1/ a little story. When I was 18yo, summer 1995, I had the immense luck of working as an intern at Hearst Publishing in NYC. I was a rising sophomore, the web was just taking off, and that internship taught me so much, it dramatically kickstarted my career.
2/ the group VP was a guy who dressed like a banker and led the effort to create the first dynamic web site for Hearst. His office was on the 5th floor, top most floor of the Hearst building at the time, 57th and 8th (there's now a huge tower at that address.)
3/ About every other day, he wanted a demo, so he would call me up to his office from the dungeon basement where the small engineering team worked.
4/ we'd done all sorts of really cool stuff to track users throughout the site so we could understand what they were clicking on, how long they spent on each page, etc. All without cookies (Netscape 1.1 came out later that summer.)
5/ He wanted more tracking. After every demo, he would ask "what can we do to get the user's email address?"
My answer, every time, was simple: "you have to ask the user for it."
His counter, every time: "that's inconvenient, can you get it automatically from the web browser?"
My answer, every time, was simple: "you have to ask the user for it."
His counter, every time: "that's inconvenient, can you get it automatically from the web browser?"
6/ to be honest, I thought the guy was an idiot. Why would he keep asking me the same question every freaking time, and how come this guy who clearly knew nothing about the Web was in charge of this whole thing.
7/ I eventually chatted with my mentor, the guy who'd hired me. He explained it so simply, and it shocked me at the time, even though now it's quite obvious. Give me a break, I was a very naive 18yo.
8/ he said "there is a whole world of non-technologists who are trained to think that if a technologist says it can't be done, it's because it's hard or they don't want to do it. So their strategy is to just keep asking you, over and over again."
9/ stunned. I was stunned.
Of course, like most caricatures of management advice, there is a grain of truth: technologists sometimes *do* sandbag and declare something impossible, just cause they don't want to do it. But that's hardly the default. And what a toxic relationship.
Of course, like most caricatures of management advice, there is a grain of truth: technologists sometimes *do* sandbag and declare something impossible, just cause they don't want to do it. But that's hardly the default. And what a toxic relationship.
10/ anyways, so here I was, stunned that this guy, who I thought was having an honest conversation with me and was just a little thick, turns out just didn't trust me at all. Just thought that if he said "nerd a little harder, nerd" I'd figure it out.
11/ what's the point of this story, other than to point out just how sweet and innocent I was at 18?
12/ the point is, Congresspeople, that when every security expert is telling you that encryption backdoors aren't possible without dramatically weakening commerce, communications, voting machines, and basically everything we rely on, please don't say "just nerd harder, nerds."
13/ we've heard it before. We've nerded quite hard on this already. Please cut the condescension and work *with* the experts to understand technical limitations and chart a path forward that respects individual rights and doesn't weaken critical infrastructure.
