The texas book festival is a Nonprofit Organization and its mission is to support low income schools in texas with author visits and book donations via tweeting rock Stars Program and to fund grants for libraries in texas. So your purchases make ahe huge difference in the lives of texas kids, so please buy early and often. The texas book festival is also running a books drive this weekend to raise money to help rebuild texas libraries affected by hurricane harvey, so they could donate 15 at any register to buy a book for a reading rock star student, the texas book festival and the foundational each match or donation with the book to rebuild a library affected by the hurricane. Someone book purchased puts three books in the library. So please keep that in mind. Allig right, so it is my very great pleasure to be here with ellen ullman. 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 CompanyCompanies 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.