Today is Queens Birthday weekend. Not that it means that much to me, as I am on paid leave already, and a public holiday doesn’t alter things much in my present situation. So, rather than going out to enjoy the fine (if a little chilly) weather, I decided to spend the day working on my blog instead. This news, of course, was greeted with a rather chilly reception from my wife. She did manage to drag me away for a short while during the day, but most of it was spent here at the computer.
While assessing the direction that my blog has been taking since I started it a week ago, I was alarmed to find that I have been straying seriously from the focus, which is computer forensic investigation. Admittedly, my studies have not started in earnest yet, and I am still very much in preparation mode. To keep things on target in my blog, I have therefore decided to spawn sister-blogs for my other interests. Today I created a new blog for my interest in online identity, privacy, internet safety, and online presence issues, which I call Cyber Presence (cyberpresence.wordpress.com). I have also created a blog to keep track of my informal studies in cyberpsychology, cyberculture, online behavior, and human-computer interaction issues, which I will call Psyber Psychology (psyberpsych.wordpress.com). My fourth WordPress blog is about my current project of creating a personal ontology of my life, and issues relating to mindmapping, the semantic web, and social semantic desktops. This blog will be called Personal Ontology (personalontology.wordpress.com).
I guess this may all sound more like separation, rather than amalgamation, at first. But in the process of separating out the various strands I have been able to get a better picture of how they all fit together. Computer forensic investigation is about detecting criminal activity as it relates to computers. Cyberpsychology will help the forensic investigator to “know thy enemy” as Sun Tzu would say. Tracking a cybercriminal across the ‘net requires a certain amount of “getting inside their head”. This also links in with my interest in online identity, privacy, and online presence. A cybercriminal could easily have a secondary presence that shines with ethical meekness. Issues relating to emerging frameworks for online authentication may well impact on how cybersleuths track down the bad guys. I haven’t developed my theories on personal ontology well enough yet to link that in as well, but I know that it is related somehow.
