Debbie Reynolds “The Data Diva” talks to Tom Cottingham, CEO, and Partner at Flyover Media Group LLC. We discuss his work on the early internet company TechRepublic and his journey to creating Flyover Future to highlight technology talent in the mid-western part of the US, the impact of remote work and Covid on tech investment in the midwest, the regional talent pool working all over the world, cybersecurity professionals wanting to move from tactics to strategy, concerns about cybersecurity understanding at the board level, the need for cybersecurity and data privacy to be proactive, funding for privacy technology within organizations, future of authentication and blockchains, his concerns on the use of facial recognition technologies, and his hope for Data Privacy in the future.
Debbie Reynolds “The Data Diva” talks to Tom Cottingham, CEO, and Partner at Flyover Media Group LLC. We discuss his work on the early internet company TechRepublic and his journey to creating Flyover Future to highlight technology talent in the mid-western part of the US, the impact of remote work and Covid on tech investment in the midwest, the regional talent pool working all over the world, cybersecurity professionals wanting to move from tactics to strategy, concerns about cybersecurity understanding at the board level, the need for cybersecurity and data privacy to be proactive, funding for privacy technology within organizations, future of authentication and blockchains, his concerns on the use of facial recognition technologies, and his hope for Data Privacy in the future.
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SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, technology, data, large organizations, flyover country, world, company, privacy, midwest, cto, flyover, issue, blockchain, happening, thinking, technical, person, build, c suite, tech
SPEAKERS
Debbie Reynolds, Tom Cottingham
Debbie Reynolds 00:00
Personal views and opinions expressed by our podcast guests are their own and are not legal advice or official statements by their organizations.
Hello, my name is Debbie Reynolds; they call me "The Data Diva". This is "The Data Diva" Talks privacy podcast, where we discuss Data Privacy issues with industry leaders around the world. So the information that businesses need to know now, I have a special guest on the show. His name is Tom Cottingham. He is the CEO of Flyover Future. Welcome.
Tom Cottingham 00:36
Thank you. How are you doing, Debbie? I'm doing well. I'm doing well.
Debbie Reynolds 00:41
Well, this is fun. So you and I met through a mutual friend of ours, Chris Roberts, whom I adore, told me about some of the great work you guys are doing. And then you and I ended up on a call, and you were telling me your backstory. And I lit up when you told me that you were involved with the creation of Tech Republic. Yeah. Which I adored. I mean, it was like my lifeline, especially in the late 90s. You know, when I was doing a lot of technical stuff. I would love for you to explain to our audience what you're doing now with Flyover Future that I think it is really a cool thing. So why don't you just tell me a bit about your tech journey and what you're doing right now with Flyover Future?
Tom Cottingham 01:35
Sure, I'm happy to. Tech Republic was an interesting experience. The whole thing was great. But it was founded on the idea that IT professionals, and this was more people in the trenches, wanted to talk to each other. So we were trying to build a community of IT pros back in the relatively early, late early stages of the Internet, the late 90s. Fast forward to today, we built Tech Republic here in Louisville, Kentucky. I was raised and raised my kids in flyover country—John Piles, who was also instrumental in TechRepublic very early on also from here. Tony Bowers, our editor in chief from here, Jim McKiernan, so we all grew up here in the Midwest. And we were very cognizant of the fact that innovation and talent drive growth and that there was a ton of innovation going on here in flyover country. There was amazing world-class talent. But we were doing a terrible job of telling that story to the rest of the world. And there were several inflection points. One was that the coastal cities were pricing themselves out of the market. And people were sort of looking for an excuse to move back to flyover country. And we were there saying, hey, there's a ton going on. So we started covering general innovation and realized that a lot of our audience were technical and senior management. They wanted the same thing that we were talking about at the Tech Republic. What they really wanted to do was get expert content and then build communities around that. And it turns out that part of the importance of the community is being in flyover country, that there's enough of a vibe here. And being able to drive doesn't hurt in this pandemic era that we're in where people want to get together and that are from the region. Talent flows a lot more easily within the region, and capital flows a lot more easily within the region. And so we're building this community; we're having a blast. And now Chris came in and is helping us a lot on the security side. It's great to engage you, and we're just trying to find the smartest people we can and bring them to our community, let them interact, ask questions, let the community interact, and keep them engaged. And they're super engaged.
Debbie Reynolds 04:23
That's really cool. Yeah. So for my listeners, especially the people outside of the country, flyover country, as we call it, it's kind of the Midwest, in the West. So a lot of attention gets paid to East Coast and West Coast, not a ton, not enough in my opinion on the middle region in Chicago, and so I definitely feel that situation as well. But I think something has happened in favor of the Midwest, and he touched on this a bit. To me, a lot of this is around COVID. Right? Before COVID, for example, there were a lot of companies that want you to relocate to some expensive place. Oh, yeah, do some job or, yeah, and then so having companies realize what we've known for decades now that you can actually do stuff remotely, and actually embracing that. I think that's helped a lot. But then also, I think it opens up the talent pool because a lot of people have thought about talent in a regional way. Right? So it's like, okay, I have this company, let me look at who's around this particular area, and then they sort of kneecap themselves by trying to stuff everyone into the same hole, in my opinion. So, I think that COVID and remote work and the Internet have changed that in a way that maybe I've always wanted that to happen because I've never restricted myself to talent in a region, right? I did as much as I could with people.
Tom Cottingham 06:17
Right, COVID accelerated a lot of things, right. You can argue good and bad. And, absolutely. I mean, certainly, one of the biggest ones is exactly what you're talking about, this acceptance of remote work, and how it has made people really rethink their lives, right? I have kids with young kids. And there's been a lot of good things that came from them being and working remotely. There have been some frustrating things too. But it's definitely changed the way all of us think about work. And right, if I'm in the Midwest, I can work anywhere in the world. And one of the things about flyover country is we export a huge amount of our talent to the coasts every year, out of our fantastic universities. Purdue, Michigan State and Carnegie Mellon and these schools that are turning out top technical talent. And we need to say to those graduates, and others, stay here, there's tons of opportunity here. Intel is investing a huge amount of money in building a massive chip factory in Ohio that they just announced. That's a big deal. So I think, yeah, you're right. COVID accelerated this. And we feel like we've been doing this now for three years, pre-COVID. And so, our thesis has been proven out. We think that the VCs on Sandhill Road weren't going to invest in a company that had more than about a 20-minute drive to a board meeting. They thought and believed back then that up close and personal to the company, and the founders and the management team made a huge difference. Now they're investing in companies in the Midwest with founders and management teams that they have never met in person. So we're going to move from almost 90% of the venture money being in three or four coastal cities, plus maybe Austin, to now them saying, oh, we have a whole world that's opened up that we haven't really looked at that we can, and I think that's going to encourage venture funding. And then in the Midwest, we've got kind of venture capital 3.0 happening, which is also interesting. So we're very optimistic.
Debbie Reynolds 08:45
Very cool. Very cool. What is top of mind that you're hearing from people in the Flyover Future community right now? What was the lowest, the biggest pain point, that people were talking about, tech talent, whether it be support? What are your thoughts?
Tom Cottingham 09:15
Yeah, there are a couple of different categories. On the technical side, security remains a huge issue. And it's a ginormous issue, right. And it's surprising how many companies really don't have very good security policies, like 40%. Right. So that keeps a lot of people up at night. And that's everything from state actors to phishing attacks. So that's a big thing. Data Analytics is a big thing. And how do we turn all this information, all this data into information? And is management looking at the right data? That's a whole separate conversation. I think the tricky thing and the really interesting opportunity is that the job of the CTO, or whatever we're going to call that person, is changing a lot. And if you look at the people that are CTOs right now, the analogy is to that in the organization. Something like 90% of them came out of development and were coders. And if you think about it, a decade ago, that made a ton of sense. You wonder now if that is the path forward because what we're facing now is that a lot of things are being outsourced. Whether it's demanding service providers of the cloud or what have you, soft skills are becoming super important. And this is something I think that a lot of CEOs understand. The vast majority of them, 70 some odd percent, believe that it should be more strategic. But people aren't implementing it yet, right? But the CTO wants to move out of putting out fires and being more proactive and strategic. And working with a line of business executives to avail themselves of the best technologies or the most appropriate for the corporate goals. So there's, that's also a super interesting topic. Behind all of that, AI is also working there. And, whether that's machine learning or more advanced AI, and the Quantum computing to drive that is also happening in parallel. So we're going to hit some inflection points from a technology standpoint. And the question is, are our organizations ready with a leadership team to handle it? And is that leadership team fully integrated with it? Right. Right. So you touched on something that I want to chat about, and I think there's a parallel here. So one is the misnomer that IT or cyber, their role is only reactive, right? So it can't be that.
Tom Cottingham 12:36
Right.
Debbie Reynolds 12:37
And then the parallel that I see is in privacy, or privacy has to be proactive, you can't get, once you violate someone's rights, you can't unviolate them, you know what I'm saying? So, I think there are some parallels there. What are your thoughts?
Tom Cottingham 12:55
Yeah, the reactive thing is a huge issue. But if I think about the typical CTO, I mean, typical is probably not the right word. But a lot of CTOs that I've encountered in my many years of doing this are hands-on doers. And like I said before, they were coders. So their DNA is we got a problem, I'll fix it. Right? Because I know how to fix it better than anybody else. And so there's one aspect of that, where we sort of trained people how to treat us, right? And if I'm always the person raising my hands, I don't know; I'll go do it. I know, it's Sunday, but I can go in and reboot the servers. People are going to expect that. So that's part of the issue, right? The other issue is that I don't think the C suite has a very thorough understanding of all of the issues that are involved in managing it. It's a huge job, and it's a ginormous responsibility. And if you mess up, you are potentially exposing the entire company, maybe your customers, maybe your vendors, to a lot of pain. So failure can be catastrophic. Meanwhile, people are hounding you about small things, seemingly small things, but that are important to that person and need to get fixed. Right. So, yeah, they've got to get out of reactive mode. And again, I think this outsourcing helps some of that. And more into understanding the financials, understanding what drives the business, understanding what the data points are, that you can look at to know if you're on track or not knowing where to make more investment, where to make less investment. I mean, they see the data on the privacy side. I'll tell you what, man, you're right. Once somebody's rights have been violated, they've been violated, and you can't put the genie back in the bottle. And I think the genie's out of the bottle to a large extent. Certainly, as consumers, it is, right? I think that businesses still have an opportunity to establish policies that ensure the privacy of data. And I think actually, looking down the road, Blockchain is going to help us own our own data. We'll see who has access to it. So it's a big issue. But we live in a surveillance state to a large extent, right. Everybody's got all of our data about everything. It's kind of astounding.
Debbie Reynolds 16:00
It is, it absolutely is. I would love to talk to you about board-level visibility to IT and cyber. So there aren't enough, in my opinion, boards thinking about it, and this goes back to this reactive thing again, too. So there are a lot of organizations, and a lot has changed, and you're probably the perfect person to talk to about this, right? So we, in the beginning, when people started to develop IT systems and get more into the Internet and stuff like that. So let's say a hardware store or law firm, or so, ok, I hire smart people, we're lawyers. And then we're going to implement this technology to help us do lawyering. Right. So it was kind of like an add-on, right? And then what happened is that the technology has become so ubiquitous and so fundamental to how companies do business. It's like, you can't be a lawyer, you can't do your job without technology. So I think that's the change to happen that people aren't really thinking about. So I don't think that initially, when people started using IT systems, they didn't think about it becoming this kind of all-encompassing thing where they just can't, they literally can't do their business, if they don't find a way to kind of embrace technology and be able to do it in a secure fashion. What are your thoughts?
Tom Cottingham 17:40
Yeah, yes, technology is ubiquitous. And we are all connected to each other and to everything. And so when we started Tech Republic, we were an Internet company. That was a distinct thing. Right? Now, every company is an Internet company. And, it's totally changed. I mean, we used to have; I was explaining to people still in the late 90s what the Internet was. Now imagine me; I'm not a technical person; it was a pretty sorry conversation. But anyway, I think that part of the problem is the reality that boards aren't as engaged as we would like them to be or as we think they are. And board members are typically involved in lots of other businesses in one way or another. And they are not thinking through the problems. What the board is doing is, is managing senior management whom they trust right and deferring to them on a lot of decisions. And that's just, that has been my experience, right? There are generally one or two really engaged board members. And that's just the reality of it. Right? So I think that one of the missing links in this is the CEO and the CFO. Right. And we're trying to explore ways to get the rest of the C suite involved in explaining to the board, explaining to shareholders, stakeholders, whatever it is, what the issues are, how they're prioritizing it, and how they're going to go about fixing them. So we have to, it's interesting in marketing, if you survey people, their answers are generally aspirational. If you track people, it's not following what they say they would do on a survey, right? You don't eat healthy vegetables every day. We've been watching you. You're eating Cheetos. So what we have to do is we have to close this gap between CEOs who say that their CTO should be more strategic, right? And making them more strategic. So I think the other approach is getting more mindshare from the CEO at a more granular level than most CEOs like to operate. Right, if that makes sense? And really sitting down with them and saying, okay, here are the consequences of not doing these things. And they're non-trivial. And it's one of those situations where, yes, the odds are slim. But if you hit a royal flush, it's going to bring down the company. Right. And then you've got this whole issue also of employees. And from a security standpoint, that's your biggest problem. Right. And so, how do you incent employees? How do you make employees understand that this is a priority, that following these security protocols is a priority? Well, the C suite has to do it. Right? I mean, people do what their superiors do, not what they say. So again, a lot of this starts at the very top. And part of it, I mean, I was joking; we had a Slack event with Chris the other day. And I said our only security rule is that I have access to nothing. I'm an administrator on zero accounts, right? And everybody started laughing about CEOs in the C suite and how they demand access to everything. They're the worst, right? So I think CEOs, CFOs, and the rest of the C suite have got to sit down and start getting engaged in some of these issues. And tossing around things like AI and not really fully understanding what that means, what the implications are.
Debbie Reynolds 22:19
I want to talk a bit about funding for different projects. And so tell me what you're hearing. And I'll tell you what I think is happening. Now, what I'm saying so, and this is related to privacy. So like, now we have all this privacy tech, right? Where organizations want to be able to implement this stuff. And a lot of times, that is, you maybe there's a privacy person or the privacy folks, maybe lawyers and law where they say, okay, we have this tech, we want to be able to use but a lot of times that the budget for that, especially if it's something that actually touches data comes out of the cyber, IT side of the house, right? So there has to be communication there. And there has to be some collaboration because the lawyer may not understand the technical ins and outs of what a certain technology may be doing. And maybe it doesn't even answer the question or solve the problem that ABC company has. Have you seen kind of that scenario play out with people?
Tom Cottingham 23:30
Yeah, and I think it gets back to what we were talking about before about it being siloed. Right? I mean, this isn't an IT issue. Right? I mean, it's a corporate issue. And it's not even just a corporate issue. It's every employee, every vendor, right? Potentially every customer. So this is the shift that needs to happen, right, is that the CEO, the C suite needs to understand security is a corporate priority, we need to fund it, we need to understand it. We need to incent our employees to follow whatever protocols we're going to establish. And no, this is not just buying a software license. Right? It then flows through to everything right, and it flows through to marketing and your CMO and how are they handling customer data and what kind of data are they collecting? And, that on down the road, so yes, this has to be something that gets pulled out of this assignment to IT, raised up to this as a corporate issue that is important. And then make a commitment to being the best in class.
Debbie Reynolds 24:59
Exactly, exactly. What challenges are you seeing? So I don't know, I feel like the way things have traditionally progressed is like, okay, privacy is somebody else's problem. And so now it's gone from somebody else's problem to people saying, almost like cybersecurity, like they say, well, it's sort of is everyone's problem, right? Everyone has to play. But in a way, if you say it's everyone's problem, it's no one's specific responsibility.
Tom Cottingham 25:34
Well, right. I know totally. And this is part of the challenge we have in a distributed world, right? So, on the one hand, yes, if employees are not following protocols, we're not going to be very secure; it's almost impossible. On the other hand, we have to figure out a way to incent employees to do that; that becomes our problem. Right? Like, if you don't understand what I'm saying, then I need to figure out a different way to say, all right, it's kind of always my view, it's incumbent upon the messenger to deliver a message that is heard. And a lot of times, if no one in the company is complying, which is typically the case, including the C suite, then we need to change the message. All right. So yeah, it's a very tricky thing, right? To what extent is management, including the CTO, responsible for security, and then to a certain extent, it seems sort of like a Sisyphean task, because now I've got to go audit, everybody I'm connected to in the world, because there's all sorts of vulnerability, or I've got to build really strong firewalls. So it's both, right? And this is, again, in a distributed world. Individuals have responsibilities, and organizations that those individuals are affiliated with have responsibilities. I think ultimately, people are going to have a lot more control over their data, like I said, through Blockchain or something very similar. But we may be, I don't know, 10 years away from that. Yeah, right. I am someone who said a long time ago that Blockchain was a technology that was looking for a kind of use. Yeah.
Debbie Reynolds 27:38
And so I feel like I see some really cool things happening in the identity space around authentication and Blockchain. I think it'll be really, really cool. And I think that will have some traction, which will definitely help in the future. So yeah, tell me, what are you concerned about? Just in general, about privacy, what's happening in the world? Like, what's on the horizon? You're saying I don't like that, or I'm concerned about this theme that's developing.
Tom Cottingham 28:13
What am I concerned about? I think I'm concerned about state actors having access to so much data and what the temptations are to do with that data if you're in power. I mean, that's one thing. There's some very interesting questions about employer employees’ surveillance. All right. That, I think, is a little troublesome, right? So what bothers me the most is that large organizations have a huge advantage in this data-driven world. And large organizations oftentimes don't really care about individuals as much as they care about the large organization, right. It's just the nature of the beast. And so my worry is that a very few players in the private sector, and government, and then government and these players cooperating with each other, puts a lot of power in a very few hands. And in my experience with technology people, technologists is that they're very enamored of the technology but often slow to catch on to what the implications down the road of that technology might be. Right? So it's like we can build this; it would be so cool. And yeah, if it were in a few hands, it would be really cool. And if it stopped right there, it might be really cool. But it's going to continue to grow. And it's continued to be used by broader and broader groups of people. And it might not be so cool five years from now. So that worries me some, but it's really about a few large organizations really having so much data at such a granular level. That our ability to be manipulated will be huge. Yeah, or their ability to manipulate us. I think that’s if I'm going to say, a little dystopian or something. But it just, it is what it is. Yeah. I've studied a lot of history, and power does not like giving up power.
Debbie Reynolds 30:48
No, absolutely not. Absolutely not. One of the things that I'm concerned about is people taking technology that was used for one purpose and using it for another purpose and not really understanding the implications of that. So an example, let's say, for some, this is a great example. There was a company that developed the technology for marketing, right? And they said, okay, we think 90% of people like blue pants, so now we're going to sell blue pants, or whatever. So, they take, they repurpose that technology into a system that maybe is creating databases of potential criminals or something like a facial recognition database, they'll say, well, 80% of the people in this database are fine, but the other 20% are criminals or something like that, it's like it can't be a situation where you walk away from that and say, it's okay to harm 20% of anyone, you know?
Tom Cottingham 31:55
Well, again, you look at very large organizations, and individuals are not consequential. Right? So, I think what you're partly saying is that no one cares about the people that don't fall into the bucket that we're trying to get, right. Or imagine that someone did an algorithm, and they said, we found something interesting that 80% of criminals carry blue pens. So now we're going to track everyone that carries a blue pen. All right, well, I just may be a law-abiding blue pen lover, right. And now I'm part of a set of potential criminals. But that's the way big data works, right? It wouldn't be fair to that 20%, But 87% of these guys are carrying blue pens. So let's track them all. People become atomized in their data points. And you and I both worked in that world where we're, it's really easy to shift gears, right? It's like, okay, I only care about this 3%. And everybody else I don't really care about, and as long as I get that 3%, I'll do anything to get that. And so, I think that we need to keep individual human beings in mind as we move forward with this technology. And this gets back to the large organizations. That's almost impossible for large organizations, right? You come in, and you say, Well, you can't do this because I know six people that will be harmed by this. Like, okay, look, dude, we're dealing with hundreds of millions of people, six people, sorry, don't even make the report.
Debbie Reynolds 33:54
Right. Yeah, it's concerning. It's concerning. So I always try to bring in the human element of things because we are dealing with data of humans, right. And so it can't be
Tom Cottingham 34:08
Yeah, ultimately, right? It's, we're all people,
Debbie Reynolds 34:11
Right. So you can't just create a statistic, and if someone doesn't fit in the box, like, I don't neatly fit in anyone's box, right? So a lot of times, they try to jam you into something that doesn't fit for you, and that could possibly have created harm in and of itself.
Tom Cottingham 34:29
Right. Well, and if you're not in that box, you're a suspicious outlier, right? Like, this requires more scrutiny, here's somebody that doesn't fit in our box. Right? And fortunately my whole life has been spent with those kinds of people, right? Entrepreneurs don't fit in the box, no matter what color, sex, or race, none of that matters. If you're an entrepreneur, you're typically not going to fit in anybody's box. Right? Look at your background. It's really very bright. You don't fit in the box. No, right? So right there in the data, people want to create boxes and define people by the box therein. And when we think about that, personally, it's very bothersome. But when you think about it abstractly, you go, well, that's just the way the world works. I mean, a lot of people have just kind of given up. And I think that's super important.
Debbie Reynolds 35:27
I agree, too. I think the agency is key. So I saw a statistic from the (FIDO) Alliance, Fast Id Online Alliance, and they said that the average person has 90 logins and passwords. And I'm like, that's not sustainable. It's like, we're only getting more stuff. So the more stuff we have, the more we have to secure. So it has to turn to the more individual-centric agency over their data. So I think people should be like a bank, right, where they pick and choose what technologies or what things kind of connect to their identity and how much that they share as opposed to them creating, no one's going to read 80-page privacy policies from like, 90 different companies. It's not going to happen.
Tom Cottingham 36:18
Right? No. Yeah, I mean, what do you think about the biometric stuff?
Debbie Reynolds 36:27
Oh, wow, Biometrics is so frightening. It's so scary. And I'm so concerned. Well, I am, as a Black woman following this very closely. So there are statistics to say that Biometric systems misidentified Black women 10 times more than other people, and I'm very concerned about that. You know, that doesn't impact other people as much as it impacts me. And I'm concerned about that, especially people who don't have a voice, don't have, means be able to fight their way out of a situation like someone says, okay, you robbed this bank. How do you get out of that? They think this is you. Oh, my God. No.
Tom Cottingham 37:18
You imagine that nightmare. Terrible? No. Well, and then think globally, right. But London has cameras everywhere. Beijing has cameras everywhere. And we do in the states, too, right. But I feel like we're going to move to more Biometric, whether that's iris scanning, fingerprinting, whatever it is. Chip implanting, which, right. It is not a conspiracy theory. No, that's not. Right. So Biometric, I think what's going to happen is we're going to start relying a lot more on Biometrics. Yeah. And well, then you say, well, then my body is my password. And at that point, people might really start thinking, well, then I should own my own data.
Debbie Reynolds 38:22
Right. Right.
Tom Cottingham 38:25
I mean, I think that one of the things that's come out of the last couple of years with the pandemic has been the key realization that they need to take responsibility for a lot of things, and one of them is their data. Right. So I feel like people are starting to kind of realize this is a big thing. And it's important, and they need to do it—both as consumers and as citizens. And so I see that accelerating, and I see the technology happening that will enable that.
Debbie Reynolds 39:07
Yeah, I don't think the technology is stopping. So I'm not naive enough to think that is going to stop this. Right? So I want to be involved in those conversations about what's happening with that. And then also, I have issues with technology that isn't as accurate is being used in high-stakes situations. Right? So I don't think us being on a video camera to say, okay, this person, let's put them in jail. That's actually happened to people when they basically have to fight their way out of it. They're like, okay, I wasn't actually there. This isn’t me, like a judge may not be able to tell, this is not this person. And it's like you basically, to me, you've totally thrown out the rules of evidence how the way they are, we'd like other corroborating information, it can't be as thorough. So true.
Tom Cottingham 40:04
I am trying really hard to not be dystopian, right? I mean, don't get me going. But yeah, there's some super, super worrisome things that are happening as we speak. The technology is enabling. And it's interesting. It loops kind of back to what we were talking about, who's really responsible for security? And once everybody and it's nobody. Well, Your Honor, the technology says that it was Tom Cottingham. Right, but he's the guy that did that. I mean, it wasn't me, right? Or the algorithm did it? Right. And it's like, the judge doesn't say, well, what I'd really like to know is, I liked the development team that developed the algorithm in here, and I want to cross-examine those people. Because they had a big influence on how that algorithm made its final conclusion. Right? So I mean, and I think that's kind of happening as people were saying, well, no, the data says this. The algorithm said that this was the guilty person.
Debbie Reynolds 41:15
Right.
Tom Cottingham 41:16
So anyway, we'll stay optimistic it's a beautiful day outside.
Debbie Reynolds 41:18
I love the way you're thinking. It's a huge problem, right? A huge problem, especially if people are thinking of it as a kind of a single source of truth. And then, I don't know, and I think I feel like we have a problem with Biometrics and technologies like this because we watch too many movies, right? So right, we watch movies, and people get the idea that technology is perfect. We aren't perfect. We make technology. Technology's not perfect.
Tom Cottingham 41:51
What was that movie when Bruce Willis? Oh, you bought somebody else's eye? Right? Because they were scans? No, there was like a black market and eyeballs. Element, the Fifth Element, right. But I was thinking about movies. And that always struck me as, yeah, there will be people that will sell an eyeball for a certain amount of money. Why not? Absolutely. Figure that often, you know? No, it's crazy. Yeah, it's crazy stuff. It is. And that's been the great irony of the personal computer and the Internet. And what it's really done is it's given large organizations a huge amount of power. The question is, will people and some of that's getting decentralized? That's what bitcoins are about, right?
Debbie Reynolds 42:46
If it were the world, according to you, what would be your wishes for privacy, technology, cyber? What do you really want to happen in the world now, as it relates to technology in your space and things that you're working on?
Tom Cottingham 43:09
I think we need to find new ways to attract people of a variety of backgrounds into what we're calling IT. Right? In other words, I hear more and more that we have technical people, but they don't really know how the sausage is made. And we got a bunch of people down there making sausage, and they don't even know what the possibilities are from a technology standpoint. So they don't come to us and say, hey, you know if you build a widget like this, it would save us three cents a sausage or anything. They don't know how hard it is to build a widget. They don't want to ask a stupid question. But it's hard to find people that have graduated from university with a computer science degree who want to go spend a couple of years watching how the sausage is made and figuring out how technology can make that process better. Right? And we get back to we have a lot of people right now whose background is coding. And part of me thinks that we should be bringing in people from the humanities, people from finance, people from marketing, and saying, look, here's the tech stack, you need to know, and you don't need to know the whole tech stack, you just need to know the top 20% of it. Right? You need to know enough to know who knows what they're talking about. Right? Because right now, we're taking technologists and trying to give them those skills. And so, I just think we need to really rethink who's making technology decisions and choices in our society. Right? So that would be a big one. And the other one would be that whether it's blockchain or different technology that, the individual starts to take more control over their data.
Debbie Reynolds 45:11
That's, that's amazing. Oh, wow. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you being on the show. And I know the audience really likes you. Thank you.