Tag Archives: education

Shoham – Collapsing Technologies

Healing our technological self-destruction

By Eh’den Biber

Dedicated to Shoham

Prologue – Shoham (1997)

Shoham was the beautiful gift my ex-wife and I received after the death of our second son. I remember our happiness when she came into the world and the shock that hit us less than 24 hours later when her doctors realised something is *really* wrong with her body. The doctors did everything they could – they made her pass endless tests, they created a committee with the best experts in the hospital and consulted with colleagues around the country and the world. She was given every treatment they can think of – but nothing helped. I remember a conversation I had with the head of the emergency unit for newborn babies, a kind and gentle man, who told me during that week: “You know, we doctors are good plumbers. We can change valves, and pipes, but when the system is collapsing we don’t have any ability to fix it”.

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Dancing with Faust

The hidden cost behind technology addiction, the knowledge culture, and the abandoning of wisdom.

By Eh’den Biber

 

Prologue

Once upon a time there was a successful scholar who was dissatisfied with his life. One day, he decided to make a deal with the devil, to give up his soul for all the world’s knowledge and pleasures. This ancient German tale that has been captured so vividly in the writings of Goethe at the late 18th century is one of the most known stories about deals humans have made with the devil. Fast forward to the 21st century and we are constantly being tempted by knowledge and the pleasures of technology. But what price do we pay? Are we exchanging something more important by our addiction to this flashing thing we call reality?

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The Desolation of Awareness – 4 – Buddha Was a Hacker

By Eh’den (Uri) Biber

 

The root of all problems, Baron Münchhausen, why “no” fails, and why Buddha was a hacker.

 

Prologue

Please, don’t continue reading. Unless you’re willing to give up everything you thought is true about information security awareness I gently ask you to stop. If the only thing you’re interested in is how to distribute an awareness material to the employees in the organisation you belong to this series is not for you. If you think that you can make people aware of anything by explaining it to them this series is not for you. If you believe that computer based training can make anyone aware, please stop, this series is definitely not for you.

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The Desolation of Awareness – 2 – Making Sense

By Eh’den (Uri) Biber

 

Welcome back. Is there an information security sense like there is a sense of smell? Can we evaluate it? Why our normal definition of information security prevents us from reaching awareness? In case you missed the first article, please start there before continuing.

In this article we will look at our senses. After all the definition of awareness is all about being able to notice, and we notice via our senses.

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The Desolation of Awareness – 1 – The Art of Noticing

By Eh’den (Uri) Biber


Why am I writing this series, and why awareness is not as straightforward as most of us perceive it to be.

 

Introduction

Awareness is a wonderful buzz word. From a very young age we are being expected to “be aware” of what’s going on and to be able to react accordingly, even though most of the people who are trying to make us “aware” have no clue what true awareness is. Blind to the beauty of true awareness we convince ourselves that we might not understand reality but at least we are aware of it, yet  nothing could be further from the truth.

Fast forwarding to “information security”, which is a domain in awareness that includes technology. There have been many discussions in our community about this topic: some people claim that information security awareness training is a waste of money and others claim it is a crucial element in making organisations secure. Continue reading →