Guns & Graduation!

My wife and I have been watching an eponymous TV show set in the Shetland Islands, off the coast of Scotland. It is a police procedural. With so much of American police shows that flood the airwaves around the world, it stands out since the DIs (Detective Inspector) or the uniformed cops approaching criminals don't have drawn guns in their hands, that almost looks odd! Possession and use of guns is such a part & part of the US culture, that saying, "Why do we need so many guns?", even in elementary school teacher introduction type settings, will elicit responses from parents who won't agree to any kind of limitation or restrictions. (This is from a personal experience, here in PA years ago.) 

I have been serving as a (volunteer) member of the Board of Trustees for a kindergarten to 12th grade Charter School here in Allentown. Out of the 1200 students in the school, 81% are Hispanic and more than 10% are Black students and so it is predominantly a minority school. In case if you are not familiar with the US charter school system, they are publicly funded (i.e. using tax dollars) and privately run schools, that usually try to focus on some unmet need in the school district. 

On May 15th the school held a cultural function (a school dance) that was attended by students. After the event, many kids were in a nearby McDonalds hanging out to be picked up by parents. Around 9pm, somebody drove by, shot at the restaurant and one student from our school died, capitulating to the gun shot wound! He is just 18 and is a graduating student of the high school this year! 

Funeral for this student named Tymell Millan Mason, Jr. was held on June 5th. I attended the viewing and celebration of life service held in a church. Though black is the color people wear here for funerals, this family asked us to wear white and so we all did. It was so sad to see so many of his school friends in the service, crying, with his parents, younger sister, uncle and pastor paying tributes. Really depressing to see young 18 year old kid, attending a school dance, then waiting in a nearby McDs with friends, to be picked up by parents, passing away this way! So far police haven't caught the perpetrators or found any motive. 

https://www.vanderburgfh.com/obituaries/tymell-millan-mason-jr

Couple of more pictures and a short video: https://photos.app.goo.gl/gh2JWdX3ui8V5Q1V9

Local TV news report about the incident. 

In a sad coincidence, in an unrelated incident, another board member's granddaughter, who is just 18, was shot in the head by her ex-boyfriend (who is in prison now) just couple of days before! Luckily that girl is recovering ever so slowly, with years of physiotherapy ahead of her. Even before we recovered from that news, this one hit us! Sad months that will hopefully get better going forward. 

These incidences reminded me of another gun violence incidence from the 90's I was following closely, since it happened in Baton Rouge, LA where I was living as a fairly new graduate student at LSU. You can read about it on this Wikipedia page. I still remember those days vividly since it was hard for me to accept then the perpetrator getting acquitted!

Turning towards more positive updates, the high school graduation for our school (Lincoln Leadership Academy Charter School) was held last Friday (June 5th). I attended as a board member, robed and sitting on the stage! About 66 kids graduated, including Tymell Millan-Mason, Jr., the 18-year-old kid who died last month. Tributes to him were moving, with his mother & younger sister accepting the diploma. 

The overall graduation vibe was similar to our daughter's high school graduation last year, full of cheers & tears. But this being a smaller inner city school (about 1200 students across 12 grades, compared to 3200 students in across just 9-12 grades in Parkland High School) with predominantly Latina and Black students, where students were heading next was markedly different. Majority of the kids are heading to local community colleges, beauty schools, etc. with just a few heading outside the state to 4-year colleges. 

I still remember the school principal Dr. Michael Evans talking to me couple of months ago, when I visited the school. He pointed out to a young kid who had turned 18 and so was out of foster care system, and so the school was trying hard to make sure he still feels cared for and will graduate high school properly. Evans was saying, while test scores are no doubt important, he is not sure how to put a value on what the school staff is doing to help that kid graduate! That kid did graduate last Friday!

It is important for us to get out of our bubbles, mingle with citizenry across the spectrum, while keeping our values & outlook grounded, prioritizing the right things in life! I look forward to learning and contributing to help this school & kids grow in the forthcoming years!

Few more pictures from the graduation ceremony, showing me, another board member, Tymell on the big screen, a short video: https://photos.app.goo.gl/pi74VtuxhRcU9akc7 to let you soak in the event!

Book Review - Nexus by Harari

When I left Intel more than a year ago, my team gave me Yuval Noah Harari's Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI as one of my send-off gifts. Since I had other books ahead in the queue, it sat on my shelf for a while, but I finally got around to reading it.

Similar to his Sapiens, this book feels like a collection of historical facts and observations that are mostly easy to agree with, while lacking any truly novel thesis or groundbreaking insight. To be fair, my perspective is likely biased: As you may know, I have been delivering a lecture titled "Ethics & Emerging Technologies," for many years now, which covers the same grounds Harari treads here. Because I regularly read/watch/absorb material to incorporate into that talk, I found myself intimately familiar with a lot of material found in the book. But if you haven't looked into these areas closely, this is an easy read. Material & prose are very accessible, with nothing too complex to grok.  

The book is structured into three parts. The first section defines human networks, exploring how information was gathered and shared over past millennia. Harari repeatedly draws a contrast between religious scriptures and foundational legal texts like the US Constitution. While both are human constructs, religious texts are traditionally framed as infallible. Conversely, a constitution is living prose that can be amended as societal morals evolve, a prime example being how both the Bible and the original US Constitution treated slavery.

The second part, titled "The Inorganic Network," shifts the focus to computer networks. Harari emphasizes that because these networks are "always on" and frequently propagate misinformation, they require robust, built-in self-correcting mechanisms, that are currently missing. The final section, "Computer Politics," dives into algorithmic bias, facial recognition surveillance, and the tech-driven US-China rivalry, topics that dominate our daily headlines these days.

The book is peppered with amusing historical tidbits. For instance, Copernicus’s seminal 1543 work, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, failed to sell out its initial print run of just 400 copies, earning it the historical title of a "worst-seller." Similarly, the discussion of how the Bible was canonized, and how the initial formation of the Torah subsequently required the Mishnah, which later demanded the interpretations of the Talmud, was equally amusing. However, some other broader contrarian claims feel like a stretch. One such example is the assertion that the invention of the printing press wasn't entirely a net positive because it accelerated the spread of early "fake news" (like witch-hunt manuals). Thought this is an overengineered attempt to offer a provocative counter-narrative.

That said, the dilemmas raised in the final chapters are deeply concerning. Harari highlights COMPAS, a proprietary software sold to the US justice system that judges use to predict recidivism and determine prison sentencing. While the company selling the software claims it standardizes punishments, the underlying algorithm remains a black box protected as a trade secret. If the algorithm errs and recommends a ten-year sentence instead of one, the defendant has no data on which to base an appeal. This is just one example. This lack of transparency is a pervasive existential threat in the AI era. Even if we legislate "explainable AI," that Intel Corp and other companies were promoting, the sheer volume of data and the complexity of neural networks mean that human beings may soon lose the ability to untangle the decision-making trail. He also talks about how competing interests & nations (e.g. US Vs. China Vs. Europe) may render the idea of "web" irrelevant leading us towards "cocoons" instead, where different networks & systems become siloed, refusing to interwork.

Ultimately, since these ideas are not that new, not a lot of fresh learnings for me. But this could be a good book for those who are not well versed in these topics and are looking to understand how the information networks evolved over the centuries and are getting shaped now by algorithms that require close attention to ensure they don't blow up the societies.