The presence of technology is becoming increasingly prominent in our daily lives. With the growth of the Internet and other technological advances, it may be of interest to those aspiring to any number of professions to learn about computer science.
DEIS.kernel, an academic club founded this past November 2013, aspires "to educate members on topics in computer science and to provide a format for members to present on an area of computer-scientific expertise," according to its website.
The club aims to provide an environment for members to share their individual areas of computer science expertise to the rest of the club body in the form of presentations, discussions and lectures.
The club was created and is led by five coordinators: Kenneth Foner '15, David Giliotti '16, Daniel Kats '16, Andrew Kouides '16 and Eden Zik '16.
DEIS.kernel, as it stands, has a minimalist approach to its functions; the student-directed club activities rely primarily on allocating the time and location to discuss a topic of interest. Then, Foner said, "the members decide what interests them and what they [wish to] bring to the undergraduate body interested in computer science."
This framework inspired the analogy which became the club's name, "DEIS.kernel." The kernel of the computer is the component which allocates memory and tasks to programs, much like the coordinators who "allocate" time and space to its members.
A few of DEIS.kernel's current and upcoming projects for the semester are Project Euler where they intend to solve computational puzzles in a group and a typography lesson about fonts; user interface and design and one, in particular, is the series of talks about Bitcoins.
DEIS.kernel held the first Bitcoin talk on Jan. 30 in the Benjamin and Mae Volen National Center for Complex Systems.
For this event, Sam Ronkin '15, president of the Brandeis Technical Trader's Society, a chartered club that educates members on technical analysis and trading, helped facilitate the "What is Bitcoin?" presentation and discussion. "This Bitcoin series is a collaboration," Foner said. DEIS.kernel teamed up with BTTS to "run a joint three part series on the what, why, and how of Bitcoins, the crypto-currency that's taking the world by storm," according to the club flier.
Bitcoin is the "first decentralized digital currency," according to the informational video available on weusecoins.com, a website dedicated to increasing accessibility of Bitcoins to beginners. The video was shown during Ronkin's presentation. According to the video, Bitcoins are sent directly from one individual to another, eliminating the transactional fees one could incur. They are generated by anybody with access to a free application called a Bitcoin miner. For each "block" of coins, worth a certain amount of computational work, one must "mine," ergo extract, Bitcoins.
After the mining process, the Bitcoins are stored in the user's digital wallet, which is similar to the format of online banking accounts. When a person transfers Bitcoins, an electronic signature is added to the transaction, which is verified by a miner and permanently stored in the network within the span of a few minutes.
One benefit of Bitcoin that was cited in the talk is that it is secure. Bitcoin "verifies transactions with the same ... encryption that is used in military and government applications," Ronkins said.
The drawbacks of the currency were also addressed. According to Ronkin, many criminals take advantage of Bitcoins as payment. The price of Bitcoin-how many dollars per Bitcoin-is volatile, and moreover, it is seen as a threat to governments and as a speculators' market to some economists. It also poses ethical and regulatory issues. "In December, the People's Bank of China decreed that merchants may not accept Bitcoin and forbade banks and payment processors from converting Bitcoin into yuan," Ronkins said.
The second and third Bitcoin talks will follow up with the hardware aspect of mining Bitcoin and the Bitcoin algorithm, which deals with the actual process of mining.
Naman Patel '15, a member of BTTS, said "the event was excellent because in addition to the people presenting, there was a lot of discussion being done among the peers, [including] people who already have knowledge and a lot of people who are actually involved. ... There was a lot of engagement. So that was nice."
Attendees ranged from the self-proclaimed tech-illiterates to those with a more advanced knowledge base. Although the nature of each event will vary, DEIS.kernel encourages all students to join and participate in the club events.
"We all have different experiences, even within the club, but that's kind of the beauty of it," Kouides said. "[The beauty is] that we're able to come together to teach what we know, starting at the ground floor ... making it accessible for people of all levels."
One attendee had a very positive reaction to the event. "I was kind of curious about how [Bitcoin is] stored on different computers, et cetera. I definitely learned a lot about that," Elena Stoeri-D'Arrigo '16 said. "If I come to the next [talk], I think that will help me better understand [Bitcoin's] hardware aspect of it. That was really great."
"Anyone, really, needs to understand how this world is changing and in what ways," Zik explained. "We want to communicate this to everyone on this campus, regardless of their interests or majors."