However, because the majority of those in the Touchpoints group had been at Ubatoo only a short time, lunches often took on a very different character. Regularly, the interviewee was taken to lunch by interviewers who had been at Ubatoo under a month and who were still trying to prove themselves worthy of being there. In these cases, lunch was usually an exercise in academic one-upsmanship, or as Stephen liked to refer to it, mental masturbation: a fun, all-too-frequent diversion that in the end led to a minute of satisfaction and a mess to deal with.
The game went as follows. The instant the meal was started, the interviewers would delve into a minuscule technical aspect of the work presented in the talk, which in some, usually non-obvious, way related to their own work. Of course, on that topic, only the interviewer himself could be the world’s foremost expert. The real trouble started when the interviewee would try to interject an opinion that diverged from utter amazement at the obvious display of technical wizardry that the interviewer exhibited by being astute enough to find the small parallel to his/her own work. When such a diversion occurred, it was most commonly met with a Lord of the Flies–like ruthless barrage of questions designed to teach the interviewee that the only right response was sheer reverence. The sooner the interviewee realized the appropriate appeasement, the sooner the pain for the interviewee stopped.
There did exist, however tiny in number, a few lunches that began like this, but in which the interviewee addressed the challenge of one-upsmanship head on and proved himself able to stand his own ground. It was with complete surprise that Stephen noted that the interviewee was not berated or vindictively voted against in the hiring meetings. Instead, the interviewers usually passionately fought to ensure that any interviewee who could hold his ground would receive an offer. Nobody, despite any bruised egos, wanted to lose such a person to a competitor.
When the interviewee finished the lunchtime interview interrogation, usually thirty to forty minutes into the lunch—whether by acquiescing to the brilliance displayed before him or by displaying his own brilliance that outshined the others at the table, the conversation invariably turned toward the food they were eating. The free food was a perennial source of amazement for those who visited Ubatoo, and a genuine source of pride, and immense calories, for those who worked there.
Because it was quite rare for the interns to be able to contribute much to the conversation at these lunches, the interns had found other ways to keep amused. Out of such boredom was created the following classification system of the various types of interviewees, based solely on their discussion of the food they were eating.
A people manager would start by saying: “It’s an absolutely brilliant idea to have this quality of food. It keeps people on the grounds and working and thinking about Ubatoo. No wasted time going out. Very nice.”
A salesperson would start by saying: “All of this is free? Every day? That’s awesome. I can’t wait to try all of the cafeterias. I really can’t wait to tell my co-workers back where I work. They’re going to be so jealous.”
A marketing person would start by saying: “If I ate this food every day I would gain fifteen pounds my first year. It’s like the freshman fifteen, like being an undergrad again. You guys should try to be more green, though. Green I could really sell.”
A young engineer/scientist would start by saying: “This food is much better than the other companies where I’m interviewing. How late are the cafeterias open? Do they serve all this food in the middle of the night, too?”
An experienced engineer/scientist would start by saying: “This is as good as all my friends who came here said it was. You guys should really think about delivering this food to desks as well, especially for those days when things get busy. If we had perks like this where I am now, I bet people wouldn’t be in such a hurry to find their way here.”
Regardless of the position and the background, there was little chance that an interviewee didn’t leave impressed. At least the food always provided a nice upbeat end to the lunch—whether the person would get an offer or, more likely, would not.
It was in the midst of one of the interview lunches that Stephen was interrupted with a call forwarded to his cell phone from his office line. A voice he couldn’t quite recognize was speaking on the other end, “Stephen, I hope you remember me. We met a while ago at the Ubatoo party. My name is Sebastin Munthe. Atiq introduced us. I hope that now is a good time to talk.” It wasn’t, but the invocation of Atiq’s name was enough to motivate Stephen to excuse himself from the table, despite being in the middle of a debate about an equation that the latest interviewee had shown on slide three of his sixty-seven-slide talk.
As he scurried past the cafeteria’s maître d’, he rushed to find an empty conference room for a moment of quiet. He found Pinocchio and jumped in. “Hi, Sebastin. Great to hear from you again. It’s been a long time.” Stephen still hadn’t the faintest clue who Sebastin was.
“Thank you so much for taking my call, Stephen,” Sebastin continued in a vaguely familiar voice, the accent overly refined. “Normally, I would sit down with you and explain my group’s background and goals, to make sure you’re comfortable helping us. But in the interest of time, Atiq suggested I call you directly and, well, plead for your help. He mentioned you would be the one who would be fastest at the analyses I need.”
“Of course, I’d be glad to help. I’m flattered Atiq mentioned me.” Stephen was surprised Atiq still even remembered his name. “Are you tracking an advertisement campaign, or do you need some kind of demographic analysis done? I can help you with that as soon as I get back to my desk.”
“No, no. Nothing like that, Stephen.” A protracted pause arose before the conversation resumed. “I imagine it’s best to quickly give you a bit of background on my group. I head the American Coalition for Civil Liberties, ACCL for short. We’re a small but vocal group in Silicon Valley. We began by working on a number of pet social causes that we wanted to impact in our local communities. The ones we all coalesced around were those that as tech entrepreneurs we cared about tremendously, and, frankly, actually understood. Now, we’re focused on only one primary area—we need to ensure that our fundamental rights of free speech, free information flow, and non-censorship are upheld. You’d think we lived in China or Cold War Russia if you knew the extent of information censorship and the ever-increasing invasions of privacy we all must endure. I don’t suppose you’re familiar with our group, are you, Stephen?”
Now it came back to Stephen. “The moral conscience of Silicon Valley!” he blurted out as he recalled Atiq’s introduction of Sebastin at the party. These paranoid discourses on the evils of the U.S. government helped tremendously to narrow down the list of people who it could be. “Of course I’d be happy to help you in any way possible. I’d imagine that anyone at Ubatoo would help if they could.”
“Excellent, Stephen. Yes, your company has been remarkably receptive; I think our mission fits well with yours. But, lofty goals aside, I need your help urgently, I fear our resources are far less than yours.”
“No problem. What can I do?”
“I’ve just sent you an e-mail containing the titles of 960 books. I was hoping you could do a really, quite rudimentary, analysis of any activity surrounding them—if there are any particular geographies in which your partners are selling the books more than others, what the demographic makeup is of the buyers, and any other information you think would be interesting about the people buying or even discussing the books. Raw sales numbers, we already have. What we don’t have is the ability to look across the Web and put some of the facts together.”
“I can do it. But why are you doing this? Is there anything I should know about these books?” Sebastin’s request wasn’t difficult. Stephen had already mentally constructed the procedures to access the data he needed by the time he finished speaking.
“The books are a strange mix. They range from international cookbooks to government history to guides on how to sell collectible s
tamps. Most of them, from the titles that I can see, are fairly mundane. To be frank, we’re not really sure why, but we suspect that all of them have made it onto some ‘list of interest’ in Washington, DC. This means that people who are buying the books are probably finding their way onto some ‘watch list,’ too. Obviously, as ACCL, and as Americans, we believe we should be able to read any book we want, and that tagging a person as a ‘person of interest’ just because of what they read is a ridiculous thing to do. But that’s DC for you. I don’t know how to find all those people who might be unwittingly putting themselves on government lists by just reading a book. I fear that without some more information, we’re just poking around in the dark trying to help people we can’t find.”
“I can probably get the names of those who are buying the books or talking about them online. Can you use that?”
“That would be perfect.”
Another long pause followed before Stephen continued. “What are you going to do with the names? Are you going to contact all of them or go public with this information?”
“I like the way you think, Stephen. But, first things first. Until we have enough evidence of what’s taking place, it’d be premature to talk about this publicly. Assuming we find the right information, we would like to warn all those who are directly affected. Imagine if you knew that buying some book would put you on a list, wouldn’t you want to know? People can do whatever they want with the information, use it, ignore it, either is fine with me. I just firmly believe they should be told.”
“Of course. But it doesn’t make sense. Tracking cookbooks? I have a hard time believing that would be useful. But if you think that this little bit of information will help, I’ll be glad to get it for you.”
Sebastin responded quickly but offered no further explanation. “Thanks. It will be a great deal of help. I’ll certainly be sure to tell Atiq the next time I talk to him how helpful you’ve been. By the way, Stephen, not to beat a dead horse, but you know that last I heard, over a million people were now on at least one of the watch lists in the U.S. A million, just imagine that! ‘Persons of interest’—all that means is that it’s okay to tap your telephone, monitor your e-mail, watch where you go, and everything else you keep hearing about on the news.”
“It’s scary, I agree,” Stephen said, hoping to divert Sebastin before he continued. But Sebastin wasn’t done yet. He had plenty more to say about his conspiracy theories.
“And how do you think these people got on the watch list?” Sebastin asked excitedly. “Maybe it wasn’t just reading some cookbook or calling the wrong family member or watching the wrong TV show. What if someone happened to read the wrong book and called the wrong family member? Or what if they watched the wrong TV show and happened to order one of these books from Amazon? God forbid you should also take a flight that same week. You know, that’s truly all it takes. We just need to head this off and expose it for what it is.”
“I can help—I’m happy to do it. I’m not even sure which list you’re talking about, or whether these lists really exist, but we can talk more about that later. In the meantime, I’ll start working on the list of books you sent to me.”
“Fantastic. As you can tell, I always get a tad carried away. I hear it’s a common trait for us bleeding-heart types, no? One last thing, though: the lists are real; they exist. And you’re lucky not to have had any encounters with them.” He finally took a breath. “Why don’t we talk about the results in a week? We’d like to contact the people you find as soon as possible. I’ll be sure to tell Atiq you were just the right person for this project.”
Although Stephen might have been a bit unsure whether Sebastin really knew what he was talking about, and even whether he was a crackpot or visionary, Sebastin’s intentions were in the right place. The more people who knew about these lists, assuming they existed, the better off the world would be.
Stephen had hoped he would do something worthwhile at Ubatoo, though he never could have imagined this. It was time to do something other than finding gullible masses to buy more expensive diet pills. He was doing well here—now it was time for him to be doing good, also.
-SUBJECTS-
July 10, 2009.
All told, since starting pre-kindergarten at the age of four, Molly had been in school for twenty-four years (minus the all-too-brief stint in the Peace Corps) of her twenty-seven-year existence. But none of her coursework in anthropology and political science had prepared her for this. Molly needed to create a web site.
As with any task she undertook, Molly had done more than her share of planning and homework before she began. Her first step in finding subjects to observe for her thesis was to ensure that she found all the right tools to create a web site for them to visit. Fortunately, the tools to create a basic web site were readily available online, with discussion forums, voting widgets, and chat gadgets already incorporated. The color palette for Molly’s site was chosen from the standard set, “Serious Grey.” Nothing flashy or neon was needed here. Anybody with a few days of patience and the perseverance of a pit bull could get a site running and customized and even look reasonably good. In less than a week, her web site, EasternDiscussions.com, was born.
Having constructed a simple, but entirely empty, web site, her primary task turned to finding the motivating content with which to populate it. If she managed to lure users to visit, she needed to entice them to stay, interact with others, and come back often. She had to create a place where users wanted to linger for hours, discussing politics, religion and whatever other contentious topics they could. Her research depended, first and foremost, on having subjects to study.
Like anyone else on a quest for information, she had started with the listings appearing at the top of the search results pages from Ubatoo. She searched for terms such as “Islamic support groups,” “Middle East discussion forums,” “Muslim news,” and slowly made her way down the hundreds of links returned. She had originally intended to spend only a few hours looking for the content. However, it wasn’t long before she was so immersed in the world she had unearthed that even she had to allow her schedule to take a backseat to her curiosity. On her first day of exploration, she skimmed months of postings on dozens of online discussion forums. Though she had started the day by taking diligent notes, they too had soon been abandoned so she could swiftly feed her voracious curiosity.
“You ready for bed?” Stephen asked again from the sofa. It was 3:15 a.m., and Stephen had been home almost two hours, sitting in virtual silence, while Molly tried her best to reach a stopping point. He had returned early to spend a little time with her, but things weren’t going as planned.
“Just a few more minutes,” she begged from her desk.
“You’ve been working for hours without moving. You’re going to burn yourself out being this intense all the time.” Pot, Kettle, Black. He quietly walked over to where she was sitting and ran his hand lightly through her long brown hair. She didn’t respond.
“You sure you can’t do this tomorrow? I’ve been waiting all night to see you,” he said, moving closer.
Her eyes stayed on the screen.
He took hold of one of her hands, and quietly invited, “Come on.”
He tugged her hand a little harder, and might have sighed a bit when she didn’t give in to the coaxing. Unfortunately, sighs have a propensity of being interpreted in unintended ways.
Enough. She snapped her hand back, “Stop. I told you, I have to finish. I don’t hassle you when you have to work.”
“Why do I bother coming home?” he blurted.
Exasperated. “I don’t know. Why do you?”
“I should just leave.” Resentful.
Frustrated. “Yes. You should. Just go back to your office and leave me alone.”
That shouldn’t have happened. She knew it the moment Stephen stormed out the door. But today was not a good day. She was sorely disappointed. What she had found in her search had not been what she expected.
But that wasn’t what had disappointed her. She was disappointed in herself for being surprised at what she had found. As a graduate student years into her studies, her reaction to what she found on the message boards made it blatantly evident just how unworldly she was, and for a would-be anthropologist, this was an appalling fact to face.
She had come to the message boards to find extremists, dissidents, terrorists, calls to arms, and calls for unification. What she found, instead, was a place where young Muslims faced the issues that mattered to them every day. She had read hundreds of posts talking about how to deal with teasing and bigotry. How to deal with wearing a burqa or even a hijab? How many messages asked if it was okay to date a member of the opposite sex without telling their parents? What were the limitations while still remaining devout? How many posts were written simply as support for someone whose circle of friends only knew about Islam from the urgent newsbreaks on TV? How many posts had she read about both young men and women feeling unsafe every time a news story came out about terrorist activity in Europe or in the Philippines that was as far removed from their lives as missions to Mars? There were far too many to remember.
And the worst part of it all was that she genuinely liked and sympathized with the people she read about. She followed their stories, like soap-operas in fast-forward, by reading through months of their lives posted over numerous messages and discussions in only a few minutes. How could anyone read so many personal stories and not be touched? It was natural to think about Cameroon again, about Sandrine, and about Francis. This was the kind of support that Sandrine had needed. Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, whatever. At a fundamental level, the support on these groups helped, and she wished that Sandrine had gotten that help, too—someone to talk to about what was okay to do with her, to her, and what wasn’t.
The Silicon Jungle Page 11
