The Silicon Jungle

by Shumeet Baluja

  The conversation was still in full swing. Rob turned to Yuri: “If anyone here ever finds out how we learned about the party, or worse, if Ben figures out who we are, he’ll figure out how we knew about his e-mail . . . It won’t be good for us.” Rob glowered at Yuri. “What do you think, Stephen?”

  Stephen fixed on Rob, trying not to glare. “It’d serve you right if he found out.” That, apparently, wasn’t what they wanted to hear. “Nothing you can do about it now anyway.” With that, he started piling his dinner debris on his tray. The others followed.

  As they were walking out, Yuri took Stephen aside, out of earshot of the others. “Do you have time to talk today, Stephen? Would you have time for a walk tonight? I must talk to you about something.”

  “How about tomorrow instead?” Though Stephen’s curiosity was certainly piqued, tonight he just wanted to see Molly.

  -CONTROL-

  July 17, 2009.

  “I have so much to tell you about,” Stephen bellowed as he opened the door into the apartment at exactly 12:30 a.m., a full two hours earlier than usual. He had meant to get home even earlier, but as usual one thing led to another, and he wound up staying on grounds far later than he had anticipated. Not hearing anything, he asked with a slightly quieter squawk, “Molly, you still awake?”

  He dropped his keys as he fumbled to extricate them from the lock. As groups of them tumbled out of the keychain, landing with noisy metallic clanks against the floor, Stephen muttered a few choice curse words as he bent down to gather them. Despite his well-intentioned attempt to be quiet, in case Molly was napping, he banged his head against the door knob on his way up from the floor. Given the barrage of further cursing, any chance of Molly, or the neighbors, being asleep was dashed.

  Giving up any attempt at a hushed entrance, he let the door slam shut as soon as he managed to ineptly maneuver all of his body out of the way. He found her seated and wide awake in her usual position at the table, peering around her computer screen watching him intently.

  “Smooth, Stephen. I’m a lucky girl,” she said dryly.

  He rolled his eyes and dropped his backpack as he walked toward her. In the less than ten seconds it took him to make it from the entrance hallway to Molly’s desk, her eyes darted to the screen and back again to him. He couldn’t help but be strangely proud of her. Until Molly, he had thought there was no chance of anyone being geeky enough, and driven enough, to appreciate or even endure him. And she was really cute, too. He was lucky indeed.

  “What do you have to tell me about?” she asked, eyebrows raised. Again, her eyes darted back to the screen before his answer began.

  “Today was an incredibly strange day. Have I ever told you about Sebastin, the guy I’m working with at ACCL? You, the anthropology, sociology, political science, liberal do-gooder are going to love what he does, and since I’m helping him, you’re going to love what I do by transitivity, you know? A couple of weeks ago . . .” He didn’t bother to finish his sentence. Her eyes were staring at her screen, scanning someone’s latest message post, no doubt. She wasn’t even trying to hide the fact she wasn’t paying attention anymore.

  Stephen studied her for a moment, deciding how to proceed. Escalation would only lead to him walking back to Ubatoo alone again. “You know what?” he finally asked. “I’ll tell you about this guy, Sebastin, later. Let’s hear about your results—the ones you wrote about in the note you left me this morning. I’ll get us something to drink.”

  “Sure,” she replied without looking up. But when he exited the kitchen, she hadn’t moved.

  He poured two Cokes in glasses, grabbed a bottle of rum, then walked past Molly to the couch and plopped down noisily. He zealously mixed the drinks, ensuring the ice loudly clinked against the glass as many times as possible. Eventually Molly turned around to acknowledge, if not him, at least his attempts at creating an enticing racket. Her frown softened a bit when she saw the drink waiting for her. She walked over and sat beside him, taking the rum and Coke he held up for her before she reached the couch.

  “So, Miss Molly, I got your note this morning. What’s going on?”

  Molly told of the events that had transpired over the last few weeks. It had been that long since they had spoken in any detail about her work. Not that it was all Stephen‘s fault—there was a lot to get done in a short amount of time, for both of them.

  “. . . whatever Andrew did to direct people to my site, it’s working. I had 1,729 visitors just yesterday. There are a ton of posts in all of the discussion forums.”

  “I’ll have to thank Andrew. Be ready, though. I don’t think Andrew’s little lie is going to last all that long. Someone’s going to find out about it.”

  “I know, I know. That’s why I’m going to start my experiments soon. Right now, depending on how you count them, there are almost fifteen debates on my site, and those are just the ones about politics. To be accurate, ‘debates’ is probably putting too positive a spin on it. There are at least fifteen conversation threads on which people are arguing or insulting each other. To start with, I thought I would leave three of them alone, like a control group.”

  “Sounds reasonable. What about the other twelve?”

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. First, I’m just going to monitor the overall sentiment of the conversation—see if it’s negative, positive, what they’re all favoring, hating, etc. I want to record how often the overall sentiment changes and see if I can pick up any factors that initiate the change.”

  “You do know there are automated sentiment analyzers we use at Ubatoo to do exactly that?”

  Molly looked a bit impatient. “Okay, but, I’m not Ubatoo, and that’s not what my thesis is about. I can do that by hand when I need to. What I’m really going to try to do is see what it would take to change the prevalent sentiment. If the conversation has turned into an America- hate fest, how we’re evil and the root of all the world’s problems and that usual rant, then I’ll see what it would take to tone that viewpoint down, or in the best of worlds, change it.”

  “You know, though, we probably are—” Stephen started to say, without putting much thought into his words.

  “Really, you think so, do you?” Molly answered curtly before he could finish his sentence. “So, Mr. Computer Scientist Intern, what do you know about what’s happening in the Middle East, or for that matter, in the U.S.?”

  Ouch. Stephen backed down quickly. “Sorry. Go on. I’m listening.” Apparently, this was not the time to try to make casual conversation. He should have known better.

  “Sorry. But listen. I have a series of experiments planned for the other twelve conversations. I’d really like to run them by you to see what you think. Stephen, this is beyond anything I could have done before so I’m in a bit of uncharted territory. If you read what these people write, it just hits you over and over how important it is to know how to change their opinions. The more I watch them, the more I feel, I mean, I just know, that when the Internet reaches already unstable countries, we have a chance to make sure it doesn’t make things worse and let violent or extremist thinking grow unchecked.”

  Quietly, she said, “Maybe I’m getting in over my head. I feel like I’m working in some psych-ops experiment, and that’s not what I wanted when I started all this.” She knew she was exaggerating her feelings in the moment. Nevertheless, it struck her just how far she had come from her initial goal of being an anthropologist helping migrants. When had any real anthropologist ever strived so determinedly to change the subjects she was studying? What happened to wanting to study them without influencing them? No, this was not anthropology like she had envisioned. Maybe it was more like psychology experiments, maybe worse—all thanks to her advisor, Gale.

  “It’s mesmerizing watching users and trying to figure out what makes them tick,” Stephen justified. “What’s great is that you’re even taking it a step further than just watching and analyzing. You’re trying to predict it, even control it. I don’t
know what this will eventually be used for, but personally, I think you should just join Ubatoo now and get it over with. They’d love you.”

  “Stephen, forget about Ubatoo for a few seconds. Think about all those madrasahs where kids who are brought up learning to read with only hate pamphlets and hate teachings. What do you think will happen when they get access to the Internet? Think they’ll ever see both sides of a story? I doubt it. Access will be controlled in the same way everything else is. All the hate and the biases will be validated through yet another medium. Knowing how to transform opinions on the Internet seems like such an obvious thing to study.”

  “It is. You absolutely should be doing this study. If—no, when—it works, it’ll get used, and it’ll make a real difference. I don’t see any way it isn’t going to be useful.” Even in graduate school, he had never had this much passion about his thesis. If he ever had the chance again, he would choose only projects that at least had the potential for making an impact, and the potential to be something he could stay passionate about.

  “Could I see some of the postings on your site now? You probably have a bunch of interesting ones from all the new users,” Stephen said, trying to cheer Molly up. The middle of thesis research was no time to be questioning the path she was on.

  They both walked over to her computer, her leading slowly, still deep in thought. Her silence melted away as she read through the postings to find the perfect one to show Stephen. A day ago, she struggled to find a single interesting post. Now, there were dozens in just the single conversation thread she was inspecting. The postings were diverse in their style: some were well thought out treatises, some incoherent, some pleading, some demanding, many ranting. Most were simply by people who wanted to be heard, even if all they did was express passionate agreement with another’s opinion. She stopped at a message from a user who went by the name GR.Zadeh and read it aloud. It was a particularly malicious rant about the police action in the 19th district in Paris, which had occurred just a few hours earlier. She scrolled down a few pages and selected a couple replies to show Stephen. He read them with detached interest. He was certainly happy for Molly, but he knew better than to pretend to know enough about the issues to make any insightful observations. Her web site was doing well—posters were responding and inciting each other, creating new topics to discuss, and most importantly, coming back to post again. Her subjects had arrived.

  After reading a few more posts aloud to Stephen, she explained her next steps. “You remember that I post under the name Sahim Galab, right? Well, since this conversation thread obviously turns deeply negative, Sahim is going to post messages imploring patience until more is known. Sahim’s character is ready to support a fight and any necessary actions, but only after he knows all the facts. Since this Paris news just came out, and nobody knows the details of what happened, this fits him well. In a few hours, I’ll probably also post from my other character, M. Zakim—he’s the prototypical inciter, ready to blame and see the worst at every opportunity. These two are going to verbally go at each other. Maybe I’ll have a few more characters that I’ve been incubating weigh in for good measure. The whole point is that they’ll debate Sahim, and in this instance, Sahim will come out victorious. We’ll see what effect that has on other, real, participants.”

  She waited for it all to sink in before continuing. “I’m going to measure the effects of all the techniques I come up with to influence my users, quantify them, and make a detailed analysis on how to use them effectively. For all I know, it may have a decent chance of working just with Sahim, since he’s already known from other discussion forums, and he has a bit of a reputation from the very first posts I made about the videos of Mustafa Kawlia. Remember those?”

  “I remember Mustafa. And I get what you’re doing. You’re writing a handbook on how to manipulate public opinion on message boards,” Stephen replied with a huge grin. “One thing does concern me, though.”

  He slowed down a bit to make sure he chose his words more carefully than earlier. She waited, anxiously looking at him, wondering if he would be as concerned as she was that maybe she was taking this study too far.

  “How are you going to make this study scientific? I love the idea, but if your thesis committee sees it, they’re going to want to know things like how you measured the results, how statistically significant your results were . . .”

  She was relieved. He hadn’t shown concern that she was doing something wrong or going too far. All his other concerns were easily addressed.

  “Imagine if this does actually limit some extremist poster’s influence. Imagine that for a thesis. I can feel it. I’m definitely getting closer,” she said more confidently.

  “Just make sure you don’t get caught. That would be pretty hard to explain.”

  “Caught? By who?”

  “By the real users on your site. I can’t imagine they’d be too happy if they found out they were being—”

  “Oh, I won’t,” Molly replied, cutting him off. She quickly changed topics. “Want to talk about other experiments I could run? I have a bunch of ideas.”

  “Good Lord. Sure, it’s only 2:00 in the morning, plenty of time before the sun comes up.”

  Molly inhaled the remaining rum and Coke and bounded to the couch to get her notes. Stephen wearily followed, and sat next to her as she rattled off idea after idea to subtly manipulate the decisions and opinions on the message boards, such as “accidentally” lose some posts, artificially boost the rankings of some posts, create dozens of artificial personas to weigh in, cross-post to other forums, sound educated, sound passionate, pretend to be old, young, male, female, change the font color, size, and the list of tactics went on.

  They worked together until nearly sunrise, diligently assessing the pros and cons of each variation. At 5:15 a.m., having been away from her computer for three hours, she was aching to see how many more posts had been made in that time. The moment she went to her computer, Stephen let his heavy head lead his descent onto the couch. His eyelids relaxed to a close, resting his stinging, thoroughly bloodshot, eyes. The distant tapping of the keyboard and the soft rustling of Molly’s papers kept him company for the few moments before sleep overtook any possibility of staying awake. Besides, there was no chance he would see her for hours anyway.

  -A TALE OF TWO TENURES-

  February, 2004.

  It is rare for an outsider to see the elaborate processes in place at a university to decide which of the next year’s student candidates are worthy of acceptance. When talking about graduate students, this process takes on monumental importance. At the end of a graduate student’s studies, she is forever a representative of the school. By bestowing that student with a piece of paper declaring her a Ph.D., the academic institution stands behind that person, and professes that the student is now worthy of being a peer to its own best and brightest faculty members. Given the gravity of such an implicit and explicit proclamation, it may be surprising to find that entrance decisions often devolve into games as ferociously fought (and with as equally short-lived rewards) as the king-of-the-hill games children play. Such was the case with Molly Byrne, and her entrance into the ivory towers of academia.

  The problems arose when Molly’s application arrived simultaneously on the desks of two committee members. The issue wasn’t that two people were asked to review Molly; it was that the two were from different departments in the university.

  Molly’s application to the Ph.D. program at Brown University was for a dual-title Ph.D. in two departments, the Department of Political Science and the Department of Anthropology. This meant that, first and foremost, she was a masochist at heart, since she had to complete the requirements for two Ph.D.s simultaneously. Second, both departments had to accept her into their programs. But this had been her desire ever since she found out that Brown offered such a curriculum. She wanted a real understanding of what migrants’ needs were (the anthropology degree), and also the politics involved in getting migra
tion reforms enacted into law (the political science degree).

  Individually, to each department, she suspected she had a decent chance to make it through the admissions process. Her undergrad work, completed at the University of Virginia, was top notch, her recommendations stellar, and she had all the requisite extracurricular interests—all focused on independent research and publications, naturally. To cement her case, she had even gone so far as to contact the professors she wanted to work with in both departments. Molly didn’t need to visit their web pages to learn about their interests. She was familiar with their research, having cited their work in her own publications, the first of which she’d written while a third-year undergraduate. She contacted one professor in each department, Dr. Patricia Norris in Anthropology and Dr. Gale Mitchell in Political Science.

  When Molly’s application packet landed with a very loud thud on both Mitchell’s and Norris’s desks, they both dreaded having to read through another voluminous package. Nevertheless, after looking it over, they both independently concluded she would be an ideal candidate for their respective groups. Neither gave it another thought until the admission meeting was held to discuss their applicant shortlists.

  At the admission meeting, Dr. Patricia Norris, a tenured professor for twelve years, said she was willing to take on Molly as her student. The Department of Anthropology, which was notoriously laidback in its following of procedure, especially when compared to the normal exacting Brown standards, didn’t require anything else. Dr. Gale Mitchell, a professor who was coming up for tenure consideration in the next two years also had glowing things to say about Molly, but insisted she be solely in the Political Science Department.

  “You know, Gale, this candidate, Molly, would be better off in Anthropology. The only reason we’re having this conversation is because she wants this dual-title program we’ve started. But, given her research interest—migration—it’s obvious she’s better suited to my department.”