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> If you don’t understand how technology works — especially a technical subgenre as complex and dense as encryption and information security — then don’t write

> If you don’t understand how technology works — especially a technical subgenre as complex and dense as encryption and information security — then don’t write about it. This is certainly one message to draw from the situation. But it's not the most constructive message -- it puts the burden on non-technical people, telling them what not to do. Even if non-technical people realize that there are scientific limits to technologies, that won't stop them from thinking about and writing on technology incorrectly. I think the burden should fall on us techies -- I think there is something constructive we can do. I think we should strive to educate others on the roles and limits of technology. Even if we can't teach everyone the math, physics, electrical engineering, programming, and software engineering they would need to truly understand technology, we can explain the limitations of something like encryption with our blog posts, social media, and every day conversations.

dikaiosune 11y ago
It seems to me like this is already being done quite extensively. Maybe it's because I'm in the tech echo chamber, but I constantly see technologists trying to educate the outside world about the limitations. In a lot of cases (this one included), it seems to me like this is perceived by non-technologists as laziness (as TC suggests), stubbornness, or FUD-spreading. This is just my impression (no guarantee it reflects wider reality), but I'm not sure how this is something that technologists can be expected to solve. There's no way to get the public to trust you when they know that you can do what you're saying is impossible, you're just not willing.
Trombone12 11y ago
Also, his message easily generalizes to: "If you don’t understand how something works — especially a complex and dense thing — then don’t write about it" which of course is a totally ridiculous thing for a columnist to write (especially considering his implied standard for "understanding"). Of course this requirement is nothing he follows himself, writhing columns about broad sociological changes crammed into phrases like "sharing economy" and "we are all entrepreneurs". The column doesn't even build any case for the accusation in its title!
semi-extrinsic 11y ago
There's a corollary to Clarke's famous law about technology and magic: "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced." I'd say this is starting to become a serious problem.
eevilspock 11y ago
It goes both ways. Technologists should also look in the mirror, and consider what we might not understand. Since the OP is criticizing journalists' understanding of tech, we should ask how well we understand journalism. Inside the Collapse of The New Republic (http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/inside-collapse-new-republic http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/inside-collapse-new-...) Taking a Tire Iron to Techie Triumphalism (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/09/us/taking-a-tire-iron-to-techie-triumphalism.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/09/us/taking-a-tire-iron-to-t...) and associated HN discussion (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9686577 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9686577) Not every solution takes the form of a startup. And there's always the lifehack of asking the working poor what they think, and listening to them. Maybe some of them have the vision we lack. – idlewords (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8261431 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8261431) And this from MondayNote (http://www.mondaynote.com/2014/10/26/the-two-things-that-could-hurt-google/ http://www.mondaynote.com/2014/10/26/the-two-things-that-cou...): One: Google’s disconnect from the outside world keeps growing. More than ever, it looks like an insulated community, nurturing its own vision of the digital world, with less and less concern for its users who also happen to be its customers. It looks like Google lives in its own space-time (which is not completely a figure of speech since the company maintains its own set of atomic clocks to synchronize its data centers across the world independently from official time sources). You can actually feel it when hanging around its vast campus, where large luxury buses coming from San Francisco pour out scores of young people, mostly male (70%) mostly white (61%), produced by the same set of top universities (in that order: Stanford, UC Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, MIT, UCLA…). They are pampered in the best possible way, with free food, on location dental care, etc. They see the world through the mirrored glass of their office, their computer screen and the reams of data that constitute their daily reality.
svalorzen 11y ago
This does not work, for a very simple reason. The same argument the article states can be construed for literally every single topic, from tech to AI to agricolture to fishing to engineering to medical science and so on. So either every single human being is taught the whole of human knowledge, or one should simply realize there are things one should not have an opinion about and avoid spreading misinformation, which is far simpler.

dikaiosune 11y ago

It seems to me like this is already being done quite extensively. Maybe it's because I'm in the tech echo chamber, but I constantly see technologists trying to educate the outside world about the limitations. In a lot of cases (this one included), it seems to me like this is perceived by non-technologists as laziness (as TC suggests), stubbornness, or FUD-spreading. This is just my impression (no guarantee it reflects wider reality), but I'm not sure how this is something that technologists can be expected to solve. There's no way to get the public to trust you when they know that you can do what you're saying is impossible, you're just not willing.

Trombone12 11y ago

Also, his message easily generalizes to: "If you don’t understand how something works — especially a complex and dense thing — then don’t write about it" which of course is a totally ridiculous thing for a columnist to write (especially considering his implied standard for "understanding"). Of course this requirement is nothing he follows himself, writhing columns about broad sociological changes crammed into phrases like "sharing economy" and "we are all entrepreneurs". The column doesn't even build any case for the accusation in its title!

semi-extrinsic 11y ago

There's a corollary to Clarke's famous law about technology and magic: "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced." I'd say this is starting to become a serious problem.

eevilspock 11y ago

It goes both ways. Technologists should also look in the mirror, and consider what we might not understand. Since the OP is criticizing journalists' understanding of tech, we should ask how well we understand journalism. Inside the Collapse of The New Republic (http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/inside-collapse-new-republic http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/inside-collapse-new-...) Taking a Tire Iron to Techie Triumphalism (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/09/us/taking-a-tire-iron-to-techie-triumphalism.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/09/us/taking-a-tire-iron-to-t...) and associated HN discussion (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9686577 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9686577) Not every solution takes the form of a startup. And there's always the lifehack of asking the working poor what they think, and listening to them. Maybe some of them have the vision we lack. – idlewords (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8261431 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8261431) And this from MondayNote (http://www.mondaynote.com/2014/10/26/the-two-things-that-could-hurt-google/ http://www.mondaynote.com/2014/10/26/the-two-things-that-cou...): One: Google’s disconnect from the outside world keeps growing. More than ever, it looks like an insulated community, nurturing its own vision of the digital world, with less and less concern for its users who also happen to be its customers. It looks like Google lives in its own space-time (which is not completely a figure of speech since the company maintains its own set of atomic clocks to synchronize its data centers across the world independently from official time sources). You can actually feel it when hanging around its vast campus, where large luxury buses coming from San Francisco pour out scores of young people, mostly male (70%) mostly white (61%), produced by the same set of top universities (in that order: Stanford, UC Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, MIT, UCLA…). They are pampered in the best possible way, with free food, on location dental care, etc. They see the world through the mirrored glass of their office, their computer screen and the reams of data that constitute their daily reality.

svalorzen 11y ago

This does not work, for a very simple reason. The same argument the article states can be construed for literally every single topic, from tech to AI to agricolture to fishing to engineering to medical science and so on. So either every single human being is taught the whole of human knowledge, or one should simply realize there are things one should not have an opinion about and avoid spreading misinformation, which is far simpler.