Fishbowl (22 page)

Chris and James had both been telling Andrei for months, even before the Denver bombing, that he had to be more visible. The company needed a figurehead who was accessible and, so long as he was the CEO, he had to be that person. Andrei had evaded the responsibility, but even before the march he had suspected that he wouldn't be able to do that much longer. Now he knew not only that they were right but what it would mean to do it. It wasn't any less intimidating – if anything, after the fervour that he had experienced on Boston Common, it was even more daunting – but the march forced him to accept that, if he wanted to be the CEO of the company, he would have to face up to this part of the role.

But if he was going to be more visible, now wasn't necessarily the time to start. If anything, now was a time to stay in the shell. Not just for him, but for everyone in social media.

The collapse of the McKenrick witch hunt left social media in a strong but at the same time potentially vulnerable position. Their role as an enabler of free speech had been vindicated, and although it had not been formally tested in a court of law, officers of companies providing social media now seemed to be nestled in the protective shadow of the first amendment. On the other hand, the potential for that medium of exchange to carry obnoxious content had been admitted and exposed, and it was anyone's guess what would happen if another Denver occurred that could be definitively linked to a social network in the planning phase. A second atrocity might bring back the McKenrick argument stronger than ever and make people think twice about the right to freedom of expression if it appeared to be measured against the right to life.

The PR people in the tech industry and the Washington lobbyists they employed were virtually unanimous in recommending that this was a time for steady, quiet responsibility, keeping heads down, tightening policies on acceptable behaviour, abuse, hate speech and incitement, and increasing monitoring of some of the most egregious communications on their services. It was no moment for bragging or grandstanding. If tech companies were seen to be triumphalist, public opinion, which had moved in their favour, might just as soon move back again.

For Fishbowl, however, keeping heads down was not so easy a proposition. From a network that was already the destination of choice for the socially adventurous and internationally minded, McKenrick's campaign had now definitively made it a household name, familiar from New York to New Mexico, from the netizens of San Francisco who never left their apartment without a tablet computer to coal miners in West Virginia who couldn't tell a tablet computer from a plate of hash browns. Interest in Andrei was intense. The company was under virtual siege by journalists bombarding it with requests for an interview.

Fishbowl was close to two years old. Three hundred million people used it. Almost unbelievably, the only media interview
Andrei had ever given had been the one to to a student journalist at the
Stanford Daily
when he had still been living with Ben and Kevin in Robinson House.

Andrei decided that, if he was going to accept the responsibility of being more visible, he had no choice. The time had come to open himself to an interview again.

26

THEY TOOK THE
photographs first. The interviewer, Deborah Handel, was a senior features writer for the
New York Times
and had flown out for the interview. Andrei was in his usual T-shirt, jeans and sneakers. The Fishbowl communications person, Alan Mendes, had wanted him in something with a little more gravitas – not a suit, but maybe a Steve Jobs-style roll neck – but Andrei said he'd think about it, and didn't. They shot him sitting on the edge of a desk and standing against a wall. He felt awfully wooden and didn't know what to do with his face. They told him to smile, then to look serious, then thoughtful. The photographer shot a glance at Handel and rolled his eyes.

Coaching had been arranged for Andrei. Alan Mendes had organized two days of training, but even before the end of the first day Andrei had had enough. He and the coach, a retired features writer for the
Los Angeles Times
, had started by agreeing the things Andrei wanted to get across in the interview, and then the rest of the coaching, as far as Andrei could glean, was designed to make him appear in a certain light, while at the same time making him appear not to be trying to do so. ‘Remember, be yourself,' the coach kept saying every time she asked him to say something in a way that was totally not himself. It seemed irrational and self-contradictory, and Andrei had had the strong feeling that the longer it went on, the more confused he was going to be when he finally sat down to answer the questions. Midway through the afternoon of the first day, he sent the coach home.

Now, as Deborah Handel invited him to take a seat, he frowned, waiting for the first question to hit him.

‘Tell me about Fishbowl,' she said.

Easy. Andrei talked fluently and at length about Deep Connectedness, about his perspective on the world as clusters of ideas and values, about the way the world would change as facilities like Fishbowl made that model of the world a reality.

Handel's eyes glazed over a little, but he didn't notice.

‘Tell me about the way it started,' she said.

‘I just had the idea for it, as a way to get more connectedness. I had this idea that it would be a good thing.'

She waited. ‘But where did you get the idea? Did something spark it off? What happened?'

Andrei shrugged. He remembered Guy from Colombia and
Aguila Roja
but he didn't feel he should talk about that. It was too nerdy, and he didn't spend any time in chat rooms any more.

‘OK. Well, when was that?'

‘Around two years ago, in my junior year at Stanford.'

‘And you had this idea of Deep Connectedness? That was the idea back then?'

Andrei nodded.

‘And did you think it would ever be as big as it is?'

‘We're not as big as we could be. We're still growing. There's a hunger for Deep Connectedness, and my job is to find ways to help people to find it.'

‘You talk so much about Deep Connectedness. Do you really think it's so important?'

Andrei stared at her, wondering what exactly it was that she didn't get.

‘Why Deep Connectedness? Why this obsession?'

‘Do you use Fishbowl?'

Handel smiled. ‘No, I don't. I mean, I've looked at the site.'

‘But you registered, right?'

‘To be honest, Andrei, I just looked at as part of the background for this interview.'

‘And you don't use it?'

She shook her head.

Andrei frowned. ‘That's interesting. Do you use other social media?'

‘Sure. Homeplace.'

‘What about Worldspace? Sorry, I mean Openreach..'

‘No.'

‘You see, when I hear that, and when you tell me you went onto Fishbowl but you don't use it, it makes me wonder what I can do to make the experience more appealing for you, so you have the motivation to explore Deep Connectedness. Tell me what it is that I can do.'

‘Maybe I just don't need it.'

‘Everyone needs it.'

‘Maybe not.'

‘We've always been able to find people with your interests, but what if we had a function that could take your profile and select what we would consider to be the most fascinating people for you among them? They could be anywhere in the world. What about that?'

‘I guess that might be quite interesting.'

‘Not just those who are most similar or dissimilar to you with your particular interest, which we can do already, but those who, by our algorithms, we identify as those you would find the most fascinating – or the most influential, or the most educated, or the most vocal. Or anything. You could set the parameters. For example, you could be looking for us to find the most interesting of the most influential people among those with different views than your own about whatever it is you're interested in. You might want to try to understand them, debate with them. You know, for a journalist, you might find this quite useful. What are you interested in?'

‘Orangutans,' said Handel, citing the most outlandish thing that came into her head to see where it would go.

‘Cool,' said Andrei, taking her seriously. ‘Conservation, I guess? OK, say you're interested in orangutans, but you want to
find people whose view is that we shouldn't be spending money on conservation. You want to understand their argument, maybe so you can combat it. What if we could get to that level of specificity, so we'd be able to find you people in the countries you've specified with an interest in orangutans but opposed to conservation efforts,
and
, of those, the ones we think would be most interesting for you.' He paused. ‘Would that function be useful to you?'

Handel smiled. ‘I guess so. If you could do it.'

‘We're working on it. Now, how about this? What if we could provide you with photos, videos, text from public sources that are directly relevant to what you're talking about with someone
as
you're talking to them? Instead of having to try to remember where you saw something, it would be there for you right away.'

‘You'd be reading what I'm saying?'

‘No, no one's reading anything. It's totally automated. Just think, how cool would that be. It's a form of connectedness not only to the present but to the past. To things people have said or photographed or whatever. If you're talking about orangutan conservation, for example, there'd be data and pictures right there, as you're talking. You wouldn't even having to go looking. Now, as a journalist, wouldn't that be useful? If we could do that? Would that change your mind?'

‘Maybe.'

‘What if we could …?'

Handel watched him as he reeled off another idea Fishbowl was working on, and then another, wondering whether he really was interested in exploring what would make her use the site or whether it was just a way to avoid talking about himself. It was obvious that he was comfortable talking about Fishbowl, his vision for it, its functionality, but she was about as interested in that as she was in finding out about his grandparents – actually, she was more interested in finding out about his grandparents. She didn't want to know about Fishbowl, she wanted to know about him. As he spoke, Handel wondered how best to get
around his defences, get him talking about himself. Asking about Fishbowl, she thought, but about something that had a personal angle was probably the best way to put him off his guard.

‘I understand you have a motto at Fishbowl,' she said, when he paused for breath. ‘“Don't make the world a worse place.”'

Andrei nodded. ‘Kind of. It's something we use as a measure of what we're doing.'

‘Has it served you well?'

‘I think so.'

‘Give me an example.'

Andrei talked through an example of a functionality they had rejected because they considered it would make the world worse.

‘Don't you think that's kind of unambitious?' she said, interrupting him.

‘What?'

‘That motto, about not making the world worse. I mean, most people want to do something positive, not just avoid something negative.'

‘It's not about avoiding something negative.'

‘It sounds like it. I guess you're not a risk taker.'

‘Why?'

‘It's safety first. Don't make the world worse. That's like, “The first thing to make sure is that I don't mess up.” Is that how you've always been? When you were a kid, for example?'

Andrei gazed at her. ‘That's an interesting way of looking at it.'

‘Tell me what you were like when you were a kid. Was it always safety first?' Handel waited. ‘Maybe it's got something to do with your background as an immigrant – being uprooted at such a young age?'

Andrei ignored the question. His mind was still working on how Handel had perceived the motto. ‘I think you've misunderstood it. First of all, when you're doing what we're doing, building something totally new, not making the world worse is something you've got to beware of. It really is. And the second thing is, there
are so many things that we could do, the idea is let's try as many as we can as long as they're not going to make the world worse. Let's throw them out there. And then we'll find the ones amongst them that people want.'

‘And what does it mean about you, that that's the approach you take?'

‘No, let me just go back, because this is really important if you want to understand Fishbowl.' Andrei frowned. ‘We want to make the world better. Absolutely. But
I
don't know what's going to make the world better. I have ideas, but I might be wrong. Or my definition of “better” might be different from everybody else's. So the best I can do is put stuff out there for the world to react to. We develop all kinds of things. We develop functionalities that people love, we develop functionalities that people look at and say … “Meh”. And that's fine. If no one ever said “Meh”, then I'd know for sure I'm not trying enough stuff. So what I have to do is throw as much as I can out there. And what we're saying is, the only things we're not going to offer is stuff that will make the world worse. Otherwise, we'll offer you anything you like, and you decide if you want it. And I think that makes the world better.' He gazed at her.

‘That's what the principle means. It's absolutely not safety first. It's about throwing as much at the world as we can for the world to choose. And we take risks with that. Absolutely we do. And it costs money to do that – to have a bunch of really smart programmers and inevitably some of them are working on stuff that we think is cool but is going to end up “Meh”. But you've got to do that if you want to do anything new. So it's not about not taking risks – the way I see it, it's about taking as many risks as you can, but also taking responsibility for not making the world worse. And we could. We really could. If we're not careful, we could definitely do things that would make the world worse. You know, our advertising, we've really worked hard to make sure it doesn't degrade the user experience – in fact, we hope that it actually contributes to it – but there's all
kinds of stuff we could have done that would have been just horrible and would definitely have reduced the connectedness we want to provide.'

‘So if you think about that approach, Andrei, about trying anything as long as it doesn't make the world worse, what do you think it is about
you
that makes you take that approach? Tell me how—'

‘Maybe that's what the motto should be: “Try anything, as long as it doesn't make the world worse.”' Andrei glanced at Mendes, who was sitting on a chair by the wall, then he looked back at Handel. ‘You know, that's quite an interesting way of putting it. I'm going to think about that. Thank you.'

‘A pleasure.' Handel smiled briefly, as if she really meant it. That approach hadn't worked in opening Andrei up. She decided to try something more direct. ‘OK. You've been described as a boy-wonder of the internet. How does that make you feel?'

Andrei shrugged. ‘It doesn't make me feel anything. It's seems kind of ridiculous, to be honest.'

‘Then how would you describe yourself?'

He shrugged. ‘I'm just, you know, very focused on Fishbowl at the moment.'

‘So tell me about yourself. Tell me about Andrei Koss.'

Andrei looked at her, then glanced at Mendes. Inside, he was frozen. He had known that question was bound to come, but he didn't know what to say. The answers he had tried out with the coach had seemed ridiculous, contrived. There was nothing in his life, he felt, that anyone other than a fellow nerd would find remotely interesting. That was how he had felt for as long as he could remember. Anything he said could only disappoint.

‘Let's start with where you were born,' Handel prompted him. ‘You're Russian, right? That must have an effect.'

‘We came to States when I was four.'

‘So you don't remember Russia?'

‘Not really.'

‘So you don't think being Russian has made a difference?'

‘To what?'

‘To you.'

‘It's very hard to say. I've never experienced anything else.'

‘But if you had to say …?'

Andrei frowned.

She waited.

‘Andrei,' said Alan Mendes, ‘you can talk a little about yourself. It doesn't have to be just Fishbowl.'

‘I don't think being Russian's got anything to do with it,' Andrei said to him.

‘That experience of being uprooted,' said Handel, ‘even if you don't remember it, surely it must have an effect. Don't you think so? Even in family dynamics.'

Andrei looked at her blankly.

‘OK … ummm … what do you do for fun?'

He continued to stare at her.

‘Do you go out? Clubs? Concerts?'

‘I'm … really busy with Fishbowl.'

‘I'm sure you are but … what else? What else is there to Andrei Koss?' Handel paused, praying there was something. ‘Video games?'