Paul Lindner

... wherein I embrace the unknown future

I'm part of the April 2024 Core employees Google decided to part ways with. I'm taking this opportunity to take stock, embrace my purpose and chart a new path in these uncertain times.

To say that we're at a crossroads is an understatement. Cherished ecosystems are threatened. The Web itself has an uncertain future as it's moved from a global library of knowledge to an app/ads delivery channel. Open Source faces funding pressure and uncertainty about viable business models. Knowledge itself has become fluid and commodified as it's fed to global AI models. Even the once resilient systems that power society are at risk from demagogues and ill-conceived technological mediation. [*]

Yet, amidst this upheaval I see opportunity. I have a chance to embrace this uncertain future and add another technological impact to my life story.

While I'm exploring impactful possibilities within Google until June 24th I'm confident my skills can make a positive impact in many places. The world needs solutions and I'm determined to contribute to a better future!

If this resonates reach out and let's see what's possible!

I dusted off my Google Glass for Neotropolis. It was magical. But this was an environment where photo consent is the norm, and being augmented is, well, expected.

I'm yearning for an updated Glass with a Pixel camera sensor and portrait photo/video. But even without that I was able to stay in the moment and get some shots I would not have at all.

Not sure how I feel.  Google is now my longest running gig, overtaking public school.  I have a ton of gratitude for the kindness and support that the people in this company offer and the opportunities it has provided.  Oh and...

• This job finally got me out of financial precarity.  With total comp it was 6x what I was earning a few years earlier.  I had so undervalued myself.  And this was in the midst of the great recession.
• It took a while, but I eventually found my groove, and have had so many chances to reinvent myself.
• When calamity struck 6 years ago people where there for me and I had the time to attend to family.  And now as I'm going through another rough patch I've found compassion and understanding.

Much, much gratitude.

That said as the company has changed I've less-and-less identified myself as a Googler.  I often feel reluctant admitting it in the alternative public spaces I inhabit.

I guess I recognize that the sociotechnical systems we build can reinforce the inequity of our society and extract or destroy the rich "variety" of the world..  I often yearn for a future where we can focus on "stuff that doesn't scale":  the human, the physical and local connections.

With that I believe that my contribution, overall, is a net positive to the good in the world.   It's hard to quantify and I grapple with it.

So yes, this job does indeed go to 11!  Here's to the embracing the present moment and the scary unknown future!!

https://youtu.be/F7IZZXQ89Oc

Did you know you can get into the https://museumca.org/ for free with your Google Badge?

Join me and 1 other Googler today (August 22nd 2021) and we'll tour https://museumca.org/exhibit/mothership-voyage-afrofuturism

text me at 415 425 1601 if you want to join in on this group!

#googplus

I did a video version of the blog post I did for them a while back about Love, Loss and Archives.

http://anniversary.archive.org/

Consider donating and signing up for the 25th anniversary webcast, they do so much with such a small budget. Funny thing is that Google started out as a Library project. In some ways I wish we could go back to that simpler time.

#googplus

That time I almost quit Google...

In retrospect it put me on a more thoughtful relationship with Google the company and where I put my efforts, both inside/outside the company.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/22/4chan-founder-chris-poole-moot-has-left-google.html

#googplus

One thing that someone might consider is working with Data Portability laws to allow for export of user contributed data to corporate map platforms.

I'd like to add my Google Maps contributions to OSM

I'm a Level 7 local guide there and was an active user of MapMaker back in the day..

Google's loss. dwb@ was a good one.

#googplus

So many thoughts about OpenSocial and the reference implementation, Shindig. I have it thank for my time at hi5, LinkedIn and then Google.

Some little known facts about OpenSocial

- Hangouts Apps (remember those?) were based on OpenSocial containers.

- OpenSocial powered the LinkedIn Apps Platform and Labs for a number of years. The team built Rails and Node apps and deployed on Joyent.

- Eric Schmidt gave a pep talk to the working group pre-launch and mentioned about how open always wins in the end...

- MySpace was concerned about the attack surface of 3p apps running in iframes. They toyed with the idea of requiring a webkit browser plugin to run apps (!). It did lead to Caja* as a project. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caja_project

- The work on OpenSocial led in small part to the Activity Streams spec which led to ActivityPub and thus the latest Fediverse protocols. I like to think of OpenSocial as dead, but a good organ donor.

Fun times...

Do I get a badge if I get certified?

https://www.coursera.org/google-it

#googplus

Any of the Chrome folks want to figure out why SameSIte cookies are making
it impossible to add inline images in gmail compose?

Bug appears to be here: https://b.corp.google.com/issues/144398439

Looks like it's more than just Googlers:

https://support.google.com/mail/thread/19811479?hl=en

#googplus

I know some of the people that did this and they never told me....

https://www.mrjoemontana.com/google-executive-portraits

#googplus

Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2014 15:33:00 -0800
Subject: Firebase - Looking to hire Engineer #5 for our Core Development team

I just came across your LinkedIn profile and thought I'd reach out to you because of your impressive experience at Google.

---
The things you find when cleaning out your inbox...

#googplus

Looking for anything related to a hotel in Google Search sucks. Too many people chasing referral dollars. Search for 'hotelname city' gives me:

- Google provided 'Related to Hotelname' onebox of 8 hotel images/links
- Google provided onebox of 'Your related activitiy' showing me images of my other hotel searches.
- Big KP on the right rail, with booking and more (dupe) images of the same hotel.
- Favicons.. oof
- Stars, lots of star ratings. 12 to be precise.
- 3 entries with related searches, plus a related searches link at the bottom.
- Love the use strikethrough "Hotelname City 7 (-70-) Hotel deals

I ended up asking friends for advice...

#googplus

This post below is a copy of a Sep 17, 2014 post from the internal Google+ Team community.

I'm reposting it because today I published an Obituary site that includes some of these https://www.julieslife.com/more/email discussed here. What I wrote today is just as import
ant today as it was back then.

Mediating and initiating local and human connections are needed now more than ever.

[I'd also say that we need preservation too, I'm fortunate to be able to relive these memories, compared to MySpace or Snapchat users.]

Anyway, here it is after 5 years....

Subject: Local Grungy People?

...and the importance of serendipity, locals and shared interests.

warning longish philosophical post ahead...

I thought the pre-TGIF Social Presentation was weak, but it did contain one very important quote there are no strangers, only friends you haven't met yet. If I were presenting I'd dump almost all of the mechanics about how we suck at onboarding and just tell a story about that.

Tell a story about how we go from sharing an interest to sharing your entire life together. Tell a story about how we're going to help users with this basic need to connect, and how Google can use technology to mediate this. Tell us how Google can provide just the right amount of serendipity that helps people connect on a personal level. (and then provide the rest of the infrastructure to do the private/personal thing too.)

Because that's my story. It's how a shared interest became love and a wonderful life spent together, due to mailing list: GRUNGE-L

Back then there were no profiles, but there were .signatures. So serendipitously I found myself discussing bands with someone a few miles away. Until one day I made the personal connection and sent the following email.

The rest, as they say, is history

Date: Wed, 8 Jan 92 13:04:43 CST
To: [email protected]
Subject: Local Grungy people

Hey, are there any other people from Minnesota besides you and myself
on the wonderful grunge-l mailing list?

I'm always interested in putting a face onto an e-mail address. I'll
probably be at the Babes in Toyland Show saturday, and the Local Band
showcase on Monday.

Interested?

--
| Paul Lindner | [email protected] | "You have to Spit
| | Computer & Information Services | to See the Shine" --
| Gopher Dude | University of Minnesota | Babes in Toyland
///// / / / /////// / / / / / / / / //// / / / / / / / /

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NESF4NCanpg

#googplus

Looking for a break? Want to improve fairness for Google products? Have a supportive manager? Then check out this short-term opportunity on the John Henry Team:

https://grow.googleplex.com/opportunity/job/2000000070880

So what exactly would you be doing you might ask...

- Work with a system that pulls all the term lists used for blocking through Google and properly categorize them based on identity facets.
- Work with research/product partners to apply this merged, vetted Societal Context dataset. Help remove bias from underlying systems and ML algorithms
- Build tools that will help us develop System Dynamics as a common practice in policy making and the product design process.
- Have fun!

Our environment is Java+Spanner with a goal of migrating to GraphStore in 2020.

Happy to chat about this opportunity or the project as a whole.

#googplus

Foone had a great article about the https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1190784395356950535 device. So I made a joke that today they'd have your allowance on the blockchain, with an Alexa "CleanRoom" Oracle that rewarded you with "ChoreCoin".

Turns out someone beat me to it....

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=tech.sweetcandy.chorecoin&hl=en_US

#googplus

2 months notice for the death of Yahoo Groups. Google Group folks take notice, this is not acceptable for preserving the history of the internet.

https://help.yahoo.com/kb/SLN31010.html

#googplus

Unintended consequences of Google Image Search.

THE VCE exam body has been left red faced after a doctored artwork depicting a huge robot helping socialist revolutionaries during the Russian Revolution was accidentally included in this year’s year 12 history exam taken by 5700 students.

https://www.theage.com.au/education/history-transformed-in-vce-exam-20121114-29ce7.html

You heard about Young Karl Marx, but have you heard of VI Lenin Evangelion ?

#googplus

I joined the http://go/johnhenry team a few weeks ago. Finally getting a chance to post about it after an exciting https://sites.google.com/corp/google.com/societalcontextsummit2019.

Excited to be team building again and really excited about the possibility of bringing systems thinking at scale into Google. Looking forward to how our first partner http://go/delavega uses our Societal Topography and Societal Context Repository to bring ML Fairness to display ads.

So much to learn and many challenges ahead.

#googplus

...then Google said "Let there be iGoogle"; and there was iGoogle. And Google saw that the javascript was good and separated the gadgets from the container origins....

Fast forward over 10 years and this serving system is still the underlying force keeping light from darkness. After a good run in Social it was exiled to an uncertain fate with the ever faithful +111756696344385606909 and other true believers keeping it alive.

Exiting the wilderness between PAs it finally found a new home with +109533200203018540387 and +111563624442337972165 into a reliability reset fueled future.

But Gapi needs your help. Please help it find an L5 so it can grow and thrive as it fully migrates to new infrastructure

https://grow.googleplex.com/jobs/b9f41ecb-c6c5-4129-af30-2e1181d645c9

#googplus

Someone's going to eventually make a Google Duplex version of this...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33CIVjvYyEk

#googplus