User:Howard C. Berkowitz/Editor
The account of this former contributor was not re-activated after the server upgrade of March 2022.
I have started an estimated 2000-3000 articles at CZ, and the list obviously is too long to detail here. Recently, I have been using the CZ: Subgroups mechanism to characterize many, encourage collaboration, and use for targeted recruiting. Nevertheless, I think it's the best way to see my contributions. The experience of writing CZ articles, editing, and being edited is itself a form of expertise. I'm sometimes concerned that Citizens without substantial CZ contribution experience believe themselves expert on the practice of CZ editing; the Editorial Council has recognized it is usually unwise to allow people to become Editors at initial registration time.
Not all the articles are long, but all should be thoroughly interconnected. One of the key differentiators between CZ and Wikipedia, I believe, is what I call contextualization. To help this process, with Chris Day, I developed the idea of the lemma article. One of the purposes of this article type was, even if its main theme was not fully developed, it could have a Related Articles page to link it to other relevant articles. Indeed, it can make sense even to start with a lemma and Related Articles, as something of an outline for an article. We do not want what have been called "orphan" articles or "walled gardens". As an Editor, I urge authors to contextualize.
Other contextualization, however, involves extensive development of a series of articles, such as wars of Vietnam, interrogation, intelligence cycle management, Pacific War, extrajudicial detention, Nazism, etc.
Yes, I am an Editor in multiple workgroups: Computers, History, Military, Politics and Engineering. My most successful professional experience, however, is interdisciplinary. While, for example, I am an expert in routing and switching, I am no longer current in a different aspect of computers, compiler writing. Routing, however, involves both software and hardware, electronics and system architecture of the latter being electronic engineering in the Engineering Workgroup. Carl von Clausewitz defined war as the "extension of national politics by military means", so it is a bit silly to claim that Military matters can be separated from Politics.
Fields of expertise
These do not strictly map to workgroups, and I have indeed specialized within workgroups. Nevertheless, these fields seem to express my areas of interest, not considering such things as serious personal participation in areas including cooking, visual arts and science fiction.
Articles can entertain as well as inform. Not all my articles (e.g., red-stewing; sympathetic magic; Chatham, Massachusetts; chicken-based technologies; pastel; hammer (tool) belong to subgroups (although there are applications of chicken-based technologies to nuclear weapons), and I have not yet placed all subgroup-relevant articles in the appropriate list. |
Do remember the titles of workgroups; they are not strictly academic. It's Computers, not Computer Science, and Politics, not Political Science. Such a view makes it plausible to have "practitioner experts" as well as "academic experts". Practical expertise, in turn, can be, in part, evaluated by examination of my body of work at CZ. I'm not the only practitioner that will have challenges in detailing all experiences; consider a potential Law Editor, the details of whose experience could breach client confidentiality.
As George Santayana put it, “those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.” In my personal experience, it is difficult to separate serious current research from historical research. While there have been accusations that I do not consider formal historical methodology, it is a bit ironic that one of the complaints about my Adolf Hitler draft was that I included a section on historiography, now a separate article historiography of Hitler in the CZ:Historiography Subgroup.
Other broad experience at CZ includes membership in the Charter Drafting committee, serving throughout the process, as well as Editorial Council membership both before and after the Charter
Telecommunications and computer network engineering
First started programming in 1966, moved into real-time and fault-tolerant military and health systems by 1970, operating systems in 1973, and networks since 1974. Did take some graduate courses in computer science at George Washington University; there were no computer science academic curricula when I started. Designed and implemented first network (management) control center for the civilian U.S. government, 1974. Network architect for the Library of Congress and interconnected libraries, 1976-1980. First technical staff member for the Corporation for Open Systems, a nonprofit industry testing center for Open Systems Interconnection Reference Model and Integrated Systems Digital Network, 1986-1991. Consultant and certified trainer for Cisco Systems and related contractors, 1991-1999. Contributing member of Internet Engineering Task Force since 1995; International Organization for Standardization since 1979, North American Network Operators' Group since 1998. Member of Nortel Networks corporate research staff, first as product line manager for carrier routers and then senior adviser on IP routing, 1999-2001.
Author of four books, two from Macmillan (Designing Addressing architecture for routing and switching[1], Routing and switching for Enterprise Networks[2]); two from John Wiley and Sons (WAN Survival Guide [3], and Building Service Provider Networks[4]). Wrote networking chapter for Harvey Deitel's Operating Systems, 6th Edition. Technical director for CertificationZone, a Cisco study guide business, with a number of topics published as collections. Technical reviewer for Macmillan, Addison-Wesley, Wiley and Prentice-Hall. Author or coauthor of four IETF RFCs and reviewer of many more; participant in Benchmarking Technology, Interdomain Routing, OSPF, IS-IS, and other workgroups. Numerous publications and presentations for trade groups and professional associations, some peer-reviewed, some invited
My general sense is that vendor-independent traditional engineering books have a limited market, and I've been concentrating more on online publications. In the past, I've been involved in preparation for Cisco certifications, and still participate in mailing lists. I developed a Cisco course on Internet Service Provider infrastructure security.
- CZ: Routing and switching Subgroup
- CZ: Internet operations Subgroup
- CZ: Distributed computing Subgroup
- CZ: Internetworking Subgroup
- CZ: Security Subgroup
- CZ: Military information and communications Subgroup
I should clarify that network engineering includes the electronic engineering disciplines of communications engineering, not necessarily computer communications. For many years, until budget-limited, I was a member of the IEEE Communications Society. I served from 1976 to 1980 on the Federal Telecommunications Standards Committee of the National Telecommunications System, charged with ensuring interoperability of U.S. government communications in disasters including nuclear war. Associated with this, I was briefed into numerous parts of the Minimum Essential Emergency Communications Network (MEECN), many of the subsystem of which are radio based for voice, not computers.
Wireless LAN communication has been an area of involvement since it was introduced, with all the associated antenna, multipath and shielding issues. I deal with HF/SSB, VHF, and satellite communications (UHF, C-band, X-band principally) as part of my current marine electronics work, and publication in Marine Electronics Journal.
I have been involved with transmission security and safety, ranging from protecting classified communications from inadvertent disclosure (e.g., TEMPEST/Van Eck radiation) to building equipotential ground planes for computer centers and electronics labs. In addition, I was part of a team to test the tolerance of IEEE 802 waveforms to variability and interference, including building errored waveforms with an arbitrary waveform generator.
Distributed computing
Networks interconnect computers that perform distributed computing. Some of my most recent work is in advising clients on cloud computing, with special emphasis on information security. Most of the military and medical systems on which I've worked are distributed, and network management is itself a distributed computing problem for controlling the routers and other network elements. A good deal of marine electronics is distributed, including Automatic identification system and vessel monitoring systems, to say nothing of military systems such as Cooperative Engagement Capability.
Other areas include System Control And Data Acquisition for critical infrastructure areas including the electrical power grid, chemical plants, etc.
My book, WAN Survival Guide, deals with the customer side of a distributed network, while Building Service Provider Networks complements the provider side. Email and Domain Name Service are distributed computing parts of network infrastructure.
- CZ: Distributed computing Subgroup
- CZ: Security Subgroup
- CZ: Critical infrastructure Subgroup
- CZ: Military information and communications Subgroup
Politicomilitary history and practice; intelligence
I became a Military Workgroup Editor when I first registered, in part, presumably, on the intelligence and related articles that I brought from WP. While I have no uniformed service, I began paid work as a military contractor/consultant in 1967, during the Vietnam War, in military social science and engineering. Some of my nontraditional learning came in even younger years; my mother was a U.S. Army reserve officer, the training officer for the 322nd General Hospital, and arranged for me to take informal training -- I was her study partner when she took the correspondence program for the Command and General Staff College.
When I applied for History and Politics Editor status, I indicated, and have kept reasonable faith, that I would subspecialize in modern military history and practice, the political dimensions of strategy, and U.S. politics including international organizations. To the extent that I deal with earlier periods, they contribute to modern history, such as the Lieber Code of 1863 as a predecessor to the Geneva Conventions and as a precedent for war crimes. I also deal with history of technologies, such as the evolution of interconnection and switching in the Public Switched Telephone Network (Strowger-to-SS7-to-SIP proxy) and Internet.
As mentioned elsewhere, I worked on analysis of Vietnamese Communist documents. Since my client was United States Army Special Forces, a good deal of their training curricula were made available to their contractors. During this time, I was also a special graduate student in the National Security Program, School of International Service, American University. In addition, I worked on early measurement and signature intelligence personnel sensors, first the M3 ammonia and smoke detector,[5] and some more experimental devices such as the bedbug-based device from the Army Night Vision Laboratories at Fort Belvoir. Weird as some of these may have seemed, it was important to understand the tactical doctrines by which they were used (e.g., Operation IGLOO WHITE), and their impact -- see Vietnam War ground technology.
During this time, I was involved in issues research and policy development for Republican organizations. For the Ripon Society, I prepared a policy paper on government secrecy, classified information and compartmented control systems. This involved extensive primary document work at the National Archives, as well as discussions with security officers at the Defense Department, CIA, State Department and National Security Agency. I was on the Foreign and Military Policy Subcommittee of the 1972 Young Republican National Federation Platform Recommendations Committee. Later, for Young Americans for Freedom, I debated domestic surveillance plans of the Nixon Administration with Tom Charles Huston.
After those projects, I moved to history of technology for the Office of Naval Research, tracking how basic research was realized in operational systems. Next, I spent several years in analysis and programming for military systems, again requiring understanding of how they were used. These included the Army's Combat Service Support System (CS3), and the Chief of Naval Operations Command Management Information System. My managers, mostly retired officers, encouraged my learning more and more about the military technology and its use, and arranged additional training.
As the network architect for the Library of Congress, I was a member of the Federal Telecommunications Standards Committee of the National Communications System (NCS). NCS, a "second hat" for the head of the Defense Information Systems Agency, is responsible for ensuring the interoperability of government communications across all agencies, under stresses including nuclear war. Since we all dealt with extremely large data bases, imagery, and nonroman alphabets, I was the liaison for mutual interests to the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency.
While at the Corporation for Open Systems, I had extensive involvement with military electronics, consulting to and running training for engineers at the Defense Information Systems Agency, and also the command and control support group for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
More recently, I have consulted in open source intelligence projects, as well as intelligence information sharing for counterterrorism.
U.S. politics and historyWhile I oppose much of the activity of today’s Republican Party (United States), I spent a number of years as an activist, holding office in party organizations, graduating from the senior campaign management program of the Republican National Committee. Campaigns in which I participated included the 1972 Nixon reelection and 1971 Jack Nevius for Congress. Of course, there is overlap between opposition research in politics and intelligence analysis. Going back to honors high school history, I have long been convinced that if there ever is totalitarianism in the United States, it will come from demagoguery on the right. To understand how such politics becomes dominant, I have maintained a lifelong interest in Nazism, and the The Paranoid Style in American Politics. Principally, however, my interest in history and politics deals with national security, but also with the use of propaganda against domestic targets. Transportation engineeringCurrent author for Marine Electronics Journal (National Marine Electronics Association) and consult to a marine electronics business, Beachwerks, in the fishing and recreational port of Chatham, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod. Integrate Electronic Charting Systems and chartplotters, using NMEA 0183, Ethernet, and NMEA 2000 networking with GPS, marine radio with digital selective calling, Automatic identification system, radar with automatic radar plotting aid, vessel monitoring system, sonar, engine performance monitoring and autopilot. Developed proposal for conversion of waste cooking oil to biodiesel, including chemical quality control and effect on marine diesel engines. Currently involved in discussions on human factors engineering for charting systems. Emergency managementMember of the Federal Telecommunications Standards Committee of the National Communications System (1976-1980). External network architect for the U.S. government Y2K information center and associated critical infrastructure monitoring. Developed designs for mass casualty management, weapons of mass destruction field laboratories, and U.S. Army field surgical team. Current member of Cape Cod Medical Reserve Corps, special interest in disaster communications; numerous courses from Federal Emergency Management Agency. Biomedical engineering and healthcareActive in the field since 1970, setting up the first clinical computer center for Georgetown University Medical Center, in a captive company called the Washington Reference Laboratories; had been in honors programs in microbiology and clinical chemistry since 1963. Implemented systems for toxicology (main military drug screening urinalysis for the Vietnam War, project Golden Fountain), automated medical history, regional virology center, regional blood banking for the American Red Cross, general hospital clinical chemistry, hematology and microbiology. "I'm not a physician but I play one on computers." Developed not only software but knowledge base for clinical decision support, such as optimal drug therapy for heart failure and fluid resuscitation for burns. Architect for nursing workflow product of Aionex Corp.; also designed electronic prescribing, data mining for clinical research, infection control root cause analysis. Member of Cape Cod Medical Reserve Corps, dealing with disaster communications.
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