Those infected with hiv aids through the advocacy the provision of lifesaving services and those to sustain our efforts so everything here in the bookstore has been donated house saying Health Care Advocacy and job training. Every time you buy a book you were doing a great deed with a nice beautiful display that you can go to housing works and were so grateful for donating their time and talents. You can donate your time we also house beautiful weddings or private parties. And those that will continue every week and other awesome defense even as. So now we will get started with the launch. Ellen ullman writing your First Computer Program 1978 with a 20 year career at her books are landmark works the author of to a novels and has one the hemingway award. As part of the classic heard a book life in code a personal history of technology is a continuing story while living in the midst during the two decades. Based in San Francisco. Our second conversationalist is the host and managing editor of the tech show about being jilin from her podcast to lifes digital quandaries. Ended 2014 the alliance for women in media any draw outstanding post. Sova lets have a big round of applause. [applause]. Failing girl lived is happening right now. This is my kid is a to sit down and a cafe to chat about your book. You can listen in if you want to because i have to thank my producer because i have my version and said oh my god. We all have to read this book when we talked about it and could not wait to have you on the show and we got a lot of amazing feedback. So now we get to ask you the book is a compilation of essays here and ideas. How would you begin . You are prolific. So that prediction really did come true. How did you decide to do this . To read my editor said leo best work. The idea was to stop motion in history. And then to look at the different pieces with a discussion of Artificial Intelligence but they make their own story is three stories of what we owe the past writing about technology and the future it is important look at what happened in 1980. This is our learn to have skepticism. We are getting some feedback . That is how it came about been removed to the present present, coming to the end peas here rigo again it will not crash but slowly deflate what i feared it would it be when i started in 1984 into the deepest intimacy is of our lives that technology is not leading that place in us as human beings. Host you save the yucatec with interest into the intimacies of our allies buy you didnt know so many people would be delighted at that changed state of existence. What do you mean by that . That is the peace waller was away and give credit to my editor because there was the whole in the time sequence he said is there an essay . And then i finished the book and these are things i had feared all of this time that the internet would intrude with privacy coming into the lives and social lives in changing politics so then i looked at that these are things that i feared. And then it seems to me that on the one hand we know were being surveyed. And then to be traded and like everybody cannot live without this anymore. If you say there is where it happens with the fraud in the proverbial pot . O bios. But 1996 was the first and then taking place through Silicon Valley. And that was in San Francisco. So by 1998 to take over Economic Life there is a with recalled and all those people who had helped fuel to figure out the agents and brokers and libertarians that they were not to be trusted or out for themselves and to the first Mainstream Media and to draw people directly to the web that is where you have indeed satisfied. That was more than your insurance payments the tissue were trapped with the blood website. And then there is a whole layer of the middle class it expertise and then that were mistrusted the that is the beginning of something different. What i have is from that walking toward Market Street one afternoon i saw that in the brilliant sky blue. They have not read that yet. [laughter] and it said the the world really does revolve around do what does that mean for us now . She called instagram a decade ago you saw this was coming the personalization but not only the zero wonders of that of the blue and free indian food delivered to my door in 20 minutes but also the underbelly for every wonderful thing that happened there was another side. I did not foresee anything and i described what seemed to be coming all round me slowly dawning on me it wasnt obvious but it was the more i thought about it and learned about it. How can i say this . So when i read that back tweeting over the work but i am sorry this happened i didnt foresee instagram or twitter the thought machine of the divorce universe. [laughter] but i am sorry that i did and they think i hope i am wrong. Oh i am worried about the stock market in the way the first one that the general public is the last one it is a gold rush i have my chance it goes up by half to get into the game those in the general public are not in they would be the shoeshine boys of the depression and buying stock. And putting in the 401k not the extra billions. I am afraid the mitigating the of the year so i dont know what effect at have the larger those that make no money whatsoever. And losing 645 million. This is what i worry about so much money they could afford to lose of financing the companys heeling tremendous Growth Without any natural break are they making money . Is that a benefit to the public . It is interesting like with your example of uber is a really their training machines to take this to a world we dont need to reverse the centrally to all the way you get around. Is that a shift powless Silicon Valley always works . Ten or 20 years that far . Relating to Artificial Intelligence that moment was to create a human 98 two with 08 robot they would be smarter thats utterly failed to block against the big problem called consciousness and a self awareness and the emotions that bind up so now what is going on with Artificial Intelligence with machine interaction and that is applied to the selfie driving cars. I call them Driverless Cars neither drives like a human being they wanted to. It is an interaction so with the Uber Movement is on the verge of the culmination of the trend of the ugly blossom to remove all love the intermediaries what were left with this machine to machine interaction. With the Artificial Intelligence and then last week i was taking lyft because uber is off my phone. You should know a hint it was a lovely man who moved to the United States 13 years ago from kenya and he had a four yearold and i learned a story he told me his rented how many square feet the five per cent or 20 years you will not be too is in San Francisco as a place to get a job. Where would you as an immigrant . With that toehold into the American Dream people were still coming here for the desperately. Day classic case of the immigrant job. I take taxis i confess i know that they are not strong course dollars they had day 0w i they probably would not lose a wheel i space pay ahead of time. I probably will not be affected. Did it your mother ever tell you dont get into a car with a stranger . [laughter] but is it . They dont give great ratings you are devoted and devoted to. C. It cannot rate fairly spirited take a regular taxi from the airport that i take a the lyft and price difference is extraordinary. It is half the price for so how cannon the taxi . The driving industry is just one example to go down the line. With good and close and the hardware goods sorry i interrupted you. So can basket industry question . Do you have tax stocks . You are a few tourist. I dont make these choices myself because i by very well that i cannot sell some my friend to does help me and manages this says you are just afraid to take your cards off the table you really dont know when to get out because i might miss Something Like leaving the party too soon. She said stop doing this on your own. So it tears out apple is the best performing stock the last 10 years if you like them or not. What is the future . What will happen to people needing jobs . People in retail are losing their jobs. Small shops are closing. Big box stores are suffering. Even walmart they use that as a show room then go to amazon on line. Where does it stop . I dont know purposes the future i dont want to force either somebody who looks at things no tell me where they think it is going. Could should we be watching closest in the near term . With facebook site braudel but it happened the last two weeks with special counsel investigating the russian and sponsored ads end antitrust privacy regulations and to target users and talking about those issues for a long time the last couple years but this seems a year at a moment where the bloom is off the rose. But we had the bigger moment with society not good enough facebook is not going away. Uber was not going away europeans certainly a pretty good job to snap at around but apple is not going away. Google is not going the way. These companies have real value. Facebook is the devil. [laughter] [applause] tweak that. What else can i say . Fake news started with them. To stay if you have him in curators with the leading liberal you cannot have that so they fire and the human and replace them with the algorithm to pick up trending they look at what people were chatting about these are all the arguments with rivers like a childhood deduction ring in the back of a pizzeria in new jersey. So removing that human intermediary created fake news. That is for this started. I dont think they are laughing digesting they want to be paid well they are good at what they do and want to go to their jobs and then Mark Zuckerberg genuinely seems he has our best interest of heart. Interest from San Francisco general hospital. I now think anybody says we will be a greedy ogre venture capitalists definitely are. That is their job. Guest that is what they do for a living. How will that make me money . But those individuals there are not the fault but and to create an entity of itself but first way back when with the internet and then with that user interface as it was such a great relief. But not everyone did is easier and easier. But now i have facebook but they changed the format just when you get comfortable how he will express yourself or talk to the people now we do a different way and this is true just when you get to be an expert tried this because now you are an idiot. It is better. That nice feature not you have to pay to get that. Pretty unusual. And interviewed minutes of the conversation. So if the explosion will happen is that possible . End avenue a few saw that with that since of misogyny where does that have roots . Tied it to a movement and also it is tied to the extreme right. And to bring in the women in to help people have been excluded. How quickly it turns pornographic yes we should see the review have he could not complete a fall apart send a couple of other interchanges i saw her naked body did not like how that looked. This was the place as a Software Engineer. If this is the conversation they wanted. So a conference to make an effort with those posted notes and within 48 hours and it turned pornographic. Kin to dave meggett on their own . Sold now of reading a the animal wearing it its a witch hunt. Those victims to victimized themselves those poor guys are put upon with us to a hundred thousand dollar a year salary. So the adn that women can make it so this will relate directly back to your book. So women cannot be Good Software engineers or sleep under their desks at night to get work done. So it is in the arrested state of development. This is a term used in to call them sub adult. [laughter] so young men who have not yet taken on the responsibilities they could even bring their dogs to work. So now i have to get back to your book. That is very bad Software Engineering to stay under your desk all light or staring at your screen for one set of problems will not get you anywhere as you go you have to back away to introduce emptiness and board and into your life. Play frisbee. Not only expressing misogyny this is what i dont get why the concentration of these feelings word junior men, why . I was that the last week and i was giving a talk basically saying to change the daily digital habits to get rid of some of the horrible things there is wonderful things in difficult things. I was expecting a huge backlash from the engineers and all they wanted to know how did they burn out . Really . Theyre just like us. Those elected to stay behind to chat was awkward. We had a moment bin to seem and elaine completely when i dont understand is why does this industry have this particular beef . They are going into medicine or into politics hopefully sort of. Land in in journalism, why not here . I have been speaking in broad generalities but as often as i can buy a selftaught working in areas there are amazing women. Island the great deal from them. If i did not have these supportive people i never would of had this career. And with baggy guinness. To help me get in touch it is sent all bleak. So women coming into the possession with women in medicine when they become primary care and then to get into things like surgery that advocates more narrow in narrow. There is a friend end and the back end and an event in between 2 is the front end of the webpage and all that goes into coding those send messages over the internet to the servers which handle the bulk of the work and that is where the down, dirty, algorithmic data handling happens. Even women who have experienced this go into google and are offered job on development webpages so women coming and are shunted into another ghetto which is the front end. So i fear we are repeating a pattern, women get in but get shunted into the weaker career paths. Because that is how it has always been or is it because im thinking of a moment, you took me back, 1986 when the head of the Math Department in high school told me i should not bother trying to do calculus because i wasnt very good at this stuff. You just couldnt say that in this day and age, there is no way you cant say that, some girls are not very good at this stuff, are those the roots . This idea that it is a biological thing . The roots in general, look what happens to girls . 11 years old, really comfortable beings and then puberty happens and all the confusion of what is happening to my body, am i pretty . How do you find that 11yearold . That is a task. You are told one of the things women tell me, i have tried codeing and found it hard. It is hard. And he had you really want to know is hard. Just because it is hard doesnt mean you cant be good at it. Are you intrigued by it . If you get those first little successes, did you feel a sense that was great, i want another one . Doesnt matter if it is hard to. It can be a good hard and that is the message that has to be put out over and over and maybe you wont like it. There is no should, if i never hear the acronym stem again in will be too soon. Steam. Add a for art. Steam is better than stem. I have to say your description of codeing was the real lightbulb moment for me. This is why people stay up all night in their underwear and forget to eat. Very few people bring the literary eloquence into describing how the digital parts are built, that was my as somebody who has not had a ton of experience making this and regrets not having been given more opportunities to try, if you are wondering about it give it ago but later in the book you also talk about taking a milk and your experience, massive online course. Massive online open course. Supposed to be a great equalizer, that anyone can go online if you are interested, great, bring your curiosity, take the course, off you go. There is it is taught by the same people who teach Computer Science everywhere, they have their own internalized preconceptions, they have a bias, they have expectations about who the students are so no matter where you go youre going to find this, the ethernet is not a purifier, it is a concentrator of prejudice, if it starts here with the teachers who equate programming with video games and presumes that all the students around the world know about monty python i want a shrubbery then you are not going to be able to take this course. There is one course that theoretically might have been good, and introduction to python, a beginners language and i was looking for this course, programming for everybody because in the introductory video the teacher says i dont want to just teach codeing, i want a way of outward so people in general can see code this teaching is for everybody. So i get there and before the class starts, he sends a link to a video he and a woman, teaching another course are having, they call it Digital Office hours. In the course of this she begins talking about tags, things on a webpage where you click and things happen so she says i just found out when this goes away and you see three little lines that is called a hamburger, he didnt know was called a hamburger. I didnt know it was called a hamburger, shes teaching web design for everybody and says didnt you know when you see the three little lines and a little cut out in the middle is called a man burger, she said no. Man burger and this goes back and forth a few times and he leans over to her, streamed live around the world and says look, dont tell your students a hamburger is the latest thing because it is not, you lose your credibility. And i had to soften it in the book because lawyers dont like certain things. Housing works, tell us what really happens. It was a verbal fit of dominance, she literally moved aside it was really hard stopping to watch this and then she goes i am a Computer Scientist so i guess my job is to be a little goofy and she is just reaching for anything to try to regain her composure. There was an excerpt of this in harpers and harpers sent piece and were objected to how they were portrayed. It is a transcript, there is a video and say said i took it out of context. Of course i took it out of context, this was the only context, they sent this link and the class wasnt running. It was actually shocking but i couldnt believe what i was looking at. This is what you find. Not everywhere but for coded messages i was going to say. The bias is in there and it is interwoven into the teaching. I think it is a good thing to do. If people form groups you can download these videos and you can show them to groups of people. You dont have to have an internet connection, you can just have your computer set up on a big screen and people can Learn Together and talk about it and they are useful, people who are trying to Learn Together can filter out that stuff for laugh at it, you jerk, i think if people are excluded, if youre curious about codeing you can take one of these beginners classes and see if you find it fun. You can audit it, you dont have to do all the assignments, some of them make it easy to get started and it might be fun, you dont know. I encourage people to look at these with the proviso that there are social biases inside these. I could keep going but lets take your questions or comments whether you read the book or not doesnt matter. Do you have a question . [inaudible question] i couldnt hear what you just said. Women are allowed on the bus. How do you think this will affect minorities and women . Repeat the question the question is Net Neutrality, the fight for Net Neutrality, does it have any implications for minorities or women getting into technology or having a greater voice in technology . In case anyone doesnt know what Net Neutrality is, anyone need a short course on that . Lets spell it out. Providers charge the same fees, connectivity, and the various websites with more monies that i want to run faster, i will pay more to go faster. The way phonelines are you can have one line which is very fast, to pay more for it than for a regular home line. However what that does is means the smaller websites are running on slow speed, the local track whereas facebook and google are running on the express so affect is on any small site young startups, people who want to get started somewhere, because they are the ones who were less wellfunded, that will adversely affect women and minorities the same way will affect small businesses. It has gone away. The current administration, the fcc just ruled against it. There has been a lot of politics back and forth, not sure of the outcome, what the law is at this moment. It has been delayed again, the public discussion, not sure they close the petition you could have signed for a couple weeks, my understanding is if we dont continue to have Net Neutrality this continues to consolidate power in the hands of people who already have it which doesnt seem very fair. Anybody else . [inaudible question] Free Software that you can download, do you think the lives of programmers could end up like that . Repeat it for the video. The question is hoover drivers already taxidriver might not have a job in 5 or 10 years was what about software or coders as that is more automated. That is why i have this concern of women being shunted into front end the element or website development. There are better tools for this. It will be a lowlevel job of going click here, click here, a very dumbed down profession. The automation is ever deeper into the province of human intelligence. That is all i can say. All i can do is worry with you. I want to work on a solution. Here is my theory. I hear people saying this next generation, we have pieces of code but it will be more like scratch heads where you have digital blocks, you are building on it. Is codeing the answer to in the shortterm jobs and education or is it, i wrote a book about it, an interdisciplinary approach to Teach Technology which is understand the implications from sociological the historical, psychological perspective and using the technology to design the society we want for the future, not necessarily if this and that. The dumbing down of programming started in the 90s, theres a piece about that in 1999, that has continued. My point in asking people to expose themselves is to demystify codeing, we are surrounded by these algorithms control whether you get a mortgage, whether you get a job, i dont have to go on and there is a sense that we cant do anything about it. If one learns just enough to know people write these things, they are not magic, maybe these things can be changed. I have a wonderful happy story about this. Bronx councilman whose name i wish i could remember, proposed a bill in which all the algorithms controlling how the borough runs will be examined for bias including where police are assigned or garbage pickup scheduled our kids go to school and this to me is one of those open your eyes, hiring people to examine the code, people who can examine the code who are motivated to do this or a City Department who dont want to work through google but for some small consultant that will work in the bronx. This is why i hope there will be a wider society. I went to an Unnamed Tech Company recently, we lost a couple people to this other Unnamed Tech Company because they have better tacos on thursdays, are you kidding me . We need those people who are willing to work in the bronx and not on a lush campus of sorts. There was a gentleman behind you. Facebook is the devil, what does that make the other . The horsemen. There is the devil and the four horsemen. That summed it up. Google is very complex in part because it is vast. There are parts of google that are doing really cool jigsaws of public things and Community Minded things and there are other parts where i am like come on. Almost it becomes so fractured that it worries me, we basically are like just hope larry and sergei stay cool, you are friends with them. I dont see them anymore. One of my favorite stories, larry offers her a job at a cocktail party, and that is because i was selftaught and i was terrified. Im always aware i have chasms between things i know. That is true for everybody but if you are selftaught you really know that state of affairs. I said i am fooling around teaching myself multiprocessing, two or more chips and their faces went do you want a job . This is at a startup party, do i want a job at google . This was late 90s and i just became terrified, like a lizard climbing up the wall to the ceiling. I was afraid i would fail and i look back on that as a moment i regret. All other times, i will learn this, i dont know this other stuff but i will figure it out, this was different, this was really hard hard and i lost faith in my ability to figure it out. When they started, dont be evil, they meant it. Make money, a member who was it . One of the early officers got up there and was talking about monetizing eyeballs, the first time we have all these people coming to our site, how do we make money and they had to make money and the story goes on from there. Google has tried hard trying to have humans occasionally interact with the algorithms. If you search for do the first one that came up was jew haters unite and they put in something that says if youre interested, search for jewish people, go to a more interesting result, they occasionally do intervene but i remember talking with larry, we were out with his mother and i said i am worried about this out the rhythm you are using, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and he sat there and thought about it and he said im concerned about that but i dont know any other way to do it and he meant algorithmically. Algorithms cant make choices. People are choosing this, there are many lengths going in. I cant really go and evaluate the quality of that. The only way i know is by how many people think it is great and that is the limitation of algorithms. He was concerned about it. They had to make money. And make money they did. That is not in the book. I have one more story to tell. My breath just got taken away. Why arent we funny amazon to me, because we all have prime, we have given it a pass. I dont have prime. I made an admission i didnt have to make a. That is two now. Keeps happening. Lets go to another question. Thinking about ebay and the blackhole. Is there anything good about it . Be added lease the far line. Question is about ai, the proplaps and cons which are you scared like elon musk . He does scare me. [laughter] someone with that much selfconfidence and that much money who is able to do whatever he wants and he is terrified of ai. He is using ai, of course, he has to and theres no way to build computing machines without it now. It is useful, it is in everything you do. Your car is a little robot or a big robot. Robotics and Artificial Intelligence are essentially woven into any electronic thing you have but there are toasters with anything sensors. The problem for me, i am concerned about Machine Learning because what happens is algorithms that write an algorithm that writes an algorithm in response to what the algorithm is seeing in response to what it gets to outside influence. We can get to the deck of the people who wrote these dont know what this is doing anymore. It moved out of the hands of the human beings who conceived of it. This is the part that goes into Science Fiction and i am not i dont worry about that. I dont go to Science Fiction but this is a concern. There are other Computer Scientists who worry about this, they wonder how will what is the responsibility of the people who create these Machine Learning algorithms . She specifically asked about good use, there are some Amazing Things in the field of medicine in terms of diagnoses and understanding how a cancer cell grows because with deep learning and ai you can have vast amount of information and start to make connections, one hospital looking at three cases a year and another hospital across the country looking at three, you can take all that information across the globe and have incredible discoveries or learning about this lead sprayers that can read what kind of weed it is and whether it needs to actually have pesticides sprayed on it or not, this is ai, to me there are some really wonderful and outstanding scenarios, it is when we get to the deck as ellen is saying that we see how fast these things move where we dont know what they are doing anymore and what it is doing anymore, we start to use it in situations that are ethically questionable like political standoffs, when do you right now twitter is a place where you declare war but what if it is between the missiles themselves, do you know what i mean . That is the scenario we have been living under that since forever. For the last 65 going on 70 years. Computers began as instruments of war so they remain to some extent. Important to remember where we started. The first modern computer was designed to calculate the trajectories of artillery shells in world war ii and there were women figuring it out by hand to check the result of the machines, they were called computers, they were the smart ones, they had the right answers, the machines kept getting it wrong until eniac agreed with women who were doing the calculations it wasnt declared smart, a nice little story but we have to remember that is where we started. Conceived not as beneficial object so much as war agents. A lot of technology began as war. Going back to catapults. So i poured at a lot to do with the internet. How did you go talking about what drives technical change the need for bandwidth, porn was the only thing that was making money in the first boom and everybody else is not making money but they were making actual dollars and they were the ones who for all those videos, devise a way to run this faster, get bandwidth so a lot of what was devised was for them so there were certain things the drive changes in technology and porn was one of them in my view. Anybody else . You talked about this before quite concerned about speak up a little bit. You mentioned these forms of Computer Science, concerns about machinery algorithms, how would you describe Software Engineers and data scientists, wishing on the algorithms . Specifically machine running algorithms, the question is how would you describe people making or writing the codes for the algorithms, there is . Thursday the fourth i am going to be at paul fords startup. What is the name of the startup . Post light. That is the discussion, how to be a Software Engineer and lead and life. This is the question. I think scientists face this also, i first joined a group called Computer Scientists for social responsibility during a star wars, the idea we will shoot down all these missiles coming over and they were very concerned working in computing to do this would make war more likely because we would have a false sense of security about it. This is something i find engineers are beginning to about as there are people with humanities education beginning to enter the profession. Places like google are beginning to recognize what do you know, there are people who learned a lot of other stuff for thousands of years and all this stuff about learning, maybe there are people who have another point of view. As the mix of people involved in engineering is slowly changing these questions are coming to the 4. At least i hope so. I can be optimistic at times which surprises me. Three years ago i went to talk at a conference and i dont code but i did say would you guys, would you people think about having a code of ethics and people look to me like what are you talking about and now it is being bandied about wouldnt say it is a mainstream thing people are talking about but not unusual to hear it brought up pretty regularly and i would also say some of the regulatory stuff going on in europe is forcing people to look at that was one of the projects we did about privacy, google bringing inhouse philosopher to discuss what is privacy. I think and why . Because in europe there is a history that goes back to world war ii the right to privacy is seen in a very specific way, we also have a right to privacy called the Fourth Amendment but dont seem to want to legislate towards it when it comes to the tech industry. One more. [inaudible question] a couple years ago, pretty distinguished chinese cryptographer. A year after the it snowed in was it Bruce Schneider . Sorry, bruce. Somebody else. Chinese cryptographers were not paying attention to the real world, the locations of their work. Not only the wrong way google, but talk. Maybe algorithms will go. Google will find its way. Not paying attention to the wider context of their work. National curiosities, how to design, in the real world where we all have government. Do you want to ask a question . The discussion happening in all different sectors of the industry including privacy and security as they should. That is a great place to end it. We are at this moment, some of the things you saw being built around you, cultural shift happening right now, would you say . Always. Every generation thinks it lives in extraordinary times and that is true. We will leave it, check out the book, if you want to say hi, thank you for being here. [inaudible conversations] tonight on cspan, a conversation with former Vice President joe biden and Ohio Governor john kasich, the current Political Climate and the partisan the buys. The Biden Institute at the university of delaware. Here is a preview. The Politics Today is a manifestation of politics brewing for a long time. I remember the pork hearing. I remember you were on the committee, you saw how they were, went through an impeachment and we went through the republican revolution, and the republicans when the house for the first time in 40 years. We are going to just fight you. A pox on both houses and you lie and here is the ironic thing. Raise money off of it. The system itself