Cyber Security ROI

Investment in organisational cyber security is very much a preventative measure to hopefully prevent or reduce the likelihood of a cyber security incident.This investment in reducing a probability is problematic.

Investment in organisational cyber security is very much a preventative measure to hopefully prevent or reduce the likelihood of a cyber security incident.    This investment in reducing a probability is problematic.

The ideal is always that no cyber incidents, where a threat succeeds on having an impact on a organisation, occur however as we project off into the future the likelihood of an incident can only increase in line with the unpredictability of future events.   Entropy is clearly at play.

In the worst-case scenario, an incident happens and there is an impact on the organisation.  In this case we know that our current solutions and the related investment have been insufficient.  I note this is not to say that we need to spend more following an incident, although I suspect this will be the trend, more that what has been spent has not delivered the outcomes we wish and helped in preventing a incident.   It may be that we need to spend on different things going forward, but the expenditure to date has been ineffective.

The issue with all of this is that our current setup is fine until it isn’t.   We can be happy with our current investment until it is revealed that it is ineffective by an incident, but we don’t want this to occur.    How do we therefore decide on an investment which is appropriate to the organisation, without waiting for incidents to prove what we have is ineffective?     And at the same time how can we avoid spending excessive amounts on cyber security, which would therefore be drawing funds away from the organisations core business, assuming the core business isnt cyber security itself?

I have always believed in taking a risk-based view.   We need to first identify the risks which we believe exist, the likelihood they will occur and the impact they would have on the organisation should they happen.   From this we can start to consider the amount of investment we might apply to mitigate measures, to cyber security, in relation to the risk.   So, a risk with a potential impact of £500,000 which is considered low likelihood might merit a £10,000 investment annually but is unlikely to merit £400,000.  If the risk impacts a business-critical system, it might merit more investment than a risk impacting on a low business value system.

The above isnt a science sadly; There is no magic Return on Investment (ROI) formula.   It is all based on subjective judgements hopefully based on experience and hopefully backed up by a third party to provide some level of assurance.    It also isnt easy.   Whatever amount you invest there will always be a probability that in the future it will be proven to have been ineffective by a single breach.   Those overseeing the cyber security must get it right all the time while the cyber criminals only need to get it right once.   This is why I continue to believe in a “healthy paranoia”.

We need to be concerned, to be paranoid, and to be constantly reviewing the risks, our organisation, the available technologies and threat trends.    We also need to be concious that we cannot know the future with any certainty and can only predict based on what we know now.   We need to communicate the decision-making processes and ensure these are understood.   In the future our decisions from today may be proved to be wrong; That’s always easy to do in hindsight but at the moment of decision making and with the information available, a decision which seemed appropriate at the time was made.   We need to balance our paranoia in the interest of our sanity and wellbeing.   We need to accept that we won’t always get it right!

Return on investment on cyber security spends, in my view, will always be difficult.    If all goes well then everything runs smoothly and no cyber incident occurs but this doesn’t prove your investment.   The future incident may have been brilliantly prevented or more likely it just hasn’t happened yet.   Sadly, the only definitive proof is when things go wrong, when an incident proves that your spend on cyber security was ineffective.    This is the kind of proof you just don’t want to see.

So, for now I will continue with the difficult decision process in relation to cyber security investment.  That fine balance between cyber security and business operations/cost.

Change: some thoughts on struggling with change

The one thing I am sure of is that change is not easy, BUT it is an important part of life.

Change: The old way or the new way?

Working in EdTech, change has always been a central part of what I do.   Whether this is the technical side of things when introducing new technologies or building a new school, or the human behaviours side of things in relation to identifying the need for change or supporting staff through change.

Both personally and professionally the last 6 months have presented me with lots to think of in relation to change, both personally and professionally, and it has struck me how difficult change is.

I started this new academic year with “Entropy” as one of the key words for my department.  This felt right given the unanticipated changes that Covid19 has brought about which have impacted on EdTech use within schools in particular.   Put in simple terms Entropy is the concept that all systems tend towards disorder, and therefore we need to constantly exert effort to maintain order.  (Note: I am no physicist so the above may not be 100% technically correct however I think it fits with the overall concept).   As we are constantly exerting effort to maintain the current level of order, to maintain the processes, systems, etc, we have in place, the whole thought of introducing our own change with its inevitable disorder is one I believe we naturally withdraw from at an instinctual level.

Taken on a more cognitive level and looking at things more rationally, when faced with change we often seek to look at the pros and cons, creating two lists to see which is longer.    The issue here is we can say with reasonable certainty how things are now.   We are experiencing the now, can touch, taste and feel it.   When reviewing the potential changed state however we are predicting how things might be after change and therefore our views are all probabilities rather than certainties.   A rational evaluation would then lead to a comparison of known values versus the probability of some lesser know values.    From a rational viewpoint the status quo will largely win out.

 Also, when reviewing the now, and where presented with significant change, we may over value the positives of our current situation due to our instinctual reaction to change.   This leads to negatives within our current situation being disregarded or overlooked, painting a rosier view of how things are now.   In turn, this makes it more likely for us to again adopt the status quo.

We also believe in the certainty associated with our current situation, that this situation will continue as is.    We see safety in this.  This fails to address Entropy and the fact we live in an uncertain world.   Who would have predicted Covid19 and all its many impacts a year ago?    We believe in the certainty of how things are now and often do not give sufficient consideration to how this could easily change over time, with a number of small changes adding up to a cumulatively large change, or in one sudden upheaval such as that brought about by Covid19.  Our current situation is by no-means guaranteed to continue.

The above all seems to point to a definite reluctance to change and in my experience the more people involved the more this reluctance will manifest itself.   In a meeting of 3 or 4 people it might be possible to see the benefits of change, of a new system or new process, but as soon as this change impacts of a wider number of people it becomes significantly more difficult.   We need something additional to make or even push change to happen.

We need a catalyst for change.   In our organisations this might be an external pressure or event, such as Covid19 which has certainly been a catalyst for lots of change this year.    It could be a senior staff member or group of senior staff members pushing change from the top of an organisation.  It could equally be a ground swell or grass roots movement of staff pushing for and wishing to see change.   In our personal situations it could equally be an external event, or it could be from within us as individuals.   We often need to be our own catalyst.

Thinking about change I have came to a couple of conclusions;

  1. Change is inevitable; Entropy suggests change is constant so even when we think things are remaining constant, either we are working very hard to keep them this way, or we are simply unaware of the changes which are occurring.   We shouldn’t be overly worried of change.
  2. Individually and collectively we will either tend towards or away from risk and inversely towards or away from the status quo.   This is a tendency, and some have stronger tendencies than others; my tendency towards enjoying new challenges is the same tendency as someone who likes to skydive or swim with sharks however, I would suggest the magnitude is different.  We all however need to be concious of this tendency and its impact in biasing our decision making and actions.
  3. Change is always a struggle; Change always introduces unknown factors and therefore no matter how well we plan there will always be a sense of anxiety or insecurity associated with it.   As such change elicits an emotional response in all those involved, and we need to be concious of this response and seek to manage it accordingly.
  4. But without change we don’t improve; This always makes me think of the “doing the same things but expecting different outcomes”; Unless we change the inputs or the process, the outputs won’t change.   We therefore need to be more embracing of change.

Am not sure whether writing this or spending time thinking about change will have helped me with the changes both currently in front of me or those potentially in front of me for which I need to reach a decision.    If not me, maybe it will help others who are equally struggling;  I am not sure.    The one thing I am sure of is that change is not easy, BUT it is an important part of life.

Lateral attacks

More than ever there is a need for healthy paranoia in how we deal with all communications we receive.

Cyber Security

The other day I was looking at Facebook and a post appearing to come from one of my relatives outlining how they had made easy money based on a guide on a website they had found.   The post seemed out of character and therefore I treated it with a healthy amount of paranoia.   Having contacted my brother in law via text it became apparent he hadn’t posted the comment on social media.  He had in fact been hacked however prior to my text he was unaware.

This highlights the dangers of lateral attacks.   Rather than come straight at us the cyber criminal attempts to get to us via a trusted person or organisation.    Due to the increasing cyber risk we are all becoming more sensitive to the potential malicious approaches by strangers and how these may in fact be malicious.   The cyber criminals have therefore pivoted to trying to use one person or one organisations accounts to gain access to others.  As such they will look at the contacts of a compromised email account and then approach these contacts using the compromised account to send the emails hoping that the fact the sender is someone we are familiar with and therefore trust that we will be less suspicious and more likely to click the links or open the attachments.

Given the fact the number of breached accounts now outnumber the number of people on the planet it is no surprise that the lateral attack is becoming more common.

The fact an email comes from someone we don’t know is no longer the key indicator of a malicious email as increasing the emails may come from those we know.   More than ever there is a need for healthy paranoia in how we deal with all communications we receive.

We also need to be more vigilant of unusual activity on our own accounts which might signal an account compromise and a malicious outsider trying to quietly use our accounts for lateral attacks on our friends, colleagues and other associates.

Teams: Showing video and a presentation at the same time

When doing lessons with students with Teams I found a couple of little issues which I didn’t like. In a Teams meeting the page divides based on each participant where I simply want students to see me when presenting to them. I also wanted to them to be able to see my content, for example presentations, videos, etc but also to see me at the same time.

I found a YouTube video which solved these problems and you can view this here.  Thanks to Matt Wade for this. So yesterday I set about trying it practically.

Now the main trick here is that we aren’t going to share our video feed directly from our camera via the Teams app, but instead are going to use another app to place our video feed on our screen, allowing us to layer other elements such as a presentation on top, then sharing the whole screen via Teams.

So what hardware was I using?
When I attempted the below, I was using a MS Surface attached to a dock and a 2nd screen with the display set to extent across the two screens. This for me seems the best setup as it provides a screen to allow you to manage the Teams app and any other apps you want to display. This is basically your staging area, while your other screen is the one you will share with meeting attendees and therefore the one used to show your video feed.

So where to start?
First, we need to grab our video feed. To do this I simply used the inbuilt Windows camera app set to video.

Next, I maximised this window so that it was full screen.

Following this I dropped any additional content on top of the camera app video. For example, I could open a PowerPoint in a window and then lay this window on top of the camera app window. This could however be any window and could potentially include things like OneNote or the Whiteboard App.

A key thing here, if using PowerPoint, is to set it to display in a window rather than pushing to full screen when presenting. To do this select the Set Up Slide Show option under the Slide Show menu.

And then select the Show Type as “Browsed by an individual in a window”.

Now start the slideshow; It will display in a window which you can drop in on top of your video feed.

All that is left to do is to start your teams meeting. You may get a warning regarding your video not working but this is due to Teams being unable to access your webcam as it is already in use by the windows camera app.

As such don’t worry about this. Once the meeting is started simply share the screen where you have the windows camera app maximised.

All the attendees will now be looking at your video feed maximised in the Teams window, with your other content overlaid on top.

An alternative approach may be to use split screen in Windows allowing you to have your video feed on half of the screen and your other app such as PowerPoint or OneNote, etc on the other half.    To do this simply dock your PowerPoint or other app against the side of the screen.

Next Steps

The next thing I am going to look at is how the above might work if I have multiple cameras attached; Will this allow me to use the camera app to switch between video feed sources which might be good in switching from teacher view to class view assuming two cameras were attached; I will let you know how I get on with this.

Availability Bias and the news

Watching the BBC news this morning and I saw a perfect example of the availability bias.   A news anchor pinning down a government representative as to Covid testing stating that people had contacted the programme following issues they had booking a Covid test.   The news anchor used these individual reports as proof of the problems related to getting a Covid test, even citing the specific details of one or two people.

Now I am not pretending that Covid testing is perfect or not in need of improvement but to use the available reports as proof of the failings of Covid testing seems to be a perfect example of availability bias.    The raised issues, being readily available and readily coming to mind, become the proof without considering evidence which isnt as readily available.   Take for example those people who quickly and easily got a test; These people are unlikely to contact a news programme to report their satisfaction.   Or maybe the number of people dissatisfied as a percentage of the number of tests, or the increasing volume of tests, or the testing regimes in Covid hotspot areas versus those on areas not so badly impacted. This data may be possible to gather, however isnt as readily available as a number of reported complaints.

This all reminds me of the story relating to WWII; Originally when looking at bomber planes they would reinforce the areas of planes which were regularly showing as damaged by anti-aircraft (AA) fire as these seemed to be the areas suffering regular hits.    The idea was that by reinforcing these areas the chances of bombers returning would increase, however this didn’t happen.  It was only when someone suggested they look at the areas which returning bombers never showed damage on that they made progress.  The logic here being that the areas which bombers never showed damage on was often due to the fact when these areas were hit by AA fire the bombers simply never returned; The damage was critical.    These were the areas to focus on reinforcing. In this case, the easily available data, damage to aircraft, wasnt as helpful as it at first appeared.

The issue for me with the BBC falling into the availability bias trap is that the BBC are meant to be the bastion of truth, and currently I believe more people than ever are regularly watching the morning or evening news.    That they would report in such a biased way, and therefore potentially propagate a biased viewpoint is concerning.   

As we often focus on social media bias and what Facebook, etc are doing, we maybe need to be careful not to take our eyes of what the old conventional news are doing.

Delaying exams; why?

So, a research study has arrived at the conclusion that due to Covid19 students may be 3 months behind in their studies.     The delaying of exams to allow students more time to catch up has also been discussed.   This all seems like rather simplistic thinking.

There are for me a number of issues with delaying the exams.

The first is that we already accept that exams differ each year and therefore there is already tinkering in place to adjust the grade boundaries to keep some consistency across academic years when looking at the statistical outcomes of students in general.   This is why the result show small but steady changes year on year rather than being more volatile. It seems to me to be fairly easy to just adjust this process to normalise the exam results next year should they be, as would be expected, lower than previous years and should it be important to maintain parity in results across different calendar years. And this statistical fiddle would be more acceptable than the algorithm proposed for 2020 results as it doesnt differ from the statistical adjustments of GCSE and A-Level results in 2019, 2018, etc.

Another issue, if we were to delay the exams, is that it simply knocks on to following years.   So, delay the GCSE exams would mean teachers would lose some teaching time they would likely use to start A-Level studies or to start Year 13 teaching of A-Level subjects following Year 12 exams.  As such it doesnt solve the issue, but rather displaces it. Is the focus not on learning rather than measuring learning? As such how can any solution with a knock on to teaching and learning be acceptable.

Also, the point students should be at the end of each academic year has been arbitrarily determined.   At some point the curriculum for each subject was developed and the content decided for each year or stage however it could have easily been decided that more or less content be added.   Why, therefore, is the point students should be at perceived to be so immovable?Why not simply reduce content for the year based on the reduced time available to students? Surely this is an alternative option.

There is also the point that next years results will be compared with this years results, where it has already been reported this years results were significantly up.   This obviously resulted from the use of centre assessed grades, provided by teachers, without any of the normal annual statistical manipulation in relation to grade boundaries.    This comparison is unavoidable.So, despite any delay, etc, there is still a high likelihood of negative reporting in the press with regards the 2021 results, with knock-ons in terms of students/parents being disappointed.

This bring us nicely to the big question I have seen a number of people ask, which is 3 months behind who or what?     Is it 3 months behind where teachers think they would be had Covid19 not arisen?   A prediction based on a predication doesn’t provide me with much confidence as to its statistical reliability.   Is it three months behind in terms of curriculum content covered at the predicted rate that content is covered?   Again this suffers given it relies on predicated rate of coverage of materials plus could the content be covered at a faster rate but in less depth possibly?

Maybe this issue is an opportunity to reassess our assumptions and to question our current approach regarding education and how it is assessed or are we simply going to accept that this is the way things are done around here and that any changes should be limited and only in maintaining the status quo? I believe we have reached a fork in the road, however I worry that we may look to take the route which looks easier.

Time to stop adjusting grades/grade boundaries?

If using an algorithm to adjust marks is unfair, as it has been deemed to be this year, then surely this practice must cease going forward.

The last few weeks have been filled with issues surrounding exam results.   One of these was being how the A-Level results were adjusted from centre assessed grades based on a statistical algorithm.   This was deemed to be unfair as it penalised some students or groups of students more than others.    The lack of equity was clearly evident due to the ability for schools to compare their centre assessed grades with the finally awarded grades.   It was therefore evident how the statistical adjustment, carried out in the interests of keeping results generally in line with previous year’s results, impacted on individual students.  The faces and lives of individual students could be attached to the grade adjustments.  This was deemed unacceptable.

My worry here is that this statistical adjustment has always gone on.   Normally students would sit exams with their resulting score undergoing adjustment in the form of changes in the grade boundaries.   Again, this was done in the interests of keeping results generally in line with previous years results and again some groups of students would likely be penalised more than others.    The grade boundaries changed due to the exam being deemed generally easier/harder.   The focus on the difficulty of the exam meant that seldom did we associate resulting grade changes with individual students; we don’t generally attach faces to this change, yet some students would have received lesser grades than had the adjustment not been carried out, the same as happened this year.    This seemed acceptable, and has been the way things have been done for decades, but I don’t see how this is any fairer that what happened this year.  

Maybe following this years issues, we need to take another look at how we assess/measure students learning and achievement including the associated processes.

Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert (MIEE)

I recently received an email from Microsoft confirming my acceptance as a Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert (MIEE) for what will now be my fifth successive year.    Over that time, I have found the MIEE community to have gone from strength to strength and to have grown what it has to offer to those who are accepted into the MIEE cohort each year.   This has greatly helped me as an individual and in turn, I believe, has greatly helped my school.

Probably one of the biggest benefits of involvement in the MIEE programme is the community that it provides you access to.    The MIEE community are very eager to share their ideas and resources making use of a MIEE Microsoft Team (below) as well as all the usual social media channels to share.

This has given me access to a wealth of resources including video help guides, tip and tricks resources and displays for around school, to name but a few.    This has saved me a massive amount of time and provided me an almost constant flow of professional development materials which I could use and/or pass onto colleagues throughout the school.   It is also a great place to reach out to for support or answers to questions; Many a query raised with me by staff in school has been answered with support from the MIEE community.   This community has also provided me a blueprint for the kind of internal EdTech community I think we should each seek to build within our schools and across schools within our local areas.

Another benefit of the MIEE programme is access to information and occasionally demonstrations of new functionality which Microsoft are planning to introduce.   This has been particularly interesting in relation to seeing how Microsoft Teams has developed, seeing for example the plans for user changeable backgrounds for meetings before this was introduced to the public.    This little extra insight has helped in planning and preparing within the school for the introduction of new features to Microsoft products.

The MIEE community has also allowed me the opportunity to get involved in a couple of TweetMeets this year.   These twitter-based events last about 1 hour and focus on a given educational topic.   These have been a great opportunity to interact with educators from across the world and get their thoughts and views which in turn has helped widen my perspective.   This global perspective is another significant advantage of the MIEE community as the community itself is built up of educators from across the globe working in different contexts both within their individual schools but nationally in the different counties.   As such I have been able to seek out a diverse range of opinions and ideas which has helped me in decision making within my own context and school.

The majority of my interactions with MIEEs has very much been virtual in nature, via twitter, via Teams, etc, however there have also been opportunities to meet others face to face.   During last year, through the MIEE community, I became aware of and then took part in a Microsoft Bootcamp where I had the opportunity to meet with a work with a number for staff from the Further and Higher Education sector.   This was very useful for me as the context was slightly different than my own independent school context and therefore provided me plenty of opportunities to compare and contrast what we are doing with what colleges and universities are doing.    In Jan 2020 there was also a meetup at the BETT conference in London including a trip to the Microsoft store in London; Sadly, on this occasion I missed this event due to other commitments.

I also need to mention other opportunities such as the MIE Expert Strava group which was just started the other day;   This has allowed a number of MIEExperts who are interested in fitness/wellbeing and in particular in running to share their efforts.  I have found this highly motivational and am on target to complete 25km of running this week with the groups help, assuming tomorrows run goes ahead and is completed as planned.

Overall, I have very much enjoyed being a member of the MIEE community.    I suspect the value you take from it is related to the effort you put in, in being involved and contributing to discussion, sharing resources and ideas, etc.  I myself have found myself getting more involved each year.    I personally look forward to continuing my involvement in 2020/21 and to leveraging the MIEE community in helping and supporting myself personally and professionally, plus my school and its community.   For those considering whether to apply for 2021/22 I would certainly recommend it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Embedding in SharePoint Online

SharePoint Online can easily replace conventional school VLEs thereby saving schools money.    It may be that SharePoint doesn’t have some of the education specific functionality that dedicated school VLEs have, however there are easy work arounds for this or it is simply a question of whether the often high per student licensing cost is worth it for functionality which is often limited in its use.

One of the particular things I like with SharePoint Online is the ability to easily embed content from other educational tools such as Wakelet or Flipgrid.

The key to doing this is the Embed Webpart, which is available when editing a page.

Simple add this to a page and then past in the appropriate Embed code from the site into the relevant embedcode box which appears on the right of the screen.

Please note, if you are unable to embed from a given site/service it may be necessary to allow the embedding for this site/service or to ask you IT admin to do this for you.   This involves going into Site Settings and then HTML Field Security.

Here you will find a list of the domain names/web addresses which are enabled for your sharepoint site and therefore can be embedded.  To add additional sites simply add the web address.  E.g. to allow Wakelet we simply add http://www.wakelet.com to the list.

Alternatively you could change the setting to all contributors from any domain however this is a less secure approach and therefore isn’t recommended.

For me SharePoint online may not be filled with specific educational related functionality however it is quick and easy to use, is very scalable, allows embedding of common educational tools such as wakelet and lacks the high additional cost of traditional VLEs.  I think this therefore makes it an ideal tool to consider for use in schools.

 

 

 

 

 

 

My 12 books for 2020, so far.

Its almost the end of July and I have already managed my annual target of reading 12 books, helped along by the lockdown and the resultant lack of other things to do, plus reduced need for travelling every day.

I thought I would share my list so far along with some comments on each book:

Compassionism by Kavitha Chahel

A book looking at “Helping Business Leaders Create engaged teams and happy people”.   An easy book to read but I will admit I don’t feel I took much from it.  It felt very superficial but this may just be me.   Not one I would recommend sadly.

 

The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle

“The secrets of highly successful groups”.   I took more from this book than from Compassionism plus found it mentioned concepts and theories I had an interest such as “Kaizen” which made it reasonably interesting to read.   I would however say there are better books available on organisational culture.

Start with why by Simon Sinek

“How great leaders inspire everyone to take action”.    There were lots of things to take away from this book including mention of Money vs. Value, the tendency to consider what is easily measurable as being important and also the need for trust as part of organisational culture.   It was very easy to draw parallels with schools and other educational organisations.   This is book I would definitely recommend.

Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman

This one was a book I was re-reading after some time.    Quite a heavy book to read in places but overall an excellent book with some important concepts around the need for Emotional intelligence in the world we live in.    Given the pace of change, and pressures to meet targets and other performance measures, I think a focus on our emotional understanding is only becoming more important.

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

I generally like Gladwells books so expected to like this.   I did.    A book looking at how our intuition and unconscious decision making can often steer us in the correct direction and how we can often confuse “information with understanding”.    I feel this book is a good balance alongside the likes of Factfulness which focus more on data and figures, on information, for decision making.   A strongly recommended read.

Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek

Another Sinek book for the year.   This book is similar to Start with Why however in my view focusses more on the individual whereas start with the why felt more from a team or organisational level.   I liked the concept of “Destructive Abundance” which appears to draw some parallels in Factfulness.   Could having more “stuff” lead to undervaluing what we have and/or seeking protect it in such as way that we isolate ourselves from others?    This is a book I would happily recommend.

The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt

This book also mentions abundance but as a “paradox of abundance” rather than the “destructive abundance” used by Sinek.   I found this book to be quite an interesting exploration of ancient wisdom and how it compares with modern science, including where they converge and diverge.   The main thing I took from the book was the importance of balance and how things are seldom A or B, but in fact are about a balance of A and B.

Reaching down the rabbit hole by Allan Ropper & B.D Burrell

A series of stories about people who have suffered serious brain injuries or illness impacting on the human brain, all written from the point of view of the doctor seeking to solve the puzzle of their illness and to cure them where possible.    This book wasn’t really what I expected in its content so although I read it fully I don’t feel I enjoyed it or took anything from it.    It may be a good book but didn’t really align with my reading interests so is not one I would recommend unless the subject content is something which interests you.

I’m worth more by Rob Moore

An easy to read book, but superficial as a result, a bit like Compasionism.    When I read books like this I feel they are a little like “self help” guides in that they put everything in very simple terms where things in this world are seldom simple.    I really like books that make me stop and challenge my views and assumptions which this book never did.   I would steer away from this one.

 

Life 3.0 by Max Tegmark

I really enjoyed the subject matter of this book, looking at Artificial Intelligence and how things might evolve beyond the human race, but with only the occasional nod to the Terminator films and the human race being exterminated by vicious automated systems.   This book opened my eyes to looking at the potential for AI and for the evolution of life, beyond the horror stories.   Now I have used the phrase “healthy paranoia” on a number of occasions in relation to my views on cyber security however this book introduced me to a new phrase in “mindful optimism” which I believe is the ideal phrase when looking a the potentially positive implications of technology and also of educational technology.

Factfulness by Hans Rosling

What is a lot of your thinking, which is largely intuitive, about the world we live in is wrong?   This book was very interesting in using data to prove that a lot of our thinking regarding the world isn’t supported by hard data and that if we look at the hard data we might be more inclined to be more positive, albeit there is still lots of room for improvement.   I very much enjoyed this book as it did challenge my thinking.  It was also a good book to pair with Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink which at the issue the other way, suggesting instinct is more useful than we give it credit.    This is a book I would strongly recommend.

Enlightenment No by Steven Pinker

This book is similar in topic and coverage to Factfulness, so it was good reading Factfulness and then progressing on this.   I found lots to take away from the book, although found it a little heavier reading, especially in some of the later chapters, when compared with Factfulness.   I liked the opening discussion of entropy in relation to the world, and how energy has to be expended to create order out of natural chaos.   I also liked the discussion of bias.   “When one’s nose is inches away from the news optimism can seen naïve”, hinted to the availability heuristic and how reporting of disasters, terrorism, etc via the news can colour our view as to the world we live in.    This is definitely a worthwhile book to read, however if I was to choose I would pick Factfulness rather than this, just for being marginally more accessible and easy to read.

 

Recommendations

So, if I had to recommend three books from the above, they would be:

  • Blink
  • Life 3.0
  • Factfulness

This provides some discussion of the distant future and AI, via Life 3.0, plus two differing views on the current world and whether to take a numbers based, or intuition based approach.