The Uneven Distribution Feb 8
“The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.”
-William Gibson
Mesh Nets for Cyclists
Christina Bonnington, writing in Slate Technology, raises the tricky issue of bicyclists and self-driving cars. The promise of self-driving cars is that, because of their predictability and logical behavior, they can virtually eliminate accidents and traffic. Unfortunately, pedestrians and bicyclists are not known for their predictable or logical behavior. This morning, I was snarled at by yet another cyclist going the wrong way in a bicycle lane in New York City. (Incidental point: bicycle lanes are ONE WAY unless otherwise posted. Just because you aren’t burning fossil fuels doesn’t exempt you from traffic laws.) Erratic (if not clinically insane) pedestrians and bicyclists present a challenge to makers of autonomous vehicles. Human drivers may be terrible, but they generally avoid committing vehicular manslaughter. (Outside of Boston anyway.) In order to be trusted on public roads, self-driving cars would need to recognize pedestrians and bicyclists in real time and take action to avoid hitting them. Ms. Bonnington notes that this is challenging for most autonomous vehicles today. Leading to a need to either require cyclists and pedestrians to wear beacons (too onerous according to Ms. Bonnington) or to enforce traffic safety laws for pedestrians and bicyclists (not too likely.)
So What? I’ve never believed that autonomous vehicles would function on a client-server communication model alone. Each vehicle would need to be able to function autonomously of both a human driver and of a central control mechanism. Yes, information like traffic and directions could be received from a central source (like Waze) but each vehicle would need to react to other nearby vehicles on a one-to-one basis. This calls for some sort of mesh network of the type that’s been endlessly discussed, but never commercially applied. Ms. Bonnington implies that a mesh network would be “a cheat” as a way to deal with bicyclists since it would require them to wear beacons. I’m not quite sure why she considers it onerous to ask cyclists to wear a helmet that contains a beacon. A helmet is already a safety device. Isn’t avoiding collisions even more useful than merely surviving them? However, suppose we agree with Ms. Bonnington that NFC-enabled helmets are an unacceptable restriction on individual liberty. There’s still an easy solution. Or there would be, if only everyone carried an NFC-enabled device on their person. Oh yeah. Smartphones. Building an autonomous vehicle beacon into Android and iOS phones would be a tiny tweak to existing technology and could make use of the type of vehicle to vehicle communication that was necessarily going to be part of self-driving car technology anyway. But that, I suppose, is still “a cheat” if you don’t want to give up your Nokia flip phone just yet.
In an nutshell: Every objection I hear to self-driving cars just seems a little silly.
Google Fiber to Boston: Drop Dead
Hmm… here’s a strange one. Google’s Fiber business has had a fair number of problems. However, the continued commitment to Fiber made sense for Google based on their (publicly stated) goal of getting reliable internet access to as many users as possible. According to longstanding Google policy, the more people use the internet, the more they will use Google products. So Google Fiber was created as something like a loss leader to power the profitable search and advertising business. However, Google has recently announced that they will be winding down Google Fiber in Boston, although they are publicly committed to continuing to service other Google Fiber markets. This is weird, given their previously stated goals. Boston is a tech hub, if not quite on the same level as Silicon Valley or New York. It’s full of high net worth, well-educated individuals with higher than average disposable incomes — a desirable audience for advertisers so a profitable audience for Google. Why would Google stop serving Boston? Is it because there are peculiarities to the Boston market that make it a huge money loser? And, if so, why doesn’t Google just publicly announce what these are rather than just abandoning customers without explanation?
So What? Well, let me just put on my conspiracy theory hat for a moment (made of aluminum foil, naturally, to counter the NSA’s mind-control infrasound frequencies.) The recent announcement that the FCC was abandoning net neutrality was met with barely a whimper of protest from Google who are (on paper anyway) highly committed to a free and open internet. It’s almost as if Google wasn’t afraid that their content would be throttled. It’s almost as if they had an agreement with certain ISP’s (Internet Service Providers) to continue to pass through their sites and their advertisements at top speeds. It isn’t hard to imagine why both sides would agree to such a deal. ISP’s would finally get rid of the threat of a Google-powered internet that would eat away at their profitable service-bundles. And Google could abandon a high-investment speculative venture (Google Fiber) and use guaranteed fast delivery speeds from the ISP’s to persuade more websites to serve their display ads through Google. Of course, if such a (wink-wink) agreement had been reached between certain ISP’s and Google, we would expect to see Google Fiber abandon certain profitable markets to the ISP’s. Wait a second!
In a nutshell: If Google allows an information-vacuum to persist, they shouldn’t be surprised when conspiracy theories fill it up.
Bros & Tech
Women hold only 25% of computing jobs and receive only 2% of venture capital funding. At risk of being labelled a “Social Justice Warrior”, I think that might reflect a tiny sexism problem in technology. Oh course, I don’t mean that you’re sexist! (Or me either. Especially not me.) But someone out there (not you or me or any of our friends) is clearly being a little sexist if over 50% of Silicon Valley feeder-school Stanford’s graduating class are women, but only 2% of funding goes to women. The problem (and some solutions) are offered by Emily Chang in her new book Brotopia: Breaking up the Boys’ Club of Silicon Valley. (Interview with the author below.) Defenders of technology’s gender (im)balance tend to fall back on a few well-worn arguments: 1. Men are biologically more inclined to enjoy highly rational tasks like computer programming, so they naturally gravitate to those fields. 2. It’s the society’s fault. They don’t give women enough STEM training so it’s impossible for us to hire enough qualified women. 3. We would have to lower our standards to hire more women and that would just lead to women being treated like second-class citizens. These arguments are so frequently repeated in technology circles with a knowing, “more in sadness than in anger” air, that tech executives don’t seem to be aware that they’re all bullshit. First, there is no evidence that men are better at programming than women. All of the “studies” that purport to show the male proclivity for programming are based upon the fact that there are currently more men than women in computer programming. Meaning that the justification for more men in technology is that there are more men in technology. (An argument that seems somewhat circular to me.) Blaming the schools is also a cop out. If you think gender balance is important, hire for it. You can’t just sit back and blame “society” and pretend you aren’t perpetuating the problem. Finally, there’s the “lower standards” argument. It reminds me of when I went to college. My class was composed of 57% men and 43% women. Campus conservatives were quick to imply that the percentage of women reflected a biologically-determined lack of ability and suggested that the women currently on campus benefited from lower admissions standards. Last year at my alma mater, 45% of the incoming class was male and 55% was female. Weirdly, no one has yet suggested that men are benefiting from lower standards and are “biologically” less qualified. So what happened? Was there some kind of evolutionary “jump” that exclusively affected women over the last 25 years? Or is it perhaps that an evolving society removed some of the sexist boundaries to women and allowed innate abilities to shine forth.
So What? Okay, let’s assume you’re a good guy and you don’t want to be sexist. What can you do? The first important step is: don’t hire people who remind you of you. This is hard. We like being around people who like the same music, books, video games, and sports that we do. It gives us some common ground. Something to chat about on Slack. It’s comfy. Given the amount of time we spend together working nowadays, it’s natural to want coworkers to be friends. However, music and books and leisure-time activities tend to vary in part by gender identity and ethnicity. So, if you hire someone because they share your love of the Chainsmokers, that is actually a proxy for race and sex. (Also, the Chainsmokers suck.) Hire people who have different interests. You might just improve your taste. Second, don’t reduce a professional relationship to anything else. Coworkers are not your “bros.” They are your coworkers. Neither is a coworker “like your mom”, or “like a sister to you” or a potential romantic interest or “one of the guys.” They are always just coworkers. That’s irreducible. Get it through your head that that is a fundamental category of human being — a coworker. Finally, ask yourself if you have a “company culture” or a “company identity”. A company culture is focused on goals and results. A company identity is based on shared jokes and experiences. Having a strong company culture makes you powerful. It aligns all employees in shared goals and attitudes. Having a company identity makes you… Uber.
In a nutshell: Tech has a sexism problem that is largely unexamined. Emily Chang’s book helps.
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