Roger B. Lazarus: Computing at LASL in the 1940s and 1950s (1978)

The Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories have been important sponsors of, and customers for, supercomputers-high-performance scientific computers. The laboratories played an important part in establishing speed of floating-point arithmetic (rather than, say, at logical operations) as the performance criterion defining supercomputing. But their more specific influence on the evolution of computer architecture has been limited by the diversity and classified nature of their central computational tasks, together with the expansion of supercomputer use elsewhere.

The report is part of FAS’s Los Alamos Technical Reports and Publications collection:

In 2002, the Los Alamos National Laboratory terminated public access to thousands of unclassified reports on nuclear science and technology as well as other historical and policy-related publications that had formerly been available on the Lab’s web site as part of its Library Without Walls initiative.

Fortunately, almost all of the withdrawn reports were acquired and preserved in the public domain by researchers Gregory Walker and Carey Sublette. The document titles are indexed in four parts

Publisher: Washington: Dept. of Energy ; Springfield, Va. : For sale by the National Technical Information Service, 1978.

More info (and archive of related documents)

PDF (updated on 2012-7-25)

Francis Hunger (ed.): How I Learned to Love RFID (2006)

Reader / documentation from the workshops by HMKV Dortmund and RIXC Riga, 20-22 May 2006.

With texts and images by Dorothea Carls, Jasmina Tesanovic, Rob van Kranenburg, Bruce Sterling, Oliver Leistert, Timo Arnall, Franziska Nori, Inke Arns, Francis Hunger.

“The series of lectures brings together approaches and projects that artistically and critically deal with Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Technology – a technology that is significantly being developed and advanced by companies and research institutes in Dortmund. This technology which at first glance seems to be a simple further development of the bar code (well known from the supermarket) is much more powerful that the good old bar code technology. RFID tags are passive radio transmitters, which upon receiving a minor wireless energy impulse are sending back the information stored on their memory. Today, this information can be read already at a distance of six meters – without the process getting noticed. In addition, with its unique identification numbering system, this technology will allow for a precise identification of every object worldwide. What will it be like to live in a world where all the objects constantly will be talking to each other?”

Publisher HMKV, Dortmund, 2006
[18] pages

More info (includes audio recordings)

PDF, PDF (updated on 2017-9-8)

Database State – a comprehensive map of UK government databases (2009)

In recent years, the UK Government has built or extended many central databases that hold information on every aspect of our lives, from health and education to welfare, law–enforcement and tax. This ‘Transformational Government’ programme was supposed to make public services better or cheaper, but it has been repeatedly challenged by controversies over effectiveness, privacy, legality and cost.

Many question the consequences of giving increasing numbers of civil servants daily access to our personal information. Objections range from cost through efficiency to privacy. The emphasis on data capture, form-filling, mechanical assessment and profiling damages professional responsibility and alienates the citizen from the state. Over two-thirds of the population no longer trust the government with their personal data.

This report charts these databases, creating the most comprehensive map so far of what has become Britain’s Database State.

All of these systems had a rationale and purpose. But this report shows how, in too many cases, the public are neither served nor protected by the increasingly complex and intrusive holdings of personal information invading every aspect of our lives.

By Ross Anderson, Ian Brown, Terri Dowty, Philip Inglesant, William Heath, Angela Sasse (March 2009)
Published by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust Ltd., York, UK

More info (Guardian)

Direct download:
Database State – full report (PDF, 879KB)
Database State – Executive Summary (PDF, 260KB)