken in various fronts of the conflict, perhaps leading to war. Due to this, it was necessary to maintain a balance of power not only in weapons but in supercomputing as well. Considering the role that the computers played, it is time for closer historical scrutiny

Literature based Cyber Security Topics: Handbook

Cyber security is the practice of protecting systems, networks, and programs from digital attacks. These cyber attacks are usually aimed at accessing, changing, or destroying sensitive information; extorting money from users; or interrupting normal business processes. Cloud computing has emerged from the legacy data centres. Consequently, threats applicable in legacy system are equally applicable to cloud computing along with emerging new threats that plague only the cloud systems. Traditionally the data centres were hosted on-premises. Hence, control over the data was comparatively easier than handling a cloud system which is borderless and ubiquitous. Threats due to multi-tenancy, access from anywhere, control of cloud, etc. are some examples of why cloud security becomes important. Considering the significance of cloud security, this work is an attempt to understand the existing cloud service and deployment models, and the major threat factors to cloud security that may be critical in cloud environment. It also highlights various methods employed by the attackers to cause the damage. Cyber-attacks are highlighted as well. This work will be profoundly helpful to the industry and researchers in understanding the various cloud specific cyber-attack and enable them to evolve the strategy to counter them more effectively

Mudança digital no desenho arquitetónico: uma outra visão para a arquitetura paisagista

Mestrado em Arquitetura Paisagista - Instituto Superior de Agronomia - ULA presente dissertação procura traçar uma perspetiva histórica do desenho digital, em particular, nos processos arquitetónicos. O uso do computador e de métodos computacionais no desenho arquitetónico, por meio de programas específicos, tem sido estudado por vários autores no campo da Arquitetura, levando em consideração as mudanças no processo criativo e noutras formas de projetar. Contudo, não tem sido dado relevo à origem dessa mudança, tornando premente resgatar a memória histórica sobre o contexto e os protagonistas dessa transformação que tanto tem marcado a arquitetura do século XXI. Neste sentido, pretende-se evidenciar as origens do desenho digital e olhar para as alterações que o desenho arquitetónico sofreu com a utilização de meios digitais, primeiro nos círculos académicos, nas décadas de sessenta e setenta e depois com uma massificação dos programas CAD (desenho assistido por computador) nas décadas de oitenta e noventa. A elaboração da tese de doutoramento em 1963, Sketchpad: A man-machine graphical communication system de Ivan Sutherland marca começo do digital no desenho arquitetónico. É a capacidade visionária de alguns académicos, e em particular de Sutherland, que possibilita a criação do primeiro programa de CAD interativo que permite desenhar sem papel, num monitor, num tempo em que os computadores eram dispendiosos, enormes, mas com monitores de dimensão inferior a alguns smartphones. A dissertação tem como principal objetivo esboçar uma perspetiva histórica do desenho digital a nível internacional, através de pesquisa bibliográfica do trabalho de académicos e escolas relevantes para a revolução digital do século XX. A dissertação estrutura-se em três partes. Na primeira, o primeiro capítulo destaca os antecedentes e a ligação da arquitetura à ciência e da computação à indústria. A segunda parte, descreve o começo da mudança digital através do desenvolvimento dos primeiros sistemas CAD interativos e dos contributos de cinco pioneiros do desenho digital arquitetónico. A terceira parte consiste na descrição de um caso prático de aplicação dos meios digitais à renovação do espaço público urbanoN/

Diplomacy of Discontent. Arms Control in Islamic Irans Foreign Policy.

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Thinking for the bound and dead: beyond MAN3 towards a new (truly) universal theory of human victory

This project is a blend of Africana intellectual history and philosophical anti-humanism. The opening chapter seeks to contextualize the thought of Huey P. Newton in the Black nationalist tradition outline his conceptualization of US empire – ‘Reactionary Intercommunalism’. I use the second chapter to explore counterinsurgency as a historical phenomenon that laid the basis for European colonization and the civilizing mission during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries and the modern phenomena understand as racial violence. The third chapter analyzes how gender ideological have been deployed toward this end historically and through contemporaneous Black scholarship before using the final chapter to introduce the theory of killology or MAN3. This theory advances the claim that counterinsurgency as a modality of warfare be understood as the contemporary fountainhead of western humanism and thus as the primary force of social regulation which proleptically organizes modern civilization on a spatially and temporally indeterminate basis to defeat/subvert insurgent populations before they are ever mobilized towards resistance through the application of technology, deadly force to those constructed as threats and control of the information environment towards this end

Critical Issues in the History of Spaceflight

At a May 1981 "Proseminar in Space History"held at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum (NASM) in Washington, DC, historians came together to consider the state of the discipline of space history. It was an historic occasion. The community of scholars interested in the history of spaceflight was not large; previously, well-meaning but untrained aficionados consumed with artifacts had dominated the field, to the exclusion of the larger context. At a fundamental level, this proseminar represented a "declaration of independence" for what might be called the "new aerospace history." In retrospect, it may be interpreted as marking the rise of space history as a recognizable subdiscipline within the field of U.S. history. Bringing together a diverse collection of scholars to review the state of the art in space history, this proseminar helped in a fundamental manner to define the field and to chart a course for future research. Its participants set about the task of charting a course for collecting, preserving, and disseminating the history of space exploration within a larger context of space policy and technology. In large measure, the course charted by the participants in this 1981 proseminar aided in advancing a very successful agenda of historical research, writing, and understanding of space history. Not every research project has yielded acceptable results, nor can it be expected to do so, but the sum of the effort since 1981 has been impressive. The opportunities for both the exploration of space and for recording its history have been significant. Both endeavors are noble and aimed at the enhancement of humanity. Whither the history of spaceflight? Only time will tell. But there has been an emergent "new aerospace history" of which space history is a central part that moves beyond an overriding concern for the details of the artifact to emphasize the broader role of the spacecraft. More importantly, it emphasizes the whole technological system, including not just the vehicle but also the other components that make up the aerospace climate, as an integral part of the human experience. It suggests that many unanswered questions spur the development of flight and that inquisitive individuals seek to know that which they do not understand

NBS monograph

From Introduction: "This report is the first of a series intended to provide a selective overview of research and development efforts and requirements in the somewhat overlapping fields of the computer and information sciences and technologies. The projected series of reports will attempt to outline the probable range of R & D activities in the computer and information sciences and technologies through selective reviews of the literature and to develop a reasonable consensus with respect to the opinions of workers in these and potentially related fields as to areas of continuing R & D concern for research program planning or review in these areas.