Daniel Miessler's Blog, page 122

Some Thoughts on Presentation Styles

I’m going to talk about presentations here, but keep in mind that most of my context is within the information security world, and each field has a dominant style of its own.

So here are my characterizations of various talk styles.

INFOSEC Style

InfoSec style talks can be summarized as slide-based descriptions of research that are designed to both inform and entertain. For a large part of the “in-crowd” talk circuit, however, the game is having slides that are funny, and ultimately convey to the audience that the presenter is both elite technically as well as likable. In short, it’s a slide-based popularity contest.

Characteristics include:

Talks are most popular when the presenter is making fun of how dumb something is.
The most common way of doing that is with humor, usually in the form of memes.
The goal of the presenter (whether aware of it or not) is often to raise the audience’s opinion of them personally by being entertaining as opposed to conveying a topic.
As a result, many people don’t remember the content of infosec after a few months. What they remember is whether they were entertained or not.

PROS: Entertaining, career-boosting for the presenter


CONS: More entertainment than content, ideas are forgotten quickly

ESSAY Style

Essay style talks (alternatively, Dan Geer style) can be summarized as language-based narratives around ideas, which tend to be only loosely supported by slides. The goal there is to introduce new ideas into the public consciousness in what equates to a “performed essay”.

Characteristics include:

The presenter is essentially reading a long essay.
They do their best to “perform” the essay, i.e. connecting with the audience in some way while still following the text precisely.
If slides are used, they are very much in a supporting role rather than primary. Their purpose is to enhance the content of the spoken essay, not to draw the attention.

PROS: Content-rich, usually bigger ideas


CONS: Can be hard to stay engaged, risk of boring audience if not done well

TED Style

TED style talks can be summarized as highly refined visual narratives. They’re short, story-based essays that are supported by strong visuals and very little text. The main goal is to powerfully impact the audience with a single, clear idea.

Characteristics include:

The speaker is performing on stage without the support of a podium or a computer.
They will have a prompter that might show notes or the next slide, but the entire talk is meant to be memorized, often word for word, so that notes are not needed.
Talks are short, focused, and are designed to be extremely easy for the audience to follow.
The goal afterwards is for the audience to say, “Wow.”, and to have them be able to easily convey the idea to others.

PROS: Highest quality, high production, elite feeling


CONS: High cost to attend, high prep time for presenters, relatively few conferences with this style due to the production cost

Thoughts

For most of my career I’ve been doing the standard, InfoSec style of presentation, with some moderate measure of success. Honestly my ideas are far better than my presentations, and I think the style is a big part of that.

I’ve been wanting to transition to Dan Geer style for some time because I write much better than I meme, and I like to keep the ideas as a central focus. I also like the idea of a talk only being compelling if the ideas are strong enough on their own.

If you present in Dan Geer style and you don’t have something valuable to say, there aren’t any GIFs to save you. And I like that. It forces the issue of better content.

So I’m personally leaning towards more exploration of that style of talk, but I’m also planning to experiment with the TED style as well. The advantage there is that you can actually do TED style at almost any conference and the audience won’t really notice.

Summary


There seem to be distinct presentation types, which I categorize as INFOSEC, ESSAY, and TED style.
Infosec style talks are characterized by humor and entertainment conveyed by strong slides, Essay style talks are characterized by deep ideas conveyed through a reading, and TED style talks are characterized by short, memorized performances of a focused idea.
Because I like to write, I’m going to be experimenting a lot more with the essay style of presentation, and some TED style as well.
I think people should think about their natural style for conveying information, and ask themselves which of the INFOSEC, ESSAY, or TED styles fits best for them.


Notes


Keep in mind the generalizations about infosec talks are quite regional. In Europe, for example, talks tend to be quite a bit more dry, professional, and informative. Although quite a bit of the American humor / meme game has crept in there as well over the years.
There are also many people, both in the U.S. and elsewhere, that are extremely content-focused in their infosec talks. This is obviously a generalization, and doesn’t include everyone.
All the bad things I mention about infosec talks here I’ve done myself. So I’m throwing rocks out of my own glass house. But I’m looking at upgrading to 1) not throwing rocks, and 2) living outside.
Here’s a good example of Dan Geer’s presentation style, from his most popular talk at Blackhat 2014. Link
Many senior presenters in infosec, i.e., people who are orienting their presentations towards corporate and c-level audiences, have made the move to TED style presentations. So, full-slide graphics, giant text (if any), and a walking / talking performance of memorized content.

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I do a weekly show called Unsupervised Learning, where I curate the most interesting stories in infosec, technology, and humans, and talk about why they matter. You can subscribe here.

How to Build a Successful Information Security Career
Fixing the Culture of InfoSec Presentations
Ideas
Unsupervised Learning: No. 68
Unsupervised Learning: No. 69

A Relativity Primer

I often mix up general and special relativity, so I’m creating this to remind myself of the differences between them as well as the utterly fascinating elements of each.

Special Relativity

Special Relativity says that space and time are inexorably tied, which has the following manifestations:

The laws of physics are the same for anyone sharing the same inertial frame of reference.
The speed of light is the same for all observers, regardless of how fast the source is traveling.
As objects approach the speed of light their length, as viewed by observers, shortens in the direction of travel.
As objects approach the speed of light, time slows for them relative to observers.
As an object’s speed approaches the speed of light, it’s mass increases such that it approaches infinite mass at velocity c, and c can never be reached.
No normal object can reach or exceed the speed of light.
There is no such thing as a truly simultaneous event unless observers share an inertial reference point. In other words, when you ask if something is simultaneous or not, you have to also ask the relative speeds of the observers.
It’s called the “special” theory of relativity because it refers to physics when NOT undergoing acceleration and/or within a gravitational field. When a significant acceleration or gravitational field is in play, General Relativity becomes a consideration.

What I find remarkable about this theory is that it doesn’t actually mean “everything is relative”, as if to say that there are no constants in the universe or something. In fact it’s saying the exact opposite.

What he did was allow you to translate measurements from one observer to another when they are moving relative to each other. In other words he uncovered the universality of the physical laws and elegantly explained how they appeared different to different observers.

General Relativity

General Relativity says that gravity is a type of acceleration caused by the bending of spacetime around massive objects.

The best visualization of this is a bowling ball in the center of a trampoline. The center is distorted in towards the bowling ball, while the edges remain flat. Using this warping, it’d be possible to quickly roll a marble around the dip in the trampoline so that it orbits the bowling ball.

In the Newtonian model, and to a common observer, it appears as if the bowling ball is attracting the marble and holding it in orbit. But what’s really happening, according to Einstein’s General Relativity, is that the marble is falling towards the bowling ball because space (the trampoline) is warped.

This is considered one of—if not the most—beautiful of all physics theories. It means that acceleration and gravity are the same, which is why you have to accelerate to enter orbit around the Earth. You have to overcome the opposing acceleration of 9.8m/s/s imposed by the Earth itself.

Summary


Special Relativity is about time and space being tied to each other in something called “spacetime”, and says the laws of physics are the same everywhere in the universe, most notably the speed of light regardless of the speed of the light source or observer.
Special Relativity says that in order to see that the laws are identical for observers traveling at different speeds relative to each other you must translate the measurements made based on relative motion.
Special Relativity refers to objects that are not undergoing acceleration, i.e. they either share the same inertial frame or are trailing at different speeds and directions from each other but without acceleration. “Special” basically means “without acceleration”.
General Relativity simply says that objects warp spacetime and create a type of acceleration around them called gravity.


Notes


I’m not a physicist, so I’m sure there’s lots of opportunity for improvement here. I hope they are good enough to convey basics, however.
When I say “observers” I mean relative to the thing traveling.
Special Relativity was published in 1905 and was ignored for over two years before being noticed.
General Relativity was not published until 1916.

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I do a weekly show called Unsupervised Learning, where I curate the most interesting stories in infosec, technology, and humans, and talk about why they matter. You can subscribe here.

A vim Tutorial and Primer
The Relationship Between Horsepower, Torque, and Acceleration
10 Ways to Test Your Website Performance
Ideas
Universal Daemonization as Asset Management

Ruby is Gentoo, Python is Ubuntu

I used to be a Gentoo guy. For like 7 years I ran it and it was my world. It was more of a religion than a Linux distro. But perhaps that’s implied.

Anyway, I eventually ended up back at Ubuntu.

I also used to be a Python guy, but I eventually ended up on Ruby. I feel like there a lot of similarities here.

I still smile when I think of Gentoo. If I had loved many times, it’d be like thinking of a lover who I shared a magical period of my life with, and where there was some regret that we’re no longer together.

I needed to grow up, you see. I needed a stable job, you see. And you can’t raise a family by painting and debating philosophy in the French countryside. No, you need a real career, and a real income.

So I left the countryside, and my dear lover, to come be part of the adult world. You know, where more people did the same thing and had the best answers on Stack Exchange.

I’m still in love with Gentoo, is what I’m trying to say.

Anyway, I run Ubuntu because adult. And I don’t run CentOS because I think it’s an adult that takes itself too seriously and stifles creativity as a result.

Where was I?

Oh, yes, Python.

I moved to Python after Perl taught me the power of programming. I was reading the Camel book in my marketing class and was having my mind absolutely blown by both topics. I would disappear into Perl, have multiple mindgasms, and then occasionally hear the professor say something remarkable. I would engage with him, explore that idea, and then return back to Perl.

It was wondrous.

But then I learned of a better Perl (ducks) that wasn’t so sloppy or unpredictable, and that was Python. I ran that for several years, perhaps until around 2010 or so, when I found Ruby.

Well I didn’t find it. It was already there. But I made the conscious decision to move to it from Python.

I felt Ruby was better than Python just as Python was better than Perl, but only 1/4 as much. And that was enough.

Ruby feels more elegant to me. Blocks are beautiful. The syntax is more natural. And Nokogiri is like a perfect roundhouse kick.

But now something is disturbing the force, and that something is data science and artificial intelligence. Both of these worlds, starting in the universities, are running on Python.

I’m watching Ruby fade out of existence like Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future. I reach for it, but my hand passes through it.

Python seems to be an unstoppable force. Not because it’s better, but because it’s propelled by the warp engines of data science and AI. I’m trying not to hate it like a bad product with good marketing.

Because it’s not bad. But I don’t feel like it’s as good as Ruby. Keep in mind, I’m a programmer and not a developer, so your opinion might be different.

Anyway, I’m about to say goodby to yet another lover. It’s a big world out there, after all, and you have to do what you have to do. It is what it is. Food on the table. Brass tacks. All cliche’s have a silver lining.

Something something wisdom.

Bottom line is it looks to be a Ubuntu and Python world, and I’m living in it.

Goodbye Ruby. I have fond memories of you. Not as fond as Gentoo, but fond.

Hello Python, it’s nice to see you again.

Notes


Actually, in college, Redhat was my first Linux distro, and Perl was my first programming language. Not counting C++, which I didn’t create anything useful with other than class projects.

__

I do a weekly show called Unsupervised Learning, where I curate the most interesting stories in infosec, technology, and humans, and talk about why they matter. You can subscribe here.

Programming
Ruby vs. JavaScript as a First Language
Linux Distro Wars
Getting Into Ruby
Postfix

APIs are 2FA’s Achilles Heel

One of the most popular thing to ask about the security of a service, a portal, or really anything internet-facing is:

Is it 2FA-enabled?

If they answer in the affirmative, this usually ends the conversation in a positive way. As if there’s not much an attacker can do against it.

First, that’s not true. Lots of malware is capable of dealing with 2FA. It’s just a more manual process.

But even worse is the issue of APIs, which is basically where we build massive backdoors into our authentication system—including 2FA.

The API backdoor

The next time you are chatting with someone about 2FA access to some big-name SaaS service or product, ask them if they have an API.

They’ll probably respond with,

Of course.

Now ask them what all you can do with the API.

Oh, it’s a great API. You can do pretty much everything.

Great. And how many people have access?

It’s super popular. We give access to all our developers, and any account can ask for and get a key.

Cool.

So how many of those keys are out there, and how do you control them?

Derp.

Exactly.

API keys often have full access to do anything on the platform, and guess what the access method is? It’s a string of characters for your key, and a string of characters for your secret.

Sound familiar? Maybe, like a username and password?

Oh, but this is different because it’s all code-ey and stuff. Lots of programming and things and stuff.

No.

That’s not a defense. Good APIs also share something else—great documentation. So it’s pretty easy to do things like add users, adjust permissions, pull data, etc., using this interface.

And this is all happening on 2FA enabled accounts.

Summary


Everyone understands that 2FA is better than username & password.
Everyone is also trying to add an API to their new service.
API keys are just usernames and passwords used in code.
Few people realize this, and think it’s either safe because “programming is hard” or because “APIs are magic.”
APIs are not magic. They’re an entry point into your application, and there are far too many keys and secrets floating around out there on services that are 2FA-enabled.
This presents a false sense of security.

2FA is great. Enable it where you can. But it’s not the end of the conversation.

Be sure to take a look at your API as well. Know what you can do using it, know who has keys, know how often they expire, and have a story around monitoring and response.

For all intents and purposes, you should treat API access like legacy username and password access. Credentials can be stolen, and credentials can be used to do bad things.

Don’t get shot in the ankle.

__

I do a weekly show called Unsupervised Learning, where I curate the most interesting stories in infosec, technology, and humans, and talk about why they matter. You can subscribe here.

An Encoding Primer
A vim Tutorial and Primer
Basic GPG Commands
From Password Reset Mechanisms to OpenID: A Brief Discussion of Online Password Security
A Security-focused HTTP Primer

Unsupervised Learning: No. 79

This week’s topics: WannaCry, Intel leaks, DocuSign phishing, cockpit codes, Delta facial recognition, China vs. CIA, WordPress bug bounty, Marines and drones, HPE R&D, Watts, graduates only making 40K, China’s DNA project, honeymoons vs. rings, Sherrif Eli, retirees hoarding money, boo restaurant kiosks, investing in employees, discovery, aphorisms, and more…

This is Episode No. 79 of Unsupervised Learning—a weekly show where I curate 3-5 hours of reading in infosec, technology, and humans into a 15 to 30 minute summary.

The goal is to catch you up on current events, tell you about the best content from the week, and hopefully give you something to think about as well.

The show is released as a Podcast on iTunes, Overcast, Android, or RSS—and as a Newsletter which you can subscribe to and get previous editions of here.

Newsletter

Every Sunday I put out a curated list of the most interesting stories in infosec, technology, and humans.

I do the research, you get the benefits. Over 5K subscribers.

The podcast and newsletter usually go out on Sundays, so you can catch up on everything early Monday morning.

I hope you enjoy it.

__

I do a weekly show called Unsupervised Learning, where I curate the most interesting stories in infosec, technology, and humans, and talk about why they matter. You can subscribe here.

Unsupervised Learning: No. 78
Unsupervised Learning: No. 76
Unsupervised Learning: No. 73
Unsupervised Learning: No. 75
Unsupervised Learning: No. 72

Meaning Anchors

It’s pretty obvious that people need meaning in their lives, but I wonder if the rise of suicide and opiates use can be seen in this light.

The way I think about it is that people have to subscribe to something. They need an anchor.

Some of the best ones are conservative religions. Conservative Christianity, Islam, etc. I’ll add the Fox News world as another since it includes an entire set of political beliefs as well as religious. Basically, the clearer it is what you should believe about things, how you (and others) should behave, and how the world should work, the better for your mental sanity.

These are anchors, and I think it’s hard for humans shift them.

But what modern culture does is expose us constantly to different meaning anchors.

Political conservatism
Political liberalism
The environment
Love everyone, no matter what
Being good at the game you’re playing
Your favorite sport
Role-playing games
Etc.

Basically, people tend to pick something and deep-dive on it. It becomes their world. It becomes their anchor. So when it’s pulled up for some reason, or someone shows them a deeper / heavier one, it can rock their identity.

I wrote this essay about role-playing games many years ago, and I think this is the same concept.

Role-playing games are a great example because if you’re doing them right, you’re immersing into the world. You’re taking on the meaning structure of the character. And I think hat’s where the problem is.

Your mind wants to maintain only one meaning structure, and the deeper they are the less you can mix them.

Reality and a good role-playing game are in stark conflict because the better the game the more you supplant reality and use it for your meaning structure. And that messes with your brain. It basically re-calibrates for that structure, and it wants to win there.

So evolution tunes to it in the two senses that matter: survival and reproduction. You structure all your efforts to improve around those two things…in the game. Not in reality.

That’s what a meaning structure, or anchor ultimately does. It changes where you want to win.

The new economy

I think the new post-human-work economy will have this happening at scale across the world. The meaning structure will shift from the real world, having good work, and making lots of money, to doing these things within MMORPG games of different types.

Back in 2006 I wrote about the future of gaming, where everyone had a role in MMORPGs that they played. We’ll be cops, or bad guys, or whatever. And society will work normally, with people fulfilling duties and finding meaning within that structure.

You’ll have sports stars based on e-sports, you’ll have superheroes, knights, princesses, etc. And people will live on the outside (the real world) just so they can get to their actual meaning anchor, which is in-game.

Evolution wants a context to play in

I think this ultimately comes down to evolution needing to know what to win at.

Think about a teenager moving to a new neighborhood, in a new city, in a different part of the world.

Let’s say they go from Brooklyn to Hichitaw Tennessee.

They show up looking urban and all New Yorker and such. But within a few weeks or months they realize that all the teenagers find cowboy hats and country music attractive. And pretty soon they do too.

They hated that music when they showed up. But now they like it because evolution taught them to. It made them like it so they could win at that game. And now they have a big truck and a great pair of boots.

And now they have an anchor that they can use to succeed, to win, and to thrive.

You?

So what’s your anchor? What’s your meaning structure?

And how much would it change if you went to a place that had a completely different one?

__

I do a weekly show called Unsupervised Learning, where I curate the most interesting stories in infosec, technology, and humans, and talk about why they matter. You can subscribe here.

A Potential Issue With Immersive Fantasy Games
The Future of Happiness as Digital Humans
On the Rise of Pokemon GO and AR/VR Gaming
Meaning is an Illusion
Are the Religious More Logical Than I Think?

An Ubuntu update Command

I have an alias I like to use on Ubuntu that goes something like this:

alias update=apt update; apt upgrade -y

But there’s an improvement that I made recently I’d like to share. First run this to get the tool.

apt install debian-goodies

Then run this command checkrestart.

checkrestart

checkrestart checks to see if you currently need to restart any running applications in order to fully benefit from the upgrade you just did. So if a process is using libraries that were updated, for example.

So that leaves me with an updated update command that looks like this:

alias update=apt update; apt upgrade -y; checkrestart

Add that to your shell’s configuration and now you can run update to fully update your system and see if anything needs to be restarted.

Enjoy!

Notes


Note that you should be using apt for most things instead of apt-get, etc. apt replaces apt-get, apt search replaces apt-cache search, etc.

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I do a weekly show called Unsupervised Learning, where I curate the most interesting stories in infosec, technology, and humans, and talk about why they matter. You can subscribe here.

Gentoo vs. Debian
The Ultimate Speed Guide for WordPress on NGINX
Building an IDS on CentOS using Suricata
The First 10 Things I Do on a New Mac
Ubuntu: aptitude > apt-*

Restaurant Pay Kiosks Are Just Outsourcing Work to the Customer

Restaurants are trying really hard to sell us on the “cool” tech of table kiosks—which, as far as I can tell, are magical boxes that make it so you can never find your waiter.

But that’s kind of the point, actually: the more of those boxes there are, the fewer waiters are needed.

I thought it was slightly interesting the first two or three times I used them. The next ten times I used them I was just kind of “meh”. And now I absolutely abhor them.

Dear all restaurants,

Interacting only with a screen is not a "cool tech" upgrade. It's a "super annoying" downgrade.

Thanks,

Everyone

— ᴅᴀɴɪᴇʟ ᴍɪᴇssʟᴇʀ (@DanielMiessler) May 17, 2017

If you think about what they actually are, it’s rather revolting.

They sell it as a convenience to you, but it’s actually nothing of the sort. They’re poorly designed interfaces, different in every establishment, and basically equate to a puzzle to solve at the end of your meal. I don’t want to puzzle before I leave. I’m here to relax.

They’re actually just giving you a task that needs to be performed, and that task isn’t going away.

The difference is that instead of the restaurant paying a worker to do it, you the customer are now doing it instead.

Hey, wait. So…

You’re firing your wait staff, who are people who need work.
I get worse service because there is nobody around to answer questions, refill drinks, etc.
And then you have me do the work of paying at the end, which equates to like 137 interactions with a nasty touchscreen using an interface that’s different in every restaurant.

Um, no. Nice try.

Depending on mood I might be talking with managers and/or having waiters do this manually. I’ll happily tip more for the service.

But having that task outsourced to me, by greedy corporations, so they can hire fewer waiters and give me worse service—all under the false flag of “convenience”—is not ok.

__

I do a weekly show called Unsupervised Learning, where I curate the most interesting stories in infosec, technology, and humans, and talk about why they matter. You can subscribe here.

Lifecasting: What It Is and How It Will Change Society
On Curation and Quality
Personal Daemons and Customization
2 Trends That Will Shape the Real IoT
How AI Will Improve Human Customer Service (Right Before It Kills It)

How to Download Your LinkedIn Profile as a Resume

For some reason I get a lot of questions about how to create a resume from a LinkedIn profile. I love this functionality because I find it much easier to keep LinkedIn updated and print a resume from there, rather than updating Word docs or whatever.

Here’s how you do it.

Log into your LinkedIn account.
Click the “Me” icon towards the right side of the bar at the top.


Select “View Profile” from the pulldown menu.


Select “Save to PDF”.

Now you’ll get a PDF download of your LinkedIn resume that you can share with whomever.

Bonus

To stand out for more casual inquiries, you can share a visualization of your resume via another LinkedIn integration called Vizualize Me. It connects to LinkedIn, pulls your information, and turns it into an infographic.

Here’s what that output looks like.

I hope this helps someone, and if you have any questions feel free to reach out.

Notes


Because it’s so easy to create both a PDF and visual resume using LinkedIn, and because it’s basically the go-to platform for looking up someone’s professional profile, I recommend that people use LinkedIn as their source of truth. Forget having 20 versions of your resume floating around. Just keep LinkedIn updated and print it out using this method when you need to.

__

I do a weekly show called Unsupervised Learning, where I curate the most interesting stories in infosec, technology, and humans, and talk about why they matter. You can subscribe here.

A Guide to Information Security Certifications
How To Decide Who To Friend on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter
How to Build a Successful Information Security Career
Windows File Sharing: Facing the Mystery
Great Advice on Corporate Recruiting

Leveraging the Masses as a Competitive Advantage

Imagine a time, say 10-30 years from now, where 80% of people are not needed in society.

They can’t produce more value, doing traditional tasks, than computers, AI, and robots can. So they are all either fired or can’t get a job in the first place.

It’s a whole separate topic to ask what they’re going to be doing, but let’s assume they’re there and not rioting (yes, it’s a major assumption on its own). They’re likely to be receiving a check and public housing to play video games and watch TV all day.

Anyway, 80% of the world, just doing that. We’ll call them the Betas. At first it’ll be low numbers like we have today, then it’ll be more than half, then 70%, 80%, 90%, etc. I’m not sure where that’ll top out, but I’m guessing around 95% or so. Hard to say since it also depends where you draw the line.

But let’s go with 80%.

We’re still going to have countries at this point. And those countries will still have economies and will still be competing with each other. The global economy will be far more linked, of course, but it’ll still be made up of distinct countries and distinct groups of people.

What I just realized earlier tonight is that the Alphas (the lucky 20% at the top) will have different ways of viewing the Betas (those who aren’t so lucky). Many of them will look down on them, of course, as they already do.

But the smart play, from a competitive standpoint, as a country and as an economy, is to try to harness the power of this group. Let’s say the U.S. is 500M. 80% of that is 400M people. That’s 300 million people who can’t provide traditional work that is cheaper and better than machines or automation. This isn’t actually too far off.

But the key here is the word traditional.

The challenge and opportunity for the Alphas will be to find a way to harness the creative power of the Betas, to find the Alphas within the masses, and/or to use their masses to produce value in some way.

In other words, short-sighted countries will see their Beta population as failures who should be placated and distracted to avoid revolt, but little further thought will be given to them. They’ll be the untouchables. The forgotten people. The Alphas will live in plush Green Zones with spectacular food, the newest tech, and brilliantly curated experiences 24/7, and the Betas will wallow in cookie-cutter manufactured homes that are little more than shelters for media and gaming rigs.

The smart countries, however, will see the Beta population as a fountain of potential. They will build platforms to find the best artists, the best performers, the best thinkers, the best storytellers, the best…everything. Once they’re identified they’ll be extracted, trained, and magnified, and will thus become part of the value creation engine for that country.

In other words the game changes from traditional value (which humans won’t really compete well with computers on) into one of personality, uniqueness, art, music, and other human-advantaged traits. And whoever can extract and nurture the individuals in their populations with these skills most efficiently will have a tremendous advantage economically.

In fact, these competitions will be their own games, and the reward will be entering the Alpha class. You move to the Green Zone, you get the nice house, you’re surrounded by upgraded people, you get upgrades yourself, etc. And once you do, you start producing value for the country and economy in a way that you couldn’t before.

Summary


The world will soon be separated into Alphas and Betas.
Alphas are the shrinking number of people who can provide value in a workforce being cleaned out by computers, AI, and robots. Betas are everyone else.
Dumb countries will treat the Betas like failures, and do their best to ignore them.
Smart countries will treat Betas like a sea of potential Alphas with yet-undiscovered talents, and they’ll run tech platforms designed to discover, train, and make use of the talented within the masses.


Notes


Also included in the Betas will be many millions of people in the service industry who barely make any money for the work they do. But they will have some advantages within the gaming and media consumption world, otherwise there would be no incentive to work vs. not work. They’ll probably have more channels and special abilities within their favorite games.
The truth is that AI is coming for the creative traits in humans as well, and they’ll eventually win there too. But for the next ten or twenty years humans should still have the advantage there.

__

I do a weekly show called Unsupervised Learning, where I curate the most interesting stories in infosec, technology, and humans, and talk about why they matter. You can subscribe here.

Green Zone, Red Zone
The Bifurcation of America: The Forced Class Separation into Alphas and Betas
The World Needs a Federation
On the Rise of Pokemon GO and AR/VR Gaming
Measuring the Quality of a Culture