The Golden Age of the Internet

RubyConf AU 2014

by Pat Allan

In his talk titled "The Golden Age of the Internet" at RubyConf AU 2014, speaker Pat Allan explores the current state of the internet and the role developers play in shaping it. He opens by questioning the audience's perception of whether the golden age of the internet has already passed, is currently happening, or is yet to come. Allan argues that while we are capable of advancing civilization through our work, there exist significant responsibilities and challenges to consider. He emphasizes the importance of valuing humanity, intelligence, and compassion in our industry and proposes that we reflect these values in our work.

Key points discussed include:
- The Role of Developers: Allan equates developers to 'digital royalty', highlighting their influence on society through the internet, and stresses that without their contributions, civilization would struggle.
- Challenges of the Current Internet: While there is much to admire about the achievements of developers, he acknowledges the internet's shortcomings, including negative aspects such as trolling and a lack of civility.
- Need for Control and Diversity: He advocates for developers to reclaim control over the internet from institutional forces like advertisers and governments and emphasizes the significance of diversity in fostering a resilient environment.
- Historical Parallels: Allan draws parallels between modern internet issues and historical struggles for control in writing and publishing, citing examples of early scribes and their influence in ancient societies.
- Civility and Community Engagement: He highlights the importance of civility in society at large and within the tech community, and discusses how developers can teach and share knowledge in inclusive ways.

To conclude, Allan encourages his audience to actively participate in shaping the future of the internet by embodying values of civility, diversity, and humility. He calls on developers to lead by example, ensuring that when the golden age of the internet arrives, it exemplifies the best attributes of humanity.

00:00:07.520 Good afternoon everyone! It's lovely to see you all here, and it's certainly an honor to have this opportunity to talk to you today. As you've probably noticed in the conference schedule, I've given this session the title of "The Golden Age of the Internet."

00:00:21.199 Now, before I get carried away with sharing my own ideas on when that might be, I'm curious about what your thoughts are. So, quick show of hands: who believes the golden age of the internet has already passed us by, that it's been and gone?

00:00:37.920 A few hands go up. Who thinks we're in the middle of it right now? These are the greatest days of our industry. Another few hands over there. And finally, who thinks that it is yet to come? It seems to be most of you, I would say. I'm interested to see whether I can change anybody's minds by the time I'm done, but you know, maybe you're all on my side already.

00:01:23.439 While I am up here, I would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of this land, the Cameragal people of the Aoronation, and pay my respects to their elders, past, present, and future. Let's not forget that underneath the concrete and the rides of Luna Park, this land is, was, and always will be theirs.

00:01:44.159 While I was researching who the traditional custodians of this area are, I found out that the Cameragal had the extraordinary privilege of extracting a tooth from everyone in other tribes that shared this area. So if you wouldn't mind forming an early queue at the end of the session, I’ve got some pliers here! Look, I just want to make sure we properly respect their culture, right? Okay, well I am kidding, but maybe we should remove a tooth from that big face out front.

00:02:34.160 See, the Cameragal certainly had great sway over other tribes in the area. That's pretty clear, really. Within their own tribe, it was the Karaji, which in their tongue meant 'the clever people,' who were held in the highest esteem. The Karaji were masters of not one, but many skills; they were doctors, priests, spiritualists, sorcerers, and politicians. That is, they were all of those things at once! Now, that is an amazing amount of influence—almost, but not quite, as much influence as we hold.

00:03:24.640 We, the developers and designers who shape the web, who build the internet—because look, civilization as we know it relies on the internet and thus relies on the apps and the tools that we build. At the end of the day, just between you and me, we are the digital royalty. We are the digital Karaji. Without us, society would fall apart. We hold the key to the greatest communication tool humankind has arguably ever produced.

00:04:12.159 As we step back and admire what we've done—and let's be honest, there is much to admire—we’re very talented! We count the hours we've spent slaving away, the number of bugs we've fixed, the servers we've tweaked. It's pretty obvious, right? With us in charge of the bits and the pixels, how could the internet be anything but a beacon of intelligence, wit, and compassion? It's a light on the hill to help guide the unkempt masses towards a society of fairness and reason. Wait! There may be a few cynics in the audience here. Look, I admit it, it's not perfect—but nothing is, right?

00:05:07.440 So let's just put aside the trolls, news, spam, 4chan, those sites that still use plain text passwords, every single comment thread ever, well, Internet Explorer of course, and PayPal—how could I forget PayPal? Google's quest for world domination? Yeah, Apple’s quest for world domination? Facebook's quest for world domination? Oh, and the NSA's quest for world domination. Alright, it’s pretty bad, to be honest. I'm actually really hoping that this isn't the golden age of the internet and that there are far greater things ahead.

00:05:26.639 Because man, if this is it, we really screwed up, didn’t we? I just don’t feel that we've lived up to the potential of what's possible online. Some days it even feels like we're moving backwards, but where did we go wrong? I mean come on! We pride ourselves on our eagerness to set standards, to follow best practices, to be agile.

00:06:27.520 Um, I'm sorry guys this is a little embarrassing. You see, it might be my fault. Last week, I was in a rush; we had a deadline to meet, right? And I didn’t write any tests for the project I shipped. I'm sorry I let it slip! Probably didn’t help that we were using MongoDB instead of PostgreSQL. But hey, look, I don't think it's just me, right? I think some of you left it hanging as well.

00:07:38.319 I think it's possible that we missed an industry that really needs disruption. I mean come on guys, where were you on that? And why did we not add gamification to all the apps? Okay, can't really keep a straight face that long. Actually, where did we go wrong though? Those aren’t really the reasons.

00:08:12.480 So Mike Monterro, who I'm sure some of you are familiar with, sent out the following tweet at the end of last year, just in case you can't read it—although it is pretty big. He says, 'Enough! In 2014, we take back the internet. We take back what was ours.' Maybe Mike’s tweet is a hint at the problem—we lost control! We've got all the skills, we've got all the know-how, and yet we let the suits—the telcos, the advertisers, the governments, the marketers, the entrepreneurs—make the critical decisions, and they led us astray.

00:09:04.480 So, as Mike says, we need to take back control. Unfortunately, given that we don't have it right now, we’re a little behind the eight ball. But maybe if we look through history, we can consider the smart minds behind other global communication tools—let's say writing. We can look at how they fought to maintain control from the very beginning.

00:09:46.240 Some of the first people to write, and for whom writing was their job, were the scribes of ancient Egypt. To some extent, they were the true power behind the pharaoh's throne. Not only were they entrusted to write everything down—and this was in a society where most people couldn't even read—the scribes got to dictate how monuments were built. Egypt has a few of those I guess, and they literally wrote the history books of that civilization because no one else could.

00:10:44.720 With that in mind, it’s no great surprise that there was a god of scribes. Oh, we well we’ve got DHH, we’ve got Steve Jobs, but they got a proper god who was also the god of knowledge and wisdom. Sure, that’s just a coincidence though; mind you, having a god watching out for you doesn't help that much in the long run, I’m afraid to say.

00:11:09.600 See, the plebs figured out how to read, and it was only a matter of time until they figured out how to write as well. And then, well—a few millennia later—along came Johannes Gutenberg and his printing press, and suddenly publishing books became far too common! Not that the fight was over, though; oh no.

00:11:52.560 See, in Turkey, if you published a book on religion, any religion, you were put to death. In Germany, well, they didn’t let the Jews print anything—maybe that one’s not so surprising—and the Pope made a law that the Catholic Church had to approve every single book before it could be published. Don’t think that one caught on though.

00:12:39.760 And look, to be honest, now that I think about it a bit more, perhaps this approach of control isn't really the right way to go about it, especially when we as an industry largely opt for sharing information. We opt for sharing skills rather than keeping our cards close to our chests. So what if we take the opposite approach? What if we share everything? What if we teach everyone how to code? Will that fix the internet?

00:13:36.960 Well, probably not. Look, I think everyone understanding a bit of code—even if it's just knowing how to write some HTML—would be a great thing. It'd be a wonderful thing, but at the end of the day, code isn't the source of our problems. The issue perhaps is more how people behave online. Mind you, it's not like people behave all that wonderfully offline either. Where the hell did that go wrong?

00:14:44.239 The British philosopher AC Grayling has recently noted that we've had a breakdown of civility in society—that is, in his words, a breakdown of the mutual tolerance and respect that allows room in a complex, plural society for individuals to live their own lives in peace. And he’s not referring to the internet, let me make that clear. He believes that this is an issue that civilized society is facing on a broad level, on a massive scale.

00:15:43.799 Civilized society, look, if you're wondering—and I'm sure you are—civility comes from the Latin 'civis,' as do the English words 'citizen' and 'civilization.' It's probably obvious once you look at it, but it's almost like the human race is deliberately mocking the idea of civilization. I'm jumping from quote to quote here, but this one's from François Guizot, who’s a French historian and statesman—I’m sure you knew that, right? He described civilization as the attainment of both material well-being and the elevation of the human spirit, both abundance of daily necessities and esteem for human refinement.

00:16:27.760 I love that definition, and I love the idealism that it reaches for the elevation of the human spirit, the esteem for human refinement. But he's talking about civilization. Have we ever been truly civilized? Really? Many of those we consider to be leaders aren't particularly civil. Certainly, the politicians in charge of our country aren’t really worthy role models.

00:17:25.120 The Ruby community, it’s true, has plenty of hotheads who speak before they think—if they think at all. So maybe civilization doesn't yet truly exist. That would give us an excuse for not being civil to each other, and it would certainly explain a lot about society as it currently stands. But look, that's just one idea of civilization. Words are fickle beasts, especially in the English language. We should perhaps allow different ideas for what civilization is.

00:18:17.600 Right? Let's take another example: democracy. I think if we all got together—if we had a chat—we could probably come to some consensus on what democracy is. Except that I don't think our definition would really line up with the definition for the Democratic People's Republic of Korea—that’s North Korea, not South. Yes, they think they have a democracy, but this is democracy, right? The ancient Greeks came up with this. Can't we go back to their definition? Can't we go back to the original idea? It's the basis; let's work with that.

00:19:17.440 Well, we could, but I'm not sure the Greeks got it exactly right either, especially when you look at this picture—it seems like it's almost all men. It's like a developer conference, really! See look, you could vote in ancient Greece, provided you were a man, because they didn't let women vote—God, no—why would you do that? And you couldn't vote if you were a slave—and yes, the Greeks had many slaves. The Greeks also had this habit of going to war on nearby cities and countries to force democracy upon them. Doesn't it remind you of any modern countries?

00:20:29.440 Perhaps the common thread between the masters—and I use that term loosely—masters of these domains—writing, publishing, democracy—is how they got things wrong. They were insular, they were protective, they definitely were self-important, and they were aggressive. So we can learn not so much from how they were right but how they were wrong. If we're going to avoid some of those same problems, if we don't want to be so narrow-minded, then our greatest tool, I’m pretty sure, is diversity.

00:21:14.639 Diversity is an excellent indicator of a healthy and resilient society. I even found this tweet from Steve Klavnik last night—a quote from "Ghost in the Shell," the classic anime movie—where he states pretty much the same thing. So it seems like people everywhere understand the importance of diversity. But let's be clear, right? If you're welcoming people from all different walks of life to come together and to think in the same way, that's not diversity.

00:21:59.920 You want different perspectives. You want different ways of thinking. Or to say it another way: a culture doesn't grow just by talking to itself. Okay, diversity sounds like a fine goal to aim towards, but we have a problem—there's always a catch.

00:22:28.640 Hey, we are in an industry that has a history of thinking alike, a little too often in bubbles of our own creation. When we talk of bubbles, we're generally referring to situations where companies are valued well beyond what is sensible, and we end up with a rather separate and unstable reality.

00:23:00.160 I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but we're in a bit of a bubble right now, and it's actually far bigger than any of the ones focused on startups. I like to call this bubble meritocracy. For those of you not familiar with the term, meritocracy is this ideal that everyone is on equal footing; we've all had the same opportunities, and so we can all be judged on our merits alone. Unsurprisingly, it's generally claimed to be effective and fair by white men—aka the majority.

00:23:53.919 See, I wonder if meritocracy is kind of like communism, in that they only work in theory—or at least it's a more subtle form of the aristocracy, less about your family tree, but still strongly tied to the privilege that you grow up with, that you grow up within. It's often hard to spot the privilege when you're within this bubble. I know it's taken me a very good while to realize how amazingly privileged I am. And when you've got some idea of this position that you're in, it can be difficult, it can be awkward to talk about it.

00:24:29.440 And I must admit, I do feel a little awkward addressing these issues here on stage. But look, I'm sure there’s a tiny violin somewhere playing just for me, and everyone who hasn't inherited such privilege is rightly rolling their eyes. See, with great privilege comes great responsibility. The onus is on those of us who are comfortable in our industry to reduce the barriers for others—to work towards reducing the advantage of privilege—to seek out diversity.

00:25:25.440 Because by and large, we who have this privilege have greater opportunities to have such an impact. Still, diversity alone will not save us. We're going to need more tools, we're going to need more ideals, but I think another fine target—well, look, you could call it servant leadership, you could call it humility, or you could just call it an awareness that you are not the most important person in the room.

00:26:07.440 Let's take right here, right now as an example. Contrary to popular belief, I am not the most important person in this room. Yes, I am on the stage, yes, I have the microphone, and yes, I can talk at you all I want. But if it's not something useful and engaging to you, then I'm wasting not only my time but yours as well—that’s more important, really. And this can feel a little counter to how society generally works.

00:26:59.040 Perhaps because we get caught up equating figures of authority with importance, and they're not the same thing. But if we are teaching how a student learns best, that is far more important than how we wish to teach. If we want a diverse community of Rubyists—and I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that we do—we need to be better at approaching interested newcomers in ways that work for them.

00:27:43.840 It's kind of like the difference between sitting in your office and saying, 'Hey, my door's always open, come by anytime—happy to help,' and actually going out and chatting with people in locations that suit them, in environments where they feel comfortable. One trick I'm sure many of you are familiar with that's perhaps worth keeping in mind, is a rough analogy: when others ask you for help and it involves a computer, it's generally recommended that we don't touch their keyboard or mouse.

00:28:29.440 It's far better to talk to them and help guide them to use their own computers to fix the issue. This is hard! I'm terrible at this. I just want to get in there and fix it, and say, 'There you go—go have fun!' And it's not actually that helpful when you take that approach. It doesn't really teach them anything. Perhaps it can build up a reliance on you to always be the one fixing these problems.

00:29:15.679 Perhaps that's actually a reflection of how we are quick to impatience—or at least I am quick to impatience. But we do have another fantastic model for servant leadership already in our industry, and that is pair programming. Two people on roughly even footing having to share one machine, so both are students and both are teachers. Yes, sometimes one pair may have a far greater amount of technical knowledge, but they are still a student because they get to learn how to express that knowledge, how to empathize with their pair, and how to generally be better at relating to others—all extremely useful skills.

00:30:01.440 And while I have been talking about teaching others in quite specific terms, please don't forget that there are many ways that we teach others implicitly: through how we behave, through the code we share, through the apps that we build. The issues that we are dealing with here reach well beyond our industry, so they need to be considered across everything we do.

00:30:40.960 Now, look, I am well aware that what I've been talking about—none of this is groundbreaking. Indeed, it feels a little obvious, really. But I'm hoping that expressing the obvious helps to strengthen these ideas in our minds, because the most important part is to be aware. The more we talk about such issues, the more deeply they become ingrained in our consciousness, and then our behavior should hopefully be in turn more mindful.

00:31:34.160 Also, we need to talk more about these issues because then the chance of them being forgotten, of being hidden, becomes smaller. The only way things are going to get better is if we have the courage and honesty to discuss, to debate, and then to act.

00:32:17.440 Speaking of action, let's go back to that wonderful tweet from Mike Monterro. Now, I've had the pleasure of seeing Mike speak before, and he is impassioned and intelligent and I love his vibe generally and I love the vibe in this tweet.

00:32:33.539 But the more I think about what he's saying, the more I think about the actual message, the less I like it. Taking back control implies an us versus them battle: you're either with us or you're against us, and that we developers and designers are the rightful owners of the internet.

00:33:00.480 And look, yes, our skills, our passions mean that we are laying the foundations for a lot of what happens online, but the internet is for everyone—not just the technically savvy privileged few. In some ways, it's the digital commons; it's a shared space where anyone can take part, where anyone can contribute.

00:33:57.640 I think we need to remove ourselves from our pedestals and ivory towers of bits and pixels and work together towards leveling the playing field. And look, perhaps I could give you some examples of how these ideas and principles translate into how we should be coding Ruby, but I won't for three reasons, really.

00:34:22.061 Firstly, it would be trite and simplistic. Secondly, we have a habit of latching onto examples without actually thinking things through, and really we're dealing with something much bigger anyway. But if we look around, we can find examples of people who are tackling these issues, and they are doing a fantastic job of it.

00:35:05.280 So, it's been mentioned throughout sessions today. We've got the wonderfully successful Rails Girls events happening here in Australia and around the world, and there are similar events running under the Rails Bridge banner and Black Girls Code in the US, and I'm sure there are many other similar events elsewhere. And then we have Rubyists like Ash Dryden and Sven Bukowski who are stirring up discussion around ensuring conferences are safe and friendly places for everyone.

00:35:56.240 Chad Fowler is someone I’m sure many of you are familiar with. He’s recently been encouraging developers to practice empathy, which is such an invaluable skill. Please go and read his blog post on the topic if you haven’t already. And then we have, right here in this room, right up the front, Maxine Sharon, who works hard at making sure web directions are not only superb events but they have wonderfully amazing diverse lineups and attendees.

00:36:42.080 These are the people responsible for making our industry more diverse, more civil, more humble, and we are in their debt. So none of the examples I've just listed involve code, and that is because, well, look, code is secondary at best. Best practices change, programming languages change, browsers certainly change, but I don’t think what we truly value in people, in society, in communities changes much at all.

00:37:23.920 Okay, so let's return to the questions I posed back at the start of my talk. I want to see if anybody's minds have changed. Who in this room thinks the golden age has been and gone? Our glory days are beyond us. One hand up the back there. I can’t win everyone over, I guess. Who thinks that this right now is it?

00:38:15.440 Another couple of hands. Are you guys just trolling me? And then finally, who believes that it's not yet here? Excellent! I am really hoping that all of you who just had your hands up then are right, because that means I'm right. And look, we could wait and see, except well, look, if we’re just going to wait and see, nothing's going to happen.

00:39:01.440 We need to step up! If we're all agreed that this is a fine target, then let's keep having these discussions, and more importantly, let's keep turning these discussions into action. I may have been exaggerating a little earlier about how much influence we have, but only a little. We do have a great deal.

00:39:44.160 I certainly wasn't kidding about the responsibility that comes with our skills and privilege. We are truly the digital Karaji, so let's lead by example. Let's do our best to bring civility, diversity, and humility into how we code, how the apps we build behave, and how we ourselves behave.

00:40:22.480 When the golden age of the internet does arrive, let's make sure that it is a shining example of the best of humanity—that it is civil, that it is diverse, that it is humble. Or I can just steal those wonderful words from Grizzle that it provides the attainment of both material well-being and the elevation of the human spirit, and has abundance of daily necessities and esteem for human refinement.

00:41:00.480 And that is pretty much all I have to say this afternoon, although I still have these pliers if anybody's bought. Thank you everyone! It's been an absolute pleasure. Enjoy the rest of the conference.

RubyConf AU 2014