Transcripts For CSPAN2 Ellen Ullman Life In Code 20171231

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She has, im just going to read a little of her bio, she wrote a First Computer Program in 1978, went on to have a 20 year career as a programmer in software engineer. Her essays and books have become essential reading in describing the social, emotional and political effects and personal effects of technology in our lives. And blood and first book was a New York Times note public book. Her book were talking about today is close to machine its a personal short that was a previous memoir. [laughter] forgive me. No what were talking about here is life in code. A personal history of technology. And its ellen and i go way back. I edited her at harpersing magazine when i was an editor there, and she was writing about technology i was the i was the editor the one of the oldest magazines in the country a story publication and now kind of switch roles now im an internet editor for the intercept and shes shes a novelist. And distinguished memoirs so its interesting how our careers have intertwined and crossed and so that was a wonderful experience for me. You were my editor theres a piece in the book called programming the post human, and its a long piece in which i talk about can we make a robot and make conscienceness in another silicon and metal thats a complicated question and i think i gave you roger, like 20,000 words. [laughter] and thats very long. For a magazine and you were brilliant in tracking that down, so i give you all kinds of foot notes to get you source and you were happy about that and a wonderful collaboration and i want to give you the credit i spoke about the other day. There was one moment in there where i was talking about how this simulation was meant to represent what human beings really were the image of man and i had that in italics and roger did the editor thing where he said ellen you dont need ioal picks trust your writing. That is how they get away with. And writing was so strong i hope you pick up the book and it covers the whole, the whole sweep of her career and really life, and so i thought we would start off with a simple question which is the beginning. What was it ellen tell us about what what got you interested in computers and programming and technology in general . Ill try to be brief. It started when i was just finishing college at cornell and there was a group called video project and this was a time when the first personal video recorders was available for the effect and it was a great excitement in the air because at that pont the corporations controlled what new what was beamed into television. And what could be made on video. Suddenly you could do it yourself. And this sounds like coming of the cc it is very much has that forever in the sense that we can change the world. And over course of it i found i really like working with machines i like doing the recording. I like doing edit th and generator it felt cool to be Walking Around with cables other my shoulder and former english major calling on the floor plugging in video in out, in out it sounds fantastic if fun. And if then after later hanging in college town is not good for the soul. I was in San Francisco walking down Market Street one day in the window of the radio shack store radio shack departed last place you can find a job there was a trsa meeting an early microcomputer. And known as the trash and completely on impulse i bought it. And i thought well maybe this is like i was telling you could make stuff with it. Can you make art and do social activism, and well it turns out to involve computer programming. [laughter] so how for pa can that be . It turned out to be hard. Theres a lot of hair pulling involved and cursing and kind of what you see about Program Percent staying up all night all day in their pajamas forgetting to eat. And then at some point i began to figure it out. Ill bring you briefly my honest was about mcbeth and if you really know the play is about complication of whats the future whats already happened trying to pun wind what comes first and second is kind of not trivial. Well the same thing was true with basic code because you could get all squirreled up in it. It was calling spaghetti code i said if yand unkind time i can figure out this and my First Computer Program was image where graphic of a bouncing ball and how it locked as it bounced down and at that time it was primitive and it shows pits curve and i got it working i sat back and i went oh god it works. And i found it was a tremendous pleasure and i said wow, this is great. I went on to take a jobs a programmer. And that was buzz i needed money. And pouked that even though it was work i found oifs fascinated by getting thought at work you think something you draw it out, and then somehow it stopped beig mental and turned into physical operating thing and that changes states fascinated me. So when you started work, you entered a world that was overwhelmingly male. And this comes up again and again throughout the book this culture, this male dominated programming culture were you conscience of yourself as a pioneer or o were you more like a spy . [laughter] a spy from the world of grownups into this world of boy men and perpetual adolescence. Wasnt like that to begin with the First Company at the time when business computing was exploding and you know there werent a lot of computer programs around so anyone who touched a machine and got a program working got a job so a lot of people i worked with were explorers like me with weird backgrounds in classics former dancer, and they were fun to work with and as time went by, there were more those who would come through engineering schools. And they had degrees. And then the tenner of things changed i encountered a lot of uncommunicative men. Men who also made it very Heart Disease for me because i was not aloud to make mistakes. Computer programming is an exercise in failure. To write code is to write bugs and remove them one by one and by one so all about failure and how you deal request it. But i wasnt allowed to make mistake. I was humiliated sometimes and very coyly. Well you left that day and you know i couldnt get my this and that working, and so you know maybe you dont like this job. And sometimesout outright and i i had this one instance i had to go fix a clients system and they lived way out in the mojave practically and i was fixing this guys system and he had greasy hair and ear lobes and he wore this horrible polyester shirt and he sat there rubbing my back the whole time i worked. I thought this guy is going to snap my bra what is he 11 and i changed chairs and he would never stop and he would never stop. And i thought what do i do . What do i do . And this was something i talked with women what do you do in this situation is this now at the time i was wrath rather new at all of this and work that was most physical you know he was getting touching me and more and more intimate places. And you know i just changed chairs and i started standing up which made it hard for him. And at some point pight im going to just blow up his system and put a bomb in this thing and it is going to look like it is working with now and im going to leave and whole thing had will blow up. [laughter] and i didnt do it because i wanted to go back from this shift and say i fixed this system. And then i kind of faced him down. I didnt want to get in trouble with my career. Now that is i dont know if that was the right answer. Back then i thought it was. Now i wonder you know, what that meant to me if i would have blown him up maybe that was the right thing to do. And i think this is exactly what women hope with now. What is the right thing to do . How much do you protest. How much do you just say go away. You know is just think on your mind this guy is a jerk . When someone is really, you know, goes beyond that, and goes into criminal behavior this is a different thing. Yeah. After talking to someone who interviewed me and i was very surprised to find myself saying well theyre kind of levels of this. One is like youre just, you know youre a jerk. And then its just well theyre boys and it was just tell yourself youre smarter than they are no matter what they think and when it goes into the criminal behavior that is that is where it all crosses the line right now, and thats the explosion were seeing and in all professions im excited about this. So you also talk about how this engineering culture becomes caughtified and goes to a very important scene well i dont to get ahead of myself but theres a sense in which theres where code becomes created and takes on a life of its own and that the culture of the coders becomes kind of sedimentary level in the code, and then the culture at the larger culture then has to conform to the kind of code that is being laid down almost like a constitution. And you write you were present and i was present when we when the web first began to arrive. And in the mid90s you had been on the scene for a long time you had come out of the command line culture thed hard core of computing and then we saw these or already seen the rise of the graphic user interface with the mac and early Windows Program but suddenly theres this whole new system this World Wide Web began to appear and you were suspicious from the beginning. What was it that ticked you off because now were going to see some of the fruits of the decisions that were made early on. Fruit, perhaps liz of the verge called it ugly blossom which i think is more appropriate. Thats a wig big question my first us suspicion is mostly men thinking to create a golden future and out of it will come a new supreme being starter than we are, and we should shrine at this and golden future now right away thats enough to make you suspicious. Then i saw this when the idea was go to this website. Dont use these brokers, these agents, these teachers these curators, these journalists mainstream media, and come to pus because theyre just out there are themselves theyre not so smart. And theyre fools youre and taking your money with people a lot of expertise now granted you paid them but men suddenly im going to take a travel agent everyone thinks it is so great you get now you could call a travel agent and say i want to go here and here and there, and they could even find you an upgrade because they have a a b line you know a hotline to the airline. Or you can spend hour it is online looking for this cheeps cheapest fare so it created endless fulfillment and once you enter into that world, it seemsu enter fantasy of utter happiness. Whatever you desire will be out there just keep looking. This whatted to me i needed a new facet. And normally i would have gone into a Plumbing Supplier hired somebody maybe one day or two but then i got on the web and you know how many websites are that sell facets . Turns out to be like 100. And i spent days, weeks sitting there looking at facets i near knew the universe of single hole, singlehanded facets could be so huge. And i began it was a kind of what i saw the web doing to you. If grabbed me into this terrible unhappiness. That suddenly i realized these things were repeating there wasnt endless but torturing myself with my illusion that my desire perfect own desire was out there to be fulfilled so went to a Plumbing Supply store fixeded mine had a plumber install it one day, done. So have i i think that does that pretty well cover it . That does. Now theres a crucial chapter in the book where you go to a conference and its a computer freedom and privacy conference. And it gets to what i think is libertarian paradox of the webs architecture the original internet versus what were experiencing it now. So tell us a little bit about that. There were some very big personalities there who had kind of a conversion experience that i think gets to the heart of the predicament that were facing now with the corporatization of the internet. Well there was a dream that the internet would be this free and open discussion on some friends here who remember this. Who involve in early days this this feeling of trust and discussion among equals and a sense of decorum and there was a lot of kind of ugly become and forth but people in general had had the impulse to kind of quiet those things down and to step in. And it kind of natural way. And then Corporate Company Companies Began to say well there are a lot of these people there how can i have eye balls on screen . And of course you all know now we can zoom forward 25 years to where everything you see has an ad on it youre being tracked i dont have to tell you about this. But in the year of 2000, tim byrneer lee credited with creating a hyperlinking and the web itself suddenly saying you know what, there are libertarians and theyre supposed to be against goth not business and some are going well corporations are taking over the web im not for regulation but. And this was hair and i knew there would be regulation of government was the devil, and so even those who were who have this dream or gipping to see that it was poisoned. And did not know how to turn, and regulation did not happen. They were naturally against it. So you can see where we are today. It was a turning point. I with diffy important algorithm was there and suddenly hes up there libertarian math matism proclaiming socialism just oh, boy. Supreme really changed their minds about whats happening and both happy and i dont know. Worried. I know i thought these conversions came too late. You express it very well is the as the its really a question of law is code or how did you put itsome it was the rule of law versus rule of code. And rule of code was not necessarily as you put it necessarily a democratic or even a pleasant regime that were entering into, and what i was struck about was how profectic that conference was because, you know, now were getting to the point where the entire internet is controlled by four, five massive corporations. And were beginning really to see the the political effects of that. Now, we Work Together it on programming the post human which was i think a very profound essay about Artificial Intelligence in some of the cybernetics and some of the fundamental as you see them and i tend to agree very much errors that are going into the design of these systems. What had is it about about this approach to technology that you find so maddening or dangerous . This approach [laughter] which this, artificial intenls of the dream of artificial intenls. When we work on programming the post human pfts idea was to attempt to create robots who had selfawareness and ability to function the way human beings did. That they were not only simulation of what we were, they were what we were. In the abstract. They defined us at first called brain was a computer. Then brain was seen as a angt colony and create e lab rat structure nobody is telling them from what to do on high. Small little interactions, that was the belief that that is how we functioned. But over and over kept coming across saying Rodney Brooks a well known robot cyst at the time called his group called the c word and he meant conscienceness, and you know he asked me what is conscienceness for . And do you know what conscienceness is i sat down and told him. Well, you know, were born helpless and we have to know whos friends who is foe. Its deep in us someone looking at you you look back youre aware of someone staring at you look at a dog sometimes boom this is a response to vital response. So when the course of that you have to identify individuals. You have to form social groups. They are cooperating, families, clans, tribes and out of the recognition that others exist, as individual one person different from another you understand that you too exist. It is called theory of mind. If i have these thoughts well that person has these thoughts. And this is survival mode and Rodney Brooks out there he went we cant even get robots to recognize their own kind. [laughter] so i think thing that really scarce me now is workers in Artificial Intelligence have given up a whole process of trying to create a robotic human thats no longer interesting to them him. Do you remember the film her . Where excuse me the name anyway, why . She you know she wants to be human like in star trek how to become a human being and at some point she and other oss theyre called theyre having fun being computers. And they can have interactions that stillon interactions in seconds. And they get bored with the human beings and go off being happy as computers. And this is kind of whats happening now. Ill give you example of selfdriving cars human beings have 100 years or of so experience driving vehicles. And none of that see interesting now to people doing these. Theyre doing, you know, proximity these kind of mathematical things relationship between algorithms. Im over here in the car, and you know they have this way they interact and oh, theres the interpret internet and whole web of interactions, electronically. And ill go into why okay the technological problems in that will take me all afternoon and i will save you from that. But the issue is when youre a driver theres a first crash that happened with a google car was a fourway stop. So you know there are rules if two cars come at the same time. Does anyone remember the rule . Its a drive on the right. But most people dont know it and they dont do it. The way human beings actually work out who goes first is kind of flick hadder of the eye. And you read the car if the car is coming too fast you can see its just going to o touch brakes oh, okay someone who doesnt look at you or head down you let go its a social reaction and what we are as social creatures so google car follows the rules. Okay im the car on the right i get to go first. [laughter] boom. They have their first crash. Oh, this is what we can do is proximity no you drive okay people lets take a good human drivers and losses you look far ahead you get a sense that youre going to have to stop way before the person in front of you is. You can read the human driver. You see a car moving in a certain way. The make of the car, the speed of the car, and you know that person is going to cut in front of you. There are personalities and driving is a social experience. And so you tend to completely do away with this and replace it only with technology and algorithms is the big switch right now. Human behavior is not ho considered an interesting molds. For artificial intenls, intelligence that to me is a startling change, and its a profound. Looking forward and looking forward, and looking at, thinking about your critique of the early web and your experience withen Computer Technology and what you just articulated about the new frontier, which is robot cars, do you see any rays of hope . Do you see things like the rise of signal and tor and tor got hacked. Tell us about that. Anonymously and the web do not have security and privacy built into it. It was billed as a collegial system for people to exchange ideas. By the department of defense so anyone who makes a system knows that the key module being added 15 years later is never going to work. Tour is one of those systems so whats been happening is this cryptography system, not the cryptography itself although there are flaws in some of them that have been exploited, the installation. They are being hacked one after another. People respond to phishing expeditions. Operating systems are not a dated. Basically if its on the web that can be hacked. Someone was doing a selfdriving car and i got hacked and they at least pulled it over so do i see hope . I see hope the news york times sunday section had an article technology is not your friend. You are just finding this out now. [laughter] hello. Where have you been . So you know at least its out there. Now look theres a whole generation that barely remembers life before the internet and one that has never experienced life before the internet and so when you Say Technology is not your friend this is a new concept to them and when i meet young people they say what should i do . I could talk about the obstacles and facebook is an algorithm and i could talk about that for a long time. I dont think we have time for that. I would just encourage them to look at the past of computing. Look back and see how these things happen. Whats happening now is recent but its not new. It has roots in the past and learning how we came to this juncture may lead us into how to get out of it. Isnt also a matter of arming oneself with understanding so that is not so much of a black locks so that its not, i mean the problem is people think of these machines as magical and they have no real understanding of the decisionmaking that goes into it. Theres this wonderful point in the book where you say, it was a question you were discussing with a tech to write change where the technology is the driver of change which you disagree with strongly and you have this line which know its not machines that are making the decisions and its not even the coders who are making these decisions often. Its managers who are making these decisions. Venture capitalists, ceos. There are natural desires. We want to find friends. These are all perfectly wonderful human desires but they are shunted, they are essentially purchased and avenues that take your money. I talked about facebook. What could facebook have done about the election . How did they not catch all of this and why didnt they hire 10,000 more people to look at postings . Facebook, google and apple and facebook in particular is one big set of algorithms. They are algorithms that were written by algorithms that were written by algorithms something called machine learning. They take the outcome that notched quite sure how it got there so there are billions of people doing billions upon billions of of posts. Human curators cant keep up with this and this is what troubles me. Does them matter how many people you hire, human beings versus grinding algorithms are going to lose. This is what keeps me up at night. So do i have any good news . Im not famous for that i believe. I could say i look forward to the millennial generation those who are new because i really do think they see the problem and they are sensitive to what is wrong and they know code is not visible. Many of them have learned how to code. They are not taking these bios too hard and i trust them. I decided im going to trust them and i wish their future well. Thats a good note to turn it over to the audience on. Please if you have questions come up to the microphone and please ask a question as opposed to a statement. Thank you. How do you stay scared when colors flash on your eyelids when fluoride hits your brain and you can say it does not stop you as far as what you just said said. I dont understand your question. Can you repeat it . You stay scared by the algorithm, right . That will conquers human beings. It will be about the brain. Would injects into her cells that is on line . Our brain is hardly learning to combat that. How do you then stay pessimistic as a millennial . I dont think the brain is a separate thing from a person. The brain is a kind of, its the top of it. Everything that happened starts from the body. Knowledge starts with the body. Even mathematics. You cant just cut off your head and have a brain so we have a physical reaction to life. Our thoughts are not like algorithms and so i think we are in a different playing here. Thank you. Next. Hi i have more than half of my programming career ahead of me and you have seen many frontiers of things happening over your career and im wondering what you are thinking of the exciting new challenges. What are the exciting new challenges that you think are coming up . What do you think they are . Its really up to you. Im just throwing this back to you. Im curious as to what you think think. Im gloomy by nature. Well, what i think is interesting and what i think is possible seemed to be diverging at the moment. I think it would be interesting to see out the technology and algorithms and the real social justice issues and all the cartels and the scale of which they operate and how much of that is dark web and corruption . There a lot of interesting things in the open data. A bronx councilman in new york has it danced the bill and im not sure if it has passed yet, it may have passed mandating that all the algorithms used to make decisions in the bronx and this includes garbage pickup which schools kids go to police assignments be examined. This is where we need to go. When we are up against facebook its proprietary but this to me is the social direction to understand there are decisions being made and we can examine them and change them. It has an agency over the code. If i could just add coding tools that will aid in transparency and accountability is i think one of the great frontiers right now. I happen to know several tour developers and people who are active in creating those tools and i think theres a lot of work to be done. Could you share your thoughts about how bitcoin and diphtheria are going to attack us in the future . Cryptocurrency. Briefly for the audience thats an algorithms are used in place of money and they are not controlled by any government. They are issued by individuals and they are backed by algorithms of people willing to believe they are worth something. Im going to give a shoutout to my friend stuart haber who had the first patent on block chaining. Block chaining is a mathematical concept to figure out what happens in what order which is very important for buying and selling. Now its a libertarian currency and its not controlled so the libertarians got exactly what they wanted. You can buy something thats worth 2000 and a few days later can be worth 300 and it rides up and down. There are competing cryptocurrencys now. I have friends who im tempted to do it by 100 worth of coins and see what happens. What will happen, i think its exciting and scary at the same time which all these things are. I worry however that the issuers of these coins will control these in a way thats more powerful than the federal reserve. Because its not transparent. Watch mr. Robot for one view of that. Thank you for coming. How can we encourage the millennials to preserve the culture of paper and voice and face to face and jotting notes, all those things that have that more high touch kind of quality . One person at a time. I mean on the one hand i know those things have to go way. Greek drama was wonderful. It was a wonderful communal experience and i love greek drama but its no longer, it became no longer a means for the Community Coming together over time. It was replaced by other things. Now will these little notebook things that you can write on your pads replaced it . There is something tactile about paper and there are studies that children who read actual books learn better and faster and more deeply than those who read it on the screen. They are those who must preserve the culture of the past but accepting it will be a smaller and smaller number of people and that is a hard transition to make. You like dry casks television. You will like it for a while but when you are young you will look back and it will be like the old furby. There are some trends that are on their way to not be turned back. There are people who love all television and there are stations that you can watch so there are places that preserve these. Theres this ongoing effort to preserve webpages before they disappear. So its good news and bad news. Therell always be people who appreciate the value of the older thing but we cannot expect to pass on that same appreciation in the same way. It will be an older thing and trying to understand is that older thing still useful . Its also true if you look around there are plenty of young people at this conference and i dont think the prospect of literacy is as gloomy as some people think it is and this book festival is one of the best ways that we can keep book learning alive. Just your presence here is a big part of it. Thank you roger. We have time for one more question. Hi commisso was a young woman in tech i recently got an email with the subject line diversity higher ed. Some great Tech Companies are now realizing the lack and diversity however i want to be recognized for the fact that i have those skills. There was a noise out there. That i can program and im good at what i do and not getting enough or because i am a woman and this is diversity. So i was just curious on your thought on diversity hires in the tech world. My experience is whenever there is a conference within a company to welcome in outsiders and i mean women and minorities people of other colors. Especially with women there is a fierce back lash. Its almost atavistic. They are these young men and they are young to have this culture and they want to sleep under their desk all night and then theyll want the women around. They want to go home. So its going to be a battle. What i believe is that tack into the love of the work you have and really hold that and many have looked prejudice in the eyes before. Just stare back and refuse to be sent away. And you can think that person is a jerk but if that person has power over you thats a different matter. I hate to throw this back on the individual but to a certain extent i matter how the did you are you have to go in there and face prejudice. There needs to be the equipment to tell yourself i love this work, i am good at it. Just hold onto that and many men helps me learn technology. I know this doesnt up pose your answer. No, thank you. Thank you all for coming. Thank you for joining us. Ellen will be signing books at the book signing tent and again please dig deep and buy books to help the texas book festival continue its work. Thank you. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] booktv is on twitter and facebook, and we want to hear from you. I think well get started. My name is Nancy Marshall and i the great, good fortune of being the executive director of the best Public Library and at least montgomery county. [applause] possibly the state, possibly the