[00:00.780 --> 00:02.060]  It's 6 p.m.
[00:02.140 --> 00:02.780]  This is room B.
[00:03.020 --> 00:08.240]  We have a presenter who was out due to airplane troubles yesterday.
[00:08.860 --> 00:15.740]  The talk that was scheduled is alienation and engagement and he has graciously agreed to come in and speak to you now.
[00:17.940 --> 00:18.440]  Yay!
[00:24.480 --> 00:25.480]  That was easy.
[00:25.840 --> 00:28.540]  I have a couple of announcements before he gets started, though.
[00:30.180 --> 00:40.460]  Project MF, which is in the A track, has been moved to 2,000 hours, which, okay, get out your pens because this requires a diagram.
[00:42.180 --> 00:46.400]  Off the Hook was originally scheduled, but it was replaced with Kevin Mitnick.
[00:47.000 --> 00:52.960]  Now, Kevin Mitnick, when last we heard, was medically indisposed in Columbia.
[00:54.000 --> 00:55.520]  I don't know any details.
[00:55.660 --> 00:57.540]  I just heard he's in a hospital in Columbia.
[00:59.360 --> 01:00.420]  You know, I couldn't tell you.
[01:01.300 --> 01:02.600]  As far as I know, it's Bogota.
[01:02.820 --> 01:03.180]  I don't know.
[01:07.990 --> 01:10.050]  He may even be in Columbia Hospital here in New York.
[01:10.090 --> 01:10.470]  I don't know.
[01:13.550 --> 01:14.050]  All right.
[01:14.330 --> 01:18.790]  So, Project MF has been moved to 2,000 in room A.
[01:19.630 --> 01:21.290]  Quantum crypto has been canceled.
[01:21.290 --> 01:24.730]  Alienation and engagement has been rescheduled here now.
[01:26.610 --> 01:34.290]  And Steve Rambam is currently not over in the panel in room A.
[01:37.240 --> 01:38.220]  Do you want to know why?
[01:39.280 --> 01:45.120]  Rumor has it that... No, no, no, no.
[01:45.240 --> 01:48.540]  This is the funny part, because Mitnick's in Columbia, but Rambam got arrested.
[01:52.880 --> 01:57.920]  You know, I... Other than the fact that they told me to make that announcement, I know nothing about it.
[01:58.140 --> 02:02.400]  All right.
[02:02.560 --> 02:03.360]  So, are we ready?
[02:04.440 --> 02:05.040]  Yeah.
[02:05.220 --> 02:05.220]  Yeah.
[02:05.280 --> 02:05.440]  Okay.
[02:05.920 --> 02:11.340]  This is number 58, Jason Kroll doing alienation and engagement.
[02:18.450 --> 02:19.650]  Oh, good.
[02:19.650 --> 02:20.290]  This is on.
[02:20.470 --> 02:20.770]  Okay.
[02:24.040 --> 02:34.900]  Well, I know a lot of you were expecting a super technical talk, and now you're going to get a personal rant that I somehow convinced the 2600 people to let me do.
[02:34.900 --> 02:41.480]  But on the plus side, you get to look at me trying to be dressed up, and I get a kick out of that.
[02:41.780 --> 02:48.720]  And since this is a talk about the mainstream, I thought I would do something that the mainstream loves.
[02:49.440 --> 02:50.160]  You know?
[02:50.480 --> 02:53.820]  You put on the costume, and they treat you better.
[03:03.270 --> 03:20.930]  So, our sense of social responsibility, the idea that we are responsible for the world that we live in, that we don't like the way everything is going, and that we want to do something about it, is undermined by the fact that we and the mainstream do not get along.
[03:21.490 --> 03:25.090]  Now, the mainstream, I think we all know what's wrong with them.
[03:25.570 --> 03:38.790]  And, well, we don't need to enumerate these things, but specifically what they don't like about us, I suppose, is that we outsmart them, as the mentor had said, and they don't forgive us for that.
[03:39.010 --> 03:39.810]  But it's worse.
[03:39.990 --> 03:52.310]  They're terrified of anyone who has some kind of mastery over technology, and they're afraid of us, and they'd really feel more comfortable if we were all in prison.
[03:52.470 --> 04:02.250]  In fact, a lot of them make jokes about what wonderful things might happen to us in prison, and then they bubble with glee, as though this would be a delightful outcome for them.
[04:02.490 --> 04:13.650]  So, they are dangerous, and it's a good thing that we have, you know, laws and the Constitution to protect us from what they might do if they could get in a mob and do it to us.
[04:16.330 --> 04:21.630]  Now, they're not entirely to blame for this state of alienation.
[04:21.790 --> 04:33.130]  I think on our part, we have cultivated a certain mystique of being more powerful and slightly amoral, or at any rate, not having the exact same moral values that the mainstream has.
[04:33.750 --> 04:42.150]  And, you know, the mainstream venerates violence and base instincts, and so it's very hard to share all of its values.
[04:42.370 --> 04:49.650]  You know, a lot of us, I think, are rather gentle intellectual sorts, whether we're technical sorts or bookworms.
[04:49.670 --> 04:51.650]  But in any event, they don't get along with us.
[04:52.070 --> 04:55.950]  And when we're born into this world full of them, we have some problems.
[04:56.570 --> 04:59.970]  I think a lot of hackers have had the school problem.
[05:00.170 --> 05:02.890]  You get to school, and it doesn't work out for you.
[05:02.970 --> 05:06.990]  Usually, you are too smart to deal with it.
[05:07.070 --> 05:08.150]  You get bored quickly.
[05:08.150 --> 05:12.910]  You can't accept the authority of the teachers because, in your mind, they don't really deserve it.
[05:13.010 --> 05:15.710]  They're kind of dumb, and they're kind of babysitting you.
[05:15.850 --> 05:17.530]  And no one enjoys that.
[05:17.630 --> 05:18.770]  We want to be engaged.
[05:19.010 --> 05:22.690]  And, you know, what we do is challenge authority.
[05:22.690 --> 05:25.370]  And what they hate is people who challenge authority.
[05:25.370 --> 05:27.990]  So they kick us around, and they're very bad to us.
[05:28.590 --> 05:33.190]  Now, if you're very lucky, what happened to Bill Gates might happen to you.
[05:33.250 --> 05:36.950]  The parents realize there's a problem, and they put you in a school with really smart people.
[05:36.950 --> 05:39.310]  And then people can say, I'm glad you're smart.
[05:39.310 --> 05:40.670]  I'm not going to kick you down.
[05:40.670 --> 05:44.510]  I'm going to help you, and nurture you, and figure out what you're good at.
[05:44.930 --> 05:47.290]  I mean, Bill Gates, you know, had a lot of trouble.
[05:47.430 --> 05:51.790]  He got in a lot of trouble at Lakeside, and was nearly expelled from Harvard as well.
[05:52.630 --> 05:57.510]  But, you know, he got what he needed when he needed it, and he's engaged with the mainstream.
[05:57.730 --> 06:02.410]  I know a lot of us don't approve of a lot of the things that he has done in the past with his software.
[06:02.810 --> 06:07.970]  But at the same time, he's more one of us, I think, than he is one of them.
[06:09.110 --> 06:27.850]  Now, after this school problem, which quite often involves physical violence from people, and if you go on to Slashdot and just mention bullying, you will get pages and pages of rants and really violent revenge fantasies about these horrible things that are happening to smart kids who just wanted to do well in school.
[06:28.710 --> 06:34.210]  Well, that's fine, and somehow we managed to survive because people can survive just about anything.
[06:34.550 --> 06:46.530]  But then we go to college or wherever, and we pop out in the world, and we want to develop software, or have our tech hobbies, and we find there are all these laws being passed to stop us from doing that because the mainstream doesn't understand us.
[06:46.870 --> 06:58.830]  Well, we can deal with some of that, but when it gets so egregiously corrupt, this IP property grab, this content property grab, where every image and every sound gets
[07:02.110 --> 07:15.930]  copyrighted, and held by some library that wants to charge royalties, and firms just make a project and then patent every single idea that they could in that project so they can block competitors.
[07:16.190 --> 07:22.550]  And more importantly, they can say, you know, here we have some assets, so our stock is worth more, and all of that.
[07:24.630 --> 07:33.270]  You know, we feel like we want to contribute, and here were these smart people, and we could do it, but there are all these very corrupt people who are just stealing things and locking things up.
[07:33.430 --> 07:38.590]  And then we think, well, how much progress can I make because everything is patented, and I can't do anything?
[07:39.010 --> 07:40.670]  Or everything's copyrighted.
[07:40.670 --> 07:45.770]  And it's very, very frustrating, because you want to help the world, and it's actively stopping you from doing that.
[07:46.690 --> 07:54.050]  Well, the other thing that can happen with technical people is that we get bored of computers.
[07:54.470 --> 08:01.150]  I myself have gotten fantastically bored of them at many times, and I've gone for years without using them.
[08:01.610 --> 08:05.430]  Well, using them, but not coding hardcore and all of that.
[08:05.790 --> 08:11.470]  And what I've discovered is that hackers are basically good at anything they try to be good at.
[08:11.750 --> 08:20.550]  So you take this hacker mindset of just figuring out how things work, and you apply it to anything, and you can do that fairly well.
[08:20.550 --> 08:23.330]  Sometimes it can take a little bit of work.
[08:23.570 --> 08:32.710]  And I know for people to whom everything comes easily, you know, admitting that you have to work hard at something like math can be difficult.
[08:32.710 --> 08:35.050]  But if you do it, things turn out pretty well.
[08:35.390 --> 08:49.010]  So I wanted to talk about three areas where technical people or people with the hacker mindset can have a positive impact on mainstream society in a non-technical way.
[08:49.010 --> 08:56.270]  These are things you can do if you have the hacker mentality, or if you have the technical background, but you don't want to be Joe Programmer for the rest of your life.
[08:56.870 --> 08:59.970]  And these are things that I have some experience in.
[09:00.990 --> 09:05.510]  Journalism, academic economics, and law.
[09:06.430 --> 09:13.290]  And admittedly, I don't know very much about law, and I'm glad about that because the way that we usually find out about law is less than pleasant.
[09:13.290 --> 09:18.390]  But I did have an interesting stint in journalism during the dot-com boom.
[09:18.390 --> 09:21.690]  Well, just before it, rather, until just after it.
[09:21.830 --> 09:28.370]  I got hired at age 20 as the technical editor of this magazine called Linux Journal.
[09:28.630 --> 09:32.190]  And this was a position for which I was completely and totally unqualified.
[09:32.990 --> 09:39.310]  But everyone who was qualified was working at a dot-com, getting seven figures of stock options.
[09:39.610 --> 09:42.670]  You know, these were very rich kids.
[09:42.910 --> 09:46.970]  So, I could speak English, and I could pretend to know about things.
[09:47.310 --> 09:48.690]  And that was enough.
[09:48.890 --> 09:52.510]  Well, I was also willing to work at low wages, which you always have to do if you're in journalism.
[09:52.810 --> 09:55.390]  But it's fun while you're there.
[09:55.550 --> 10:00.010]  And you do get to meet a lot of people, and you can influence people.
[10:00.010 --> 10:06.730]  You know, you can say to these venture capitalists, these Linux firms are really great, and these business people are really sharp.
[10:06.870 --> 10:09.090]  And then they'll get money, and then they can become self-sustaining.
[10:09.090 --> 10:14.050]  So, you can have some influence in journalism, or even changing people's opinions about things.
[10:14.250 --> 10:25.010]  You know, one thing I tried to do while I was there was get the Linux people and the Slashdot crowd to stop looking down at the 2600 people and people who were interested in security.
[10:25.010 --> 10:31.530]  It was the weirdest snobbery between these two groups that I thought was just completely irrational.
[10:31.930 --> 10:36.090]  And especially when the mainstream doesn't really like either one of us that well.
[10:36.430 --> 10:39.650]  You know, it seemed to me that, you know, we could get along a bit better.
[10:39.790 --> 10:53.430]  And I think nowadays, you know, things are pretty good with the occasional outburst on Slashdot of, like, you are pwned or some such, but, you know.
[10:55.730 --> 11:08.870]  So, in journalism, we do need people who can explain to the mainstream technical issues in a rather, I don't want to say unbiased way because, of course, nothing can be unbiased.
[11:09.050 --> 11:16.470]  You know, bias is how you choose one statement or one hypothesis from infinitely many equally valid hypotheses.
[11:16.470 --> 11:30.350]  But we need to give them a good understanding of technology and technological issues so that they can make decisions or at least be informed when they're voting or spending money or talking to their friends.
[11:30.970 --> 11:41.550]  You know, I think that their interests would coincide with our interests a lot more than their interests coincide with these, you know, industry consortiums that right now they tend to support, you know.
[11:43.910 --> 11:45.630]  So, that's one area.
[11:45.930 --> 11:54.130]  And I think a lot of people in this room could do a better job than a lot of journalists who cover tech for the masses.
[11:55.630 --> 12:00.170]  Does anyone here think you would be a worse journalist than John Markoff, for example?
[12:01.550 --> 12:02.730]  Well, I don't know.
[12:02.790 --> 12:04.030]  I guess we could ask Kevin about that.
[12:08.680 --> 12:14.500]  But there's another trick with journalism, which is that if you can put a sentence together, people will listen to you.
[12:14.620 --> 12:22.160]  Because people who understand tech generally don't read a ton of literature, so they sometimes don't write so well.
[12:22.160 --> 12:26.640]  And people who can write very well just about never understand tech.
[12:26.780 --> 12:32.540]  So, if you can put together a coherent paragraph, you can send it into just about any publication, and they'll print it for you.
[12:32.540 --> 12:34.340]  It's really funny that way.
[12:34.480 --> 12:35.620]  But they're desperate for material.
[12:35.620 --> 12:37.820]  They have deadlines, and they'll take what they can get.
[12:38.040 --> 12:42.460]  So, you can influence people that way or hack into the media.
[12:42.460 --> 12:44.300]  I guess it's what Jello always says.
[12:44.360 --> 12:45.380]  Don't hate the media.
[12:45.540 --> 12:46.380]  Become the media.
[12:46.560 --> 12:53.900]  And, well, the media, if you're willing to accept low wages, is a thing that you can get into and where you can have some influence.
[12:55.380 --> 13:03.800]  So, another subject of mine that I like to rant about is economics, because I happen to think that economics is an academic fraud.
[13:03.800 --> 13:08.440]  And I realize that's a very strong crackpot statement.
[13:08.660 --> 13:16.460]  You know, how could all these fancy places, MIT and Harvard and Princeton with these schnitze economics departments, be, you know, taking part in a fraud?
[13:16.460 --> 13:18.700]  Well, it is not so out and out.
[13:20.320 --> 13:33.360]  Basically, I think, as John von Neumann thought and Norbert Wiener thought, and even Friedrich Hayek thought, that economists use the wrong mathematical language to describe their theories.
[13:33.360 --> 13:40.740]  They tried to import the mathematics behind physics instead of using a new math that might describe economic processes.
[13:41.060 --> 13:46.580]  Well, then you can build all these theoretical models that say, this will happen if you do this, and this will happen if you do that.
[13:46.580 --> 13:48.620]  And then you can build policy on them.
[13:48.780 --> 13:59.760]  So you come up with something, you call it a laugher curve, and suddenly it has this instant respectability, and people say, wow, well, it must work, it must be real, because these great priests of economics have said so.
[14:00.080 --> 14:03.540]  Well, they have a lot of funny ideas, the people in academic economics.
[14:04.360 --> 14:12.560]  And if you have a hacker's background, you can come in and say, guys, this is what's going on.
[14:12.640 --> 14:14.220]  I know that this can't be happening.
[14:14.220 --> 14:16.220]  These people can't be perfectly rational.
[14:16.220 --> 14:17.860]  They can't be perfectly informed.
[14:18.380 --> 14:20.960]  This process is not an equilibrium process.
[14:21.200 --> 14:23.040]  This process is not a random walk.
[14:23.180 --> 14:24.480]  There are trends in it or whatnot.
[14:24.760 --> 14:33.100]  And I realize that's very highfalutin, and you typically would need some kind of math background to make those kind of arguments.
[14:33.240 --> 14:39.300]  But the other problem is that economists basically don't understand tech markets.
[14:39.300 --> 14:43.160]  they think they do, which is what's dangerous about it.
[14:43.240 --> 14:52.840]  So they don't really understand issues about protocols and standards and natural monopolies in the industry.
[14:53.660 --> 15:02.660]  And in particular, they don't understand libraries and how important libraries are, and the damage that patents and copyrights can do.
[15:02.800 --> 15:09.560]  Their basic attitude is, well, we're better with them than without them, therefore, we can have them for 90 or 100 years and whatever.
[15:09.740 --> 15:10.160]  Who cares?
[15:10.420 --> 15:10.640]  You know?
[15:10.860 --> 15:14.180]  The system's basically worked more than it hasn't worked, so we'll keep that.
[15:14.360 --> 15:27.580]  Well, if you've ever had to fight at a really hard level with a machine, you have a different understanding of library standards APIs than a guy who draws some graphs and says, here's the equilibrium.
[15:28.160 --> 15:33.200]  So, I think we could really help them to understand tech markets a little better.
[15:33.680 --> 15:51.340]  And if you could get them to admit that they don't know them that well, you know, maybe the models that they present to policy makers would start reflecting actual interests of people who value technology and progress rather than, you know, entrenched industries that want to stay put or whatnot.
[15:52.580 --> 15:57.740]  I think we're going to see a lot of upheaval in the economics field in a few years.
[15:57.940 --> 16:14.700]  I think people are going to realize more and more that this talk about random walks, that prices in a market are a random walk and you can never predict the market at better than, you know, the growth rate or whatnot, is going to turn out to be exposed and tossed out and all of that.
[16:14.720 --> 16:21.560]  Because, obviously, you couldn't have speculators if markets were always at equilibrium and you wouldn't have trends if everything were a random walk.
[16:21.800 --> 16:24.160]  And there's a great deal more going on in that.
[16:24.260 --> 16:31.940]  But I think social sciences being less rigorous than a lot of fields can get away with crazy ideas for a lot longer.
[16:34.040 --> 16:37.580]  So, the next thing that I want to talk about is law.
[16:40.400 --> 16:48.300]  And I know we find law frustrating because usually law just codifies the society's norms.
[16:48.540 --> 16:52.120]  You're not supposed to hit people or steal things or do this or do that.
[16:52.340 --> 17:00.380]  But sometimes special interests think that self-interest is the order of the day because the economics professors tell them so.
[17:00.560 --> 17:05.360]  And they think it's fine to buy favors from politicians and buy laws.
[17:05.360 --> 17:17.500]  So, you get a lot of laws that are written in the interests of these big corporations that have paid for them, which are not always against our interests.
[17:17.680 --> 17:28.280]  In fact, a lot of the American monopolies that the government supports, it does so because at least they're American monopolies and not foreign monopolies.
[17:28.500 --> 17:32.640]  And a lot of the patent law, at least they're American patents and not foreign patents.
[17:32.640 --> 17:54.900]  So, it's very difficult, actually, to find out where your personal interests lie on these things, but there are some areas where we can help the legal system, and one is just, through journalism, informing people, including lawyers, of what the actual issues are and what it looks like at a technical level.
[17:55.640 --> 18:02.340]  Now, we don't really need more lawyers in the world, so I wouldn't say, you know, get your CS degree and go to law school.
[18:02.640 --> 18:05.620]  At the same time, there are going to be lawyers.
[18:06.340 --> 18:24.060]  We need them to protect us from other lawyers, mostly, but we do need them, and they are going to keep going to law school and appearing, and we'd be better off if there were lawyers who had a hacker's mindset, who knew about technology, you know, who were smart,
[18:24.400 --> 18:32.320]  basically, clever people with principles instead of this dogma of self-interest that whatever I can get away with under the law is okay.
[18:32.320 --> 18:32.920]  It's mine.
[18:33.040 --> 18:33.640]  This is rational.
[18:33.800 --> 18:33.980]  It's good.
[18:34.080 --> 18:39.560]  I helped the system by abusing it, you know, very, very strange ideas that people have.
[18:40.220 --> 18:41.980]  Now, another thing about the law.
[18:42.860 --> 18:46.480]  We know that it's very unpleasant when the law gets engaged.
[18:46.700 --> 18:54.500]  When you break a law, that's fine and dandy, because a lot of them are pretty silly, and, you know, they don't really affect anyone anyway.
[18:54.660 --> 18:59.160]  You have these victimless crimes, or you're not supposed to copy CDs at your house or whatnot.
[18:59.540 --> 19:02.300]  And, you know, that's fine.
[19:02.300 --> 19:04.900]  And maybe you have MP3 or movie collections.
[19:05.240 --> 19:13.120]  But the moment you get in trouble for it, they come down on you way out of proportion to what you actually did.
[19:13.800 --> 19:20.580]  Now, if you have good technical solutions to things, you can quite often avoid having to kick in the legal solutions.
[19:20.580 --> 19:31.780]  Which means that you'll see less teenagers going to prison if we have computers that are just simply more secure.
[19:32.320 --> 19:44.660]  If you make it technically difficult for people to break laws, then people do break them less frequently, and the law doesn't have to get involved, and people don't have to get beaten up.
[19:44.660 --> 19:49.640]  Because the law, once it does get started, it doesn't understand technical issues for one point.
[19:49.640 --> 19:53.500]  It's terrified of what technical people can or might be doing.
[19:53.760 --> 20:01.220]  And it's just better if we help the law not have to get engaged in the first place.
[20:02.940 --> 20:22.500]  You know, whether this means providing anonymity software for whistleblowers or, you know, just tightening systems, providing cryptography or encryption schemes that actually work and are not just funny, you know, nominal examples, nominal locks on doors that they can charge you with breaking and entering, you know.
[20:24.320 --> 20:26.700]  So, that is what I have to say about law.
[20:28.400 --> 20:32.460]  So, the question is, do you want to engage with mainstream society?
[20:32.460 --> 20:47.820]  These people who are afraid of you and want to lock you in jail, or, you know, these executives who look at you as worker bees, unfit to be in any sort of leadership position, probably a little amoral, but very clever and very useful at the moment.
[20:47.820 --> 20:52.540]  A source of labor whose wages are to be kept down and ours are to be kept up or whatnot.
[20:55.240 --> 20:59.840]  Well, the only way good things happen is if people do engage that.
[20:59.980 --> 21:05.440]  I don't think many people are born in this world and say, gosh, I really love this place the way it is.
[21:05.560 --> 21:06.540]  I want to keep it this way.
[21:06.680 --> 21:09.440]  It's fair and just and people treat each other very well.
[21:09.600 --> 21:11.980]  This is exactly what I asked for before I was born.
[21:13.000 --> 21:13.600]  You know?
[21:15.540 --> 21:18.800]  So, it does take people of principle and I think that...
[21:18.800 --> 21:19.180]  Excuse me.
[21:19.360 --> 21:19.540]  Yes?
[21:19.720 --> 21:21.040]  Are you going to take questions?
[21:21.860 --> 21:26.200]  I'm just saying a lot of people are going out of the room and I thought we could make this a little more lively.
[21:27.320 --> 21:27.720]  Uh-huh.
[21:27.720 --> 21:31.820]  I mean, you're talking about engaging with the mainstream?
[21:32.940 --> 21:33.500]  Yes.
[21:34.500 --> 21:36.140]  I mean, do you want to do that or not?
[21:36.420 --> 21:38.820]  Well, shall we take questions at the end then?
[21:40.140 --> 21:41.840]  I'm just... I'm on your side.
[21:42.000 --> 21:43.040]  It's just people are leaving.
[21:43.320 --> 21:50.500]  And there's something going on in the next room that I think the intelligence in this room could assist.
[21:50.500 --> 21:51.060]  Okay.
[21:51.060 --> 21:52.180]  What was the change?
[21:52.360 --> 21:53.480]  What were you proposing to everyone?
[21:54.440 --> 21:56.740]  Yeah, they were expecting quantum cryptography.
[21:57.980 --> 21:58.280]  What?
[21:59.800 --> 22:00.820]  Yes, I will.
[22:00.920 --> 22:03.100]  I will take questions at the end, I suppose.
[22:05.880 --> 22:08.200]  So, is it worth engaging with the world?
[22:08.200 --> 22:09.800]  I think it is.
[22:09.960 --> 22:11.240]  I mean, on some level you have to.
[22:11.480 --> 22:15.900]  And I think that if you engage on more than a technical level, better things can happen.
[22:17.040 --> 22:20.560]  I see a lot of potential with hackers, you know.
[22:21.360 --> 22:27.060]  And I don't want to wake up 20 years from now and think that, boy, we were really interesting once.
[22:27.060 --> 22:28.240]  We had all this potential.
[22:28.520 --> 22:29.880]  This was our era.
[22:30.020 --> 22:36.180]  This was when the world was run by technical people and needed technical people, and we've done nothing.
[22:36.360 --> 22:37.220]  Where have we gone?
[22:37.580 --> 22:40.720]  Well, I don't want that to happen.
[22:41.180 --> 22:43.300]  I don't want that to happen to me.
[22:43.300 --> 22:52.560]  And I don't want people to get so frustrated with the world that they give up on it and just vent a lot of anger on web pages.
[22:52.940 --> 22:56.480]  So, I think we have a lot of potential.
[22:57.420 --> 23:14.940]  And I hope that even if you get bored with computers someday or decide you don't want to be a programmer, that you will be aware that there are other ways in which the world needs you, and that the mainstream isn't as hopeless as it feels most of the time.
[23:16.640 --> 23:20.880]  So, I wish you all good luck, and I suppose I'll take questions now.
[23:35.910 --> 23:37.830]  What is it that you do professionally now?
[23:38.230 --> 23:47.190]  Well, I just got a master's in computer science, and I've been doing some bookkeeping work to keep employed, and right now I'm on a job hunt.
[23:47.790 --> 23:50.290]  Are you hiring, or...?
[23:50.290 --> 23:51.450]  No, I'm sorry.
[23:51.730 --> 23:55.570]  Yeah, it's really difficult right now.
[23:58.990 --> 24:14.430]  I definitely empathize with your general theme behind social responsibility on a greater level, and the stuff that you're talking about is very broad.
[24:14.910 --> 24:26.450]  I mean, sort of attacking economics at its crux and saying that it's like fool's science or just based on totally specious reasoning, and so on and so forth.
[24:26.750 --> 24:47.070]  Would, is there actually some sort of construct or specifics that you would give to people who are sort of in charge of critical systems infrastructure that requires technical know-how, yet actually plays...
[24:47.070 --> 24:53.510]  They play no sort of decision-making role in the way said infrastructure is utilized.
[24:53.970 --> 25:10.830]  Are you saying that what we should start to do is make these decisions even if the people who actually, quote unquote, own them, would find what we decide to do with them totally anathema to their own goals?
[25:11.070 --> 25:12.310]  Oh, very probably not.
[25:12.310 --> 25:24.130]  But you certainly could help people to be informed and have rational discussions about what's best rather than the rhetoric that tends to dominate American political discourse.
[25:25.310 --> 25:29.330]  I don't know specifically what you mean about critical infrastructure.
[25:29.330 --> 25:29.490]  I'm sure.
[25:31.390 --> 25:49.370]  Well, you were saying essentially that there's a lot of people here who have technical know-how on how systems that are very much needed by our economy or a capitalistic society or so on and so forth in order to function properly.
[25:49.550 --> 26:01.870]  And there's a lot of bureaucracy and so on and so forth and that a lot of us are sort of alienated, hence the title of this lecture or whatever you want to call this.
[26:02.150 --> 26:08.230]  And the point is, though, that you're saying we should act in some sort of way.
[26:08.770 --> 26:11.730]  Yeah, I wouldn't recommend anything illegal, per se.
[26:11.730 --> 26:26.550]  I'm not meaning anything illegal either, but at the same time, like, what is it that you are actually trying to get people to be convinced of that they should do?
[26:26.550 --> 26:37.710]  I mean, you object to the way some of these systems are used or the way some of these systems are structured fundamentally.
[26:39.170 --> 26:44.850]  Are we just supposed to, you know, agree with you and go home and that's it?
[26:44.850 --> 26:54.030]  Or, I mean, is there something beyond just being cognizant of what it is you're saying that you're trying to, you know, put forward here?
[26:56.470 --> 27:02.050]  Well, I personally get very, very frustrated to the point where I think, why bother?
[27:02.670 --> 27:04.190]  Quite, quite often.
[27:04.410 --> 27:09.650]  And I think, well, I don't want to have to go to school and get an MBA just so I can straighten out bureaucracy.
[27:09.650 --> 27:16.250]  And I am assuming that a lot of people have felt this at some point or another, a great deal of frustration.
[27:16.250 --> 27:26.690]  And mostly, I want you to know that at least I also feel that and that you can do other things.
[27:26.690 --> 27:28.070]  You can do journalism.
[27:28.070 --> 27:30.010]  You can do economics.
[27:30.190 --> 27:36.190]  There are other things open to you if you ever just get completely sick of being someone's code monkey, for example.
[27:44.960 --> 27:49.500]  I thought the questions would make it more lively and I appreciate what he was saying.
[27:51.180 --> 28:02.800]  When you were talking about entering into the mainstream and then perhaps going as a journalist, because, you know, if you have writing skills, you could take something that was technical and blended.
[28:02.800 --> 28:03.700]  Yeah.
[28:04.080 --> 28:12.920]  You know, and then you also said maybe you could stop illegal things happening by making it more difficult to do illegal things.
[28:13.600 --> 28:22.920]  I would like to know a little bit more about your frustration and the others who have a big, a huge technical capacity, which I don't.
[28:22.920 --> 28:32.480]  I'm just a simple person who wonders why, for example, building number seven at 9-11 came down when no airplanes went into it.
[28:32.720 --> 28:44.960]  And it often seems like highly technical people get very involved in figuring how things work out, whereas there's very big things.
[28:44.960 --> 28:45.540]  Yeah.
[28:45.620 --> 28:48.000]  And I'm wondering, what's the nature of your frustration?
[28:48.400 --> 28:48.980]  Well, of course...
[28:48.980 --> 28:57.600]  I'd like to connect with you more on that, because I sense you are very concerned about blending into society.
[28:58.520 --> 29:07.160]  And yet it doesn't take a very technical person to say a building came down with no airplanes going into it and no investigation.
[29:08.020 --> 29:12.940]  And other people in society defer to people like you and people in this room.
[29:12.940 --> 29:19.680]  Well, it's true that some of us do have a tendency to get carried away with more extreme lines of thinking.
[29:20.500 --> 29:23.760]  We sometimes tend towards political extremes.
[29:24.020 --> 29:30.920]  I think there are probably very few conservative Democrats or moderate Republicans relative to, say, the quasi-libertarian wings around.
[29:31.600 --> 29:38.480]  We can fall for overly simplistic ideologies that don't account for the complexity of the world.
[29:38.480 --> 29:43.840]  We think that it's as linear as assembly code, and if we could just work out the rules, we'd understand everything.
[29:44.040 --> 29:46.420]  And, of course, it often doesn't work out that way.
[29:46.500 --> 29:52.240]  And sometimes it's hard to know when you have technical expertise that would apply to a certain area and when you wouldn't.
[29:52.240 --> 29:57.300]  I personally don't know anything about architecture or structural engineering.
[29:57.580 --> 30:00.380]  So I don't know why some buildings go down.
[30:00.480 --> 30:04.280]  It amazes me that skyscrapers stay up when the wind is blowing.
[30:04.860 --> 30:06.660]  I don't know how they get the water up either.
[30:06.720 --> 30:08.160]  But don't you think it's worth...
[30:08.160 --> 30:11.400]  But what you're saying is you don't know you're not an architect.
[30:11.740 --> 30:16.180]  Isn't it also something for someone to think about why has there been no investigation?
[30:16.180 --> 30:21.420]  Why right now is a war going on in the Middle East that's justified?
[30:21.700 --> 30:27.780]  You said to be an American, at least the intellectual property was going to Americans.
[30:28.220 --> 30:43.340]  But what does it mean to be an American when we've lost so much of our liberties, of our freedoms, based on things like a building coming down with no airplanes going into it and nobody noticing?
[30:43.340 --> 30:44.960]  It frustrates me a great deal.
[30:45.100 --> 30:50.620]  I just have to tell myself that what goes wrong here isn't as bad as what goes wrong elsewhere.
[30:51.060 --> 30:57.280]  You know, things have been worse in Germany and in Austria and France.
[30:57.600 --> 30:59.700]  And so far, things here...
[30:59.700 --> 30:59.980]  Massachusetts?
[31:00.900 --> 31:01.600]  Oh yes, please.
[31:02.060 --> 31:02.720]  Anyone else?
[31:04.780 --> 31:12.360]  Aside from a career change, what recommendations would you have for engaging with the mainstream to convince people that the Internet is not, in fact, a series of tubes?
[31:16.420 --> 31:20.080]  Well, I think it's important to be sincere and patient with people.
[31:20.240 --> 31:23.720]  Not to flaunt that you have technical knowledge in some area.
[31:24.620 --> 31:31.240]  To be patient, not to get angry at people when they ask you questions that you think might not be so clever.
[31:31.400 --> 31:33.240]  Like, can I get the Internet on my computer?
[31:33.240 --> 31:38.060]  And, you know, patience, I think, is very important.
[31:38.400 --> 31:40.680]  Treating people with respect.
[31:40.860 --> 31:45.380]  Recognizing that your worth as a human being is not a function of your technical skill.
[31:48.140 --> 31:48.820]  Yes?
[31:49.300 --> 31:53.320]  Another question about the career path in a fashion.
[31:53.320 --> 31:59.680]  I'm wondering what you hope to achieve with a Masters in Computer Science.
[32:00.120 --> 32:15.420]  Most people who've been in the business have had to make a choice, probably after a few years of being in it, of continuing on a technical path to learn more, et cetera, or shifting over to a managerial side.
[32:15.420 --> 32:23.960]  So we end up with people who are managers who are semi-educated in the very stuff they're supposed to supervise.
[32:24.220 --> 32:30.320]  With basically contempt from the people that they're supervising because of their ignorance.
[32:32.740 --> 32:36.020]  And obviously this is not a good situation.
[32:36.260 --> 32:46.140]  And as a business, as a career, I remember when there used to be zillions of COBOL programmers.
[32:46.500 --> 32:53.120]  And now if you go to a user's Oracle group, you'll see zillions of Oracle former programmers.
[32:53.480 --> 32:56.060]  You know, what is the future as a career?
[32:56.980 --> 33:01.200]  And, you know, as far as the technical side, you know, from...
[33:01.200 --> 33:03.440]  And tell us now that you have your Masters.
[33:05.420 --> 33:11.680]  Well, I personally tend to value computers as support in other fields that I think are very important.
[33:11.680 --> 33:16.020]  You know, medical sciences and those sorts of things.
[33:16.260 --> 33:20.800]  I think computers can play a very strong supporting role in many human endeavors.
[33:20.820 --> 33:24.320]  Not necessarily computers for the sake of computers.
[33:24.560 --> 33:28.840]  Of course, those things don't pay as well as manufacturing cell phone ringtone software.
[33:29.640 --> 33:31.540]  So, you know, we'll have to see.
[33:31.800 --> 33:34.080]  I don't know what the future holds for me.
[33:34.180 --> 33:37.420]  I'm probably not the most exemplary individual out there.
[33:37.860 --> 33:40.700]  But, you know, we try to do the best.
[33:41.000 --> 33:51.100]  My understanding with techies, the ones that go the hardcore tech route, as a lot of my friends have done, is you try to get a job at a big firm straight out of college or grad school.
[33:51.320 --> 33:56.460]  And then you work there for two to five years, maybe become a project manager, build up a social network.
[33:56.740 --> 34:00.180]  And then when people leave to do startups, they ring you up when they need new employees.
[34:00.180 --> 34:03.720]  And people seem to do very well that way.
[34:03.960 --> 34:05.840]  I'm not sure if that's the path I would want to take.
[34:05.840 --> 34:08.480]  But you gave up the technical side when you shifted.
[34:09.200 --> 34:10.780]  To some extent, it's very difficult.
[34:10.820 --> 34:15.600]  If you promote the really good technical people, then you've lost your really good technical people to management.
[34:15.840 --> 34:20.040]  Whereas if you promote the bad technical people, you might get really dumb management.
[34:20.380 --> 34:31.780]  So, I understand some companies like Microsoft try to promote the most technical people, the project managers, and I don't know, I'd have to study up on management.
[34:32.160 --> 34:37.060]  I think I'll help you out with that, because I'm working towards my PhD in computer science and physics.
[34:37.540 --> 34:50.200]  If you decide to go on to do, say, a master's or higher degrees, you have... we're talking... the question is you're targeted towards private industry, which are private corporations like Microsoft.
[34:50.540 --> 34:55.200]  And even though they're publicly traded, they're still private companies.
[34:55.200 --> 34:56.660]  This is commercial industries.
[34:57.380 --> 35:02.640]  But you still have, and I don't... people don't like it, you still have NASA.
[35:03.020 --> 35:10.180]  Or you have the... if you don't want to work for the federal government, you still have the International Space Administration, which really does need people.
[35:10.540 --> 35:12.520]  I'm shooting towards that gold.
[35:12.760 --> 35:20.660]  There are plenty of educational facilities, particularly, you know, I'm in New York City and CUNY, and we need teachers.
[35:21.580 --> 35:25.320]  We need teachers desperately at the higher levels to help kids move on.
[35:26.020 --> 35:38.900]  So there are plenty of areas that you're... to be a teacher in even public school, you have to have a BS, join the fellowship, get your master's, they'll help you and pay for getting your master's, and then you can go on from there.
[35:39.120 --> 35:40.040]  You just have to teach.
[35:40.620 --> 35:41.700]  U.S. government has the same policy.
[35:42.020 --> 35:45.660]  You work for the EPA if you're into the environment or anything else.
[35:45.660 --> 35:54.300]  I've gone to several career events where you don't have to work for, and I hate to say it, the Marine Corps or the Army, who are always looking for computer people.
[35:54.500 --> 36:00.720]  But there are other civilian operations and civilian facilities that you can move on to with a higher degree.
[36:00.980 --> 36:04.580]  And even with a BS, they'll pay for you to get your master's and your PhD.
[36:05.180 --> 36:06.940]  So there are opportunities.
[36:06.940 --> 36:10.100]  You just have to know where to look and not be afraid.
[36:10.480 --> 36:15.100]  Now, changing the mainstream, that's something I just recently left a job.
[36:16.200 --> 36:35.920]  New York Presbyterian Hospital, where the lesson for me was, is I think my knowledge of certain technology got in the way, and I was asked to leave subtly because I could not deal with the people in management.
[36:36.160 --> 36:37.580]  That's where I saw my issue.
[36:37.700 --> 36:41.780]  I had no problem with the technology, but I hated my managers, basically.
[36:42.560 --> 36:44.080]  And sometimes I'd let that show.
[36:44.600 --> 36:47.920]  So do you have any suggestions for melding in?
[36:48.140 --> 36:58.200]  That seems to be the issue for people with, you know, who are intelligent, and who know the technology, but can't deal with the people who tell you what to do.
[36:58.420 --> 36:59.320]  Oh, yes.
[36:59.860 --> 37:00.660]  That's awful.
[37:01.120 --> 37:01.460]  Yes.
[37:01.600 --> 37:10.360]  Now, really good management, people can be a lot more cooperative, and you feel like you have a stake in things, and it's not a pushy, hierarchical, threatening system.
[37:13.240 --> 37:16.360]  Yeah, I don't know what to do about bad management.
[37:16.600 --> 37:25.860]  I do know that some hackers don't have the greatest social skills, and sometimes show their displeasure with people in less than friendly ways.
[37:28.060 --> 37:33.960]  It is hard to inhibit one's impulses at times, but it can be a real job saver.
[37:35.540 --> 37:36.060]  Yes?
[37:37.040 --> 37:48.180]  You touched on economics, and I would definitely agree with you in finding it somewhat disrespectful to, like, the harder sciences in some respects, and it's not being very rigorous.
[37:48.180 --> 38:03.140]  But I guess my question is, ultimately, would you consider the hacker mentality a selfish mentality in comparison to people working in economics who are, let's say, trying to enact social policy to improve people's lives?
[38:03.200 --> 38:22.380]  Would you consider hackers and their pursuits to be selfish pursuits, whereas maybe people working in economics and that kind of field, even though they might not know what they're doing, perhaps they're trying for a more... just a goal for the common good versus...
[38:22.380 --> 38:23.440]  Yeah, they certainly are.
[38:23.580 --> 38:35.040]  I've had econ professors tell me how sad they were that they've been losing their best students to hedge funds and how to be in academia is like to be in a priesthood where you have to forego all of this money.
[38:35.160 --> 38:39.160]  You know, it's not like in English, where if you get a doctorate, there's not a great deal you can do.
[38:39.260 --> 38:46.940]  They'll pay you 200 grand starting and double it in a year if you do a good job with a PhD in econ if you get into the right hedge funds.
[38:47.080 --> 38:48.860]  Of course, you do have to know people first, I guess.
[38:52.560 --> 38:52.920]  Yeah.
[38:53.440 --> 38:53.700]  Hmm.
[38:55.880 --> 39:02.740]  Well, I tend to think that people who agree with me on economic issues are doing it for the greater good and people who disagree have a selfish agenda.
[39:02.760 --> 39:06.000]  So, I'm not the most objective person out there.
[39:06.000 --> 39:17.660]  I am suspicious of some of the more extremist think tanks that take really extreme ideas and try to present them as if they are mainstream or an alternative that's on equal footing, for example.
[39:19.360 --> 39:19.960]  Yes?
[39:20.440 --> 39:22.900]  Yeah, I wanted to know a little bit more about...
[39:22.900 --> 39:29.180]  you mentioned one of the first areas was journalism, using our technical knowledge to...
[39:29.180 --> 39:34.300]  if we can go ahead and use it in ways that can help educate people.
[39:34.300 --> 39:37.420]  So then, how would you... how would one get into that?
[39:37.660 --> 39:44.740]  You mentioned that there are magazines or newspapers that are always under a deadline looking for stories and things like that.
[39:44.860 --> 39:45.160]  Oh, yeah.
[39:45.160 --> 39:46.200]  How would you go ahead and...
[39:46.200 --> 39:46.880]  Oh, yeah.
[39:46.960 --> 39:55.480]  Well, you can just go to websites and go to the contact page and find all the people who are in charge of articles and say, I can write you an article on this, here are my qualifications, do you want it?
[39:55.540 --> 39:58.140]  And quite often, they'll say, well, give it a go.
[39:58.280 --> 39:59.740]  If it's terrible, we just won't print it.
[40:00.460 --> 40:05.440]  The easiest thing is the letter to the editor, because they have to get a bunch of those on a regular basis.
[40:05.720 --> 40:10.580]  So you can get hacker viewpoints into newspapers and magazines pretty easily.
[40:10.860 --> 40:18.540]  But the thing with journalism is that it can't afford to pay the wages that a person with a really technical background would expect.
[40:18.540 --> 40:24.660]  So it's the kind of thing where you can do it for a little while for the fun of it or for the experience.
[40:24.660 --> 40:35.520]  But if you want to make a career out of it, you have to hatch some scheme, like hyping some professor somewhere and then co-authoring a book with him, and you know, like that Freakonomics thing.
[40:35.700 --> 40:43.480]  Or you can manufacture a story, turn someone into the FBI's most wanted hacker, and then publish a book with some guy that you're writing about.
[40:44.240 --> 40:47.760]  Yeah, that's... yeah, I'm banking on that for retirement, so...
[40:50.260 --> 40:51.920]  Yeah, any other questions?
[40:54.800 --> 40:55.320]  Hello?
[40:55.680 --> 40:55.900]  Hello.
[40:56.500 --> 41:10.820]  Don't know if this... if you're the best person to answer this, but, you know, for laws that... you know, you say maybe the computer itself should be more secure, whatever infrastructure... whatever structure around it should be more secure.
[41:12.780 --> 41:18.960]  Even though everyone in the mainstream is affected by these laws, say, Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
[41:20.500 --> 41:30.500]  You know, the input that ended up creating that law in the government to apply to everyone else was, you know, decidedly not mainstream.
[41:30.880 --> 41:33.420]  Yeah, it was Jack Valenti and Posse.
[41:33.800 --> 41:45.220]  You know, how do... or how would you propose, say, from the viewpoint of less government intrusion to go about changing laws that are just bad?
[41:46.660 --> 41:48.060]  You can't... you know...
[41:48.060 --> 41:57.840]  I honestly don't know, because the people who write laws are, you know, elected leaders, generally, and you generally have to have a law degree, and then you have to spend your life fundraising.
[41:58.140 --> 41:59.420]  It's really awful.
[41:59.580 --> 42:12.900]  But you can go, you know, the political science libraries and check out books about just how much money a congressman has to raise every week to stay in office, and how people contribute to the guy they think is going to win, so that he'll return the favors.
[42:14.020 --> 42:16.600]  It is vaguely corrupt.
[42:16.860 --> 42:20.700]  I guess it's less corrupt than, you know, more authoritarian regimes.
[42:22.160 --> 42:30.540]  It's frustrating because dedicating your life to something like that is more than most people want to do, because as far as we know, this is your one life, so you might as well have a good time, you know.
[42:31.720 --> 42:51.340]  I think educating the masses, making them less afraid of technology, less afraid of us, being patient with people, so that they associate hackers with Thomas Edison and tinkerers, rather than, you know, creeps who steal things from people, or, you know,
[42:51.380 --> 42:53.320]  write viruses and destroy things, you know.
[42:55.480 --> 43:01.420]  The iPod, you know, sort of exploded on the scene, as it were, even though it wasn't the first MP3 player.
[43:01.840 --> 43:08.360]  And, you know, there wasn't too much discussion of, you know, what should constitute fair use.
[43:08.560 --> 43:10.360]  You know, what's this, what's this, what's this?
[43:10.620 --> 43:20.220]  And, you know, you have, by the letter of the law, many hundreds of thousands of felons, you know, running around.
[43:20.500 --> 43:25.720]  Yeah, that's frightening when everyone in the country is guilty of a felony, and probably hundreds of them.
[43:25.720 --> 43:29.420]  That's a very frightening prospect for a selective prosecution.
[43:29.700 --> 43:33.900]  But the market did force the issue of what fair use is.
[43:34.560 --> 43:41.380]  And, you know, if the iPod didn't exist, we probably would have less fair use available to us.
[43:41.480 --> 43:53.320]  I mean, not even from the perspective of fair use, but the DeCSS case and a number of other things, but specifically DeCSS and the DMCA.
[43:54.820 --> 43:56.660]  You know, the law is just, the law is wrong.
[43:56.900 --> 44:00.580]  You can't always wait for, you know, a jury trial and hope.
[44:00.740 --> 44:05.140]  There's some sort of, you know, you can educate them and they get some sort of jury nullification of the law.
[44:05.160 --> 44:07.740]  Yeah, it's just, it's so, as they say, bald-faced.
[44:07.740 --> 44:13.120]  There's no pretense that this is done in the interest of anyone but some industry groups.
[44:14.040 --> 44:16.040]  It's very frustrating to deal with that.
[44:16.140 --> 44:29.340]  I think if we could explain to enough people that this really is corrupt and that they are losing their public domain, you know, that this extension of copyright terms is not really providing greater incentive.
[44:29.520 --> 44:33.700]  I mean, we know, at least from economics, that people discount future values of things anyway, right?
[44:33.700 --> 44:36.440]  So, you could make an argument with that.
[44:37.340 --> 44:39.140]  Yeah, I don't know that much.
[44:39.260 --> 44:42.300]  It's a very frustrating world to try to deal with.
[44:42.420 --> 44:45.140]  And, you know, you're only one person in a very big place.
[44:45.460 --> 44:50.660]  But I guess we have to change people at the local level and try to do the best we can.
[44:52.260 --> 44:52.820]  Thank you.
[44:56.620 --> 44:57.280]  Any others?
[45:00.080 --> 45:03.020]  Okay, well, I'm sorry that you missed the quantum cryptography.
[45:03.020 --> 45:04.200]  I hope that wasn't too boring.
[45:06.260 --> 45:07.160]  Thank you.