This interview with Godspeed You! Black Emperor blows my mind.  The whole thing reads like a manifesto, or song lyrics.  The link calls it a “transcript” but I cannot fathom someone actually answering questions like that.  Perhaps they were prepared with pre-written answers, or maybe I don’t know how interviews actually work.  I kept thinking, “hey I should copy that line and quote it,” but then I realized I was going to quote every other line or so.

I never much cared for Yanqui U.X.O. but this new album is very good.  You can stream the whole thing online.  I’m glad I went to see GY!BE in Chicago back when I did – the poster is on the wall above me right now.

This morning I read this essay (Stoking Cyber Fears) by Bruce Schneier.  His point is a familiar one – stoking Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt will gain attention but block any meaningful discussions.  Though something struck me while reading this, and by skimming it again, I can’t see that it was something he mentioned explicitly.  Institutions like the government have strong cybersecurity requirements and I assume that there is a lot of training and effort put into enforcing those requirements.  But the employees of any institution probably follow the normal distribution curve – I bet there are some old farts working for the government.

Lately (and by “lately” I mean, “since I was 10”) I’ve been struggling with “not tech people.”  I get computers – technology is just something that comes naturally to me.  This is a skill just like the guy who can fix my car or design a house that doesn’t fall over when it rains.  But I’m open to the idea that I can learn the skills to fix my car or design a house, should I decide I want to fix my own car or design my own house.  I may not win awards or star in reality TV shows about these topics but I would (could) be aware of what matters in those contexts.  And I seem to cling to the hope, a fool’s hope, that people will approach computers with the same attitude.  I’ve repeated this diatribe so often it’ll probably be on my tombstone.  You have to know the landscape of the modern world and how to move through it if you’re going to survive.  That landscape includes (brace yourself) computers and software!  Don’t think that giggling, “oh I’m not a computer person,” is a get-out-of-jail-free card, a hall pass to let you walk in ignorance.

I’ve been trying to teach project managers to use Microsoft Project.  It’s not a simple software package by any measure and so there is reason to be overwhelmed – I’m overwhelmed and that’s just the administrator perspective, I’m not even doing actual project management with it.  And change is scary, software upgrades are tough.  It’s clear that this will not be easy.  But these project managers are dinosaurs.  Rather than admitting that this is new and different and they’ve got a lot to learn, they complain about this frustrating new software and nothing is where it used to be and what do you mean I can’t do it like I’ve always done it because it used to “just work” before and why did we have to change?

To bring this rant back around, my point is that if I’m struggling to get people to use the tools they’ve been told to use in even the most basic capacity, I imagine it must be infinitely worse for those institutions dedicated to strict cybersecurity.  Anything you read will say the weakest link is always people.  I bet the weakest part of the weakest link is the “not computer person” (tee-hee).