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Haystack and the Myth of the Boy Wizard
Jamie sent in an interesting writeup about
The Myth of the Boy Wizard. No, it's not about Hogwarts, but rather about Haystack and its creator, Austin Heap. Last summer the media covered the programmer, the software, and its supposed effect on Iranian censorship. But as is often the case, truth is less interesting than reality. What happened is that the story managed to press some magic buttons, and the media ran with it. This one is worth a read.
Getting the media to "run with it" isn't much of an accomplishment in this era of 24 hour news cycles. I don't assign a great deal of respect to their integrity or seriousness.
Even the journalists that focus their entire career on tech subjects often don't gain any appreciable expertise in the field. Besides, journalists aren't meant to be experts, they're meant to know exactly enough that they know when they should be asking questions. That usually isn't that much but for whatever reason (maybe they don't want to look stupid, maybe they don't want to appear to be dumbing down the article) journalists are quite reluctant to do so when it comes to technology issues.
Look at it this way, if someone had claimed to have invented something that... I don't know, neutralized the pepper spray that the riot police were using to break up the demonstrations. Do you really think that the journalist would have just taken them at their word, published stories to the effect that they were saving the world from tyranny? They would have wanted pictures of it in use, to talk to people who had used it successfully, maybe even interviewed a local chemist for his take on it. For whatever reason, technology stories just don't get the same level of scrutiny that other topics do.
The problem is then the people in management don't understand it so they force the tech people to "dumb it down" to the point where it becomes essentially false. For example:
Cookies can store data about where you have been and what ads you have seen. Therefore, cookies can be used to track you.
Soon becomes:
Cookies track data about people.
Eventually becomes:
Cookies are a privacy threat.
Which gets read by the masses as:
Cookies are viruses.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
The author seems shocked to read a news article that did not receive enough research from the reporter before being published. Why is he upset about this? It happens all the time.
Maybe I'm just jaded, but I always approach news stories as only containing a grain of truth, with a heavy slant towards the agenda of the reporter / reporting agency.
Posting to undo an accidental "Redundant" mod. Really meant +1 (Sad but true).
Look at it this way, if someone had claimed to have invented something that... I don't know, neutralized the pepper spray that the riot police were using to break up the demonstrations. Do you really think that the journalist would have just taken them at their word, published stories to the effect that they were saving the world from tyranny? They would have wanted pictures of it in use, to talk to people who had used it successfully, maybe even interviewed a local chemist for his take on it. For whatever reason, technology stories just don't get the same level of scrutiny that other topics do.
Yes they probably would take his word for it. The level of scrutiny in mass media is less than the level of scrutiny on Wikipedia. The mass media doesn't care about "following up" on stories, they just want to tell you that (in the words of Ross Noble) "Bad Shit is happening in the world, there's loads of shit happening in the world". They don't care if you understand it, Americans are so used to seeing fancy things on TV and then forgetting about it. It seems like every month there is some new breakthrough that "cures cancer" that we never hear another word about.
The masses have a really, really short memory.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Actually a very boring article. The author spends most of this time just telling you that he's smarter than the press. Including a mea culpa for "letting" the Guardian get away with misreporting without falling under his wrathful hammer.
The sole piece of information here that isn't self-aggrandizement is a nice little whiff of info explaining what the metaphor of "The Boy Wizard" means. This part is nice, but it gets drowned out in the "I told you so" parts.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
From TFA:
TFA's author misses the mark in two big ways;
First, like pretty much everyone he's very confused about what journalists do. Journalists write news stories, and the need to feed the public's (including much of Slashdot, though they think otherwise) unending gluttony for input. Seriously, the exceptions are rare and notable - the horsecrap about "what journalists are supposed to do" is a fantasy right alongside Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. I can't understand how anyone over the mental age of twenty can continue to believe in any of the three.
The second miss is in understanding why the media leapt all over the story of Haystack. It has nothing to do with the Boy Wizard - and everything to do with the public's (especially[1] including much of Slashdot, though they think otherwise) uncritical desire to hear about anything related to 'fighting back' against Iran. Like a five year old with a bowl of ice cream, they stick their faces in it and pig out. And also like a five year old, you take away the half eaten bowl, give them a new bowl with a different flavor, and they go right back to pigging out - the old bowl forgotten with the first mouthful of the new.
[1] I single out the 'Slashdot demographic' (young, hip, wired) for especial scorn because they're the worst of the lot - ever willing to 'amplify the signal' because it makes them feel like they're Doing Something without actually having to do anything. They'll forward, share, and re-tweet endlessly because it makes them feel better. Until the next shiny outrage meme comes along, then whatever they were previously outraged against vanishes forever down the memory hole.
The author seems shocked to read a news article that did not receive enough research from the reporter before being published. Why is he upset about this? It happens all the time. Maybe I'm just jaded, but I always approach news stories as only containing a grain of truth, with a heavy slant towards the agenda of the reporter / reporting agency.
Why is this being modded insightful? Did you completely ignore the last bit? From the article itself: "It's not just bad journalism to take someone at their word and publish glowing articles, in this case it's downright dangerous. Real people inside Iran could have been endangered by this over-hyped piece of software."
I do agree that people wanted to hear that people were "fighting back", and the Boy Wizard in this case was allegedly making it possible. In the Boy Wizard world, evil government is an old person problem, Haystack was the young wizard solving it.
I disagree it is the media's job to repeat incorrect info. Good journalism has fact checking and such. Take that away and you're just a blogger repeating "common knowledge" regardless of truth.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
But the problem in this case isn't with engineers that don't know tech, it's with journalists that don't know journalism. Consider what the article's author asked Newsweek:
There John Graham-Cumming hits the head right on the nail: they spoke only to Austin Heap and failed to get a second source. That isn't a failure to understand tech, that's a failure to understand Journalism 101.
My blog
Journalism isn't decaying. It's ALWAYS been terrible.
No they're not. They're good at what they do. The problem is that the goal of journalism today isn't correctness. Instead, they're desperately trying to create content that draws people to read it.
A story about a kid claiming to have found a way around censorship that probably doesn't work since it hasn't been through any peer review from anyone of repute in the security community is unreadably boring. One about a wunderkind who was so moved by the plight of the oppressed people in Iran that he hacked out a brilliant solution in a week will sell papers, ad impressions, etc.
If we can figure out a way to align the goals of tech reporters with getting the technology aspect correct, we'll see them get it right. But as long as their goals aren't aligned, they'll pursue their own goals first. Journalistic integrity is a myth of a bygone era when reporters didn't have to fight as hard for attention.
The problem here is that you are saying that they are supposed to be ~A but B, when ~A -> ~B.
Being able to understand new events in a field well enough to explain them usefully to non-technical audiences requires both skill at communication and substantial expertise in the field. The job of a journalist is essentially to act as a teacher without the luxury of substantial lead time to develop a lesson plan, and usually via a static medium where there is no feedback from the audience.
But this wasn't "tech news" per se. There was a whole lot more to it that was interesting to journalists. Journalists don't care about a new type of encryption or a sneaky way to hide data, but they care about the application of that tech or responses to it. Ie, bypassing censorship, countries forbidding Blackberries, etc.
No, good example, you're just an asshole who thinks using ignorance to control the populace is a good thing.