David Kalat

December 12, 2024 | Legaltech News

At the dawn of the computer age, programming was a laborious task carried out in binary notation at the machine level. The journey from that crude origin to today’s world of convenience began with a critical step taken by Grace Hopper—a step inspired by her experience playing basketball.

By David Kalat

6 minute read

November 20, 2024 | Legaltech News

"The pace of technological change is slower than it feels, and many seemingly new categories of threats have been with us longer than we remember," writes David Kalat of Berkeley Research Group.

By David Kalat

5 minute read

October 02, 2024 | Legaltech News

Creating what would become CallerID meant overcoming three challenges: the basic technical challenge of establishing a process to signal the origin of a call; the logistical challenge in deploying that technical solution across networks; and persuading a skeptical public that this technology was not a grievous privacy violation.

By David Kalat, BRG

5 minute read

September 10, 2024 | Legaltech News

Honeypots are designed to trick hackers into exposing themselves. The first known use of such a trap occurred in the mid-1980s, when a $0.75 discrepency exposed an international cadre of spies attempting to steal military secrets about the fabled "Star Wars" Strategic Defense Initiative.

By David Kalat, BRG

5 minute read

August 19, 2024 | Legaltech News

The first attempt at offering commercially available email encryption software found its distributor charged with trafficking in illegal arms.

By David Kalat, BRG

6 minute read

July 08, 2024 | Legaltech News

Any discussion of arguably the most impressive database system of the 20th Century inevitably involves giggle-inducing names and veers towards Not Safe for Work connotations. Richard "Dick" Pick, creator of GIRLS and the father of Reality, would not have had it any other way.

By David Kalat, BRG

5 minute read

June 03, 2024 | Legaltech News

The first chatbot, ELIZA, was created by Joseph Weizenbaum at MIT in the 1960s as a Rogerian-style "psychotherapist" using natural language communication.

By David Kalat, BRG

6 minute read

May 07, 2024 | Legaltech News

Hacking may seem like a current phenomenon, but in the 1830s, a pair of brothers managed to carry on a scheme of hijacking the French national telecommunications network for two years before being caught.

By David Kalat, BRG

5 minute read

April 04, 2024 | Legaltech News

The seeds of what would become the FCC had been planted in the waning hours of April 14, 1912, when the RMS Titanic struck an iceberg. Senators were disquieted to learn just how closely modern telecommunications technology had come to averting the disaster—if only it had actually been used properly.

By David Kalat, BRG

6 minute read

March 05, 2024 | Legaltech News

Related to a pioneering line of portable computers in the early 1980s, the phrase "Osborne Effect" took root to describe the phenomenon of current technology being prematurely abandoned in anticipation of a future upgrade.

By David Kalat, BRG

6 minute read