Lunch speaker: Whitfield Diffie: We Can Tap It for You Wholesale

ABSTRACT

For reasons of efficiency, business computing is moving away from the networks of autonomous desktop machines that characterized the 80s and 90s towards an outsourcing model of thin desktops and fat servers that is in style reminiscent of the timesharing systems of the 60s and 70s. One unappreciated consequence is the increasing centralization of control over the office worker's environment. The resulting loss of ability to maintain individual machine configurations will add a new dimension of workplace surveillance, even for high level professionals and will adversely affect the privacy of all who work with computers.