Gateway

I read somewhere that Stalin once asked a political enemy (Lev Kamenev maybe, or one of the other old Bolsheviks) how much the state weighed. The person was apparently confused (probably head trauma) and asked Stalin what he meant (probably not a good idea), and Stalin apparently then asked him what the Kremlin and all of its furniture and finishings weighed, and how much all of the paper in the Soviet record archives weighed, and how much all of the gold and gypsum in the mines weighed, and how much all of the soldiers and tanks and planes in the Soviet army weighed, etc. And then how much all of it combined--how many pounds or kilos, did it all add up to? The idea was that the Soviet government apparatus was so huge and all-encompassing that no one person could oppose it. The sheer weight would crush him.

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A few weeks ago, I had to attend a tech symposium at the NIH main campus in Bethesda. The National Institutes of Health, with all of its many Institutes and Centers and its 300+ acre campus, and all of the employees and contractors who work there, is a small, very secure and insular little city unto itself. It's like the Vatican.

Even if you have a Federal government ID, you still have to go through security when you visit NIH. I knew this going in, so I was prepared. The NIH Gateway Center, where all visitors begin their day at NIH, is like customs and border patrol for the NIH city-state. Visitors enter through a glass door and step into the security screening area. After they pass through security, they are directed to one of 6 numbered windows, where uniformed clerks issue ID badges and send visitors on their way to whatever NIH building they're supposed to visit. It's all very efficient, and very busy. NIH hosts lots of visitors, and they all have to pass through the Gateway Center. 

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NIH, as large as it is, is just a small part of an even larger Cabinet-level agency. Which is itself just a small part of the Executive branch. Which is itself just a part of the vast apparatus of the United States Federal government. Add up all of those buildings and pencils and papers and computers, not to mention millions of people. It's a lot of weight.

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As I said, I knew about the visitor rules, so I came prepared. I was about 10th in line when I arrived, and I spent my few minutes in line unzipping my handbag and wallet and pencil case, pulling change out of my pockets, and generally sorting and organizing my belongings for the screening. A group of visitors came in just behind me, and they all fell into line too. With 18 or 19 people waiting, a small group of three--two young men and a youngish woman--entered the Gateway Center and headed directly to the front of the line. 

"Good morning," said one of the young man, the leader of the trio, to the security guard. 

"Good morning, sir. The back of the line is right there," said the security guard, pointing helpfully to the back of the line where these three obviously belonged. 

The young man smiled, an I'm-sure-you-don't-know-whom-you're-speaking-to smile. "We're badged," he explained, waving the same PIV card that 80% of us standing in the line were already wearing around our necks.

"Yes," said the guard, "thank you very much. If any of you have NIH badges, you can head directly to the employee entrance on South Drive. If you don't have NIH badges, you can join the line, and we'll get to you just as quickly as possible." 

The young man's face fell, but he knew that he was beaten, and we knew that he knew. No one person, not even three people together, can bear all that weight. The three turned meekly around and got in line behind the four or five newcomers who had joined the line during this conversation. You can't fight city hall, and you really can't fight the NIH Gateway Center.

This is a birdhouse just outside the Natcher building at NIH.
Maybe I wasn't supposed to take pictures, but no one told me that I couldn't.
Presumably, the birds don't need visitor badges. 

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The line moved very quickly, and I walked from the Gateway Center to the conference, arriving just in time for the keynote address, given by a very senior Federal government official. The topic of the address was pretty much the same topic covered in 80% of gatherings of government information technology people; that topic being DATA: How to gather it, how to organize it, how to use it to measure and quantify stuff, and how to secure it. No one seems to know the answers to these questions, least of all me. I'm a layperson. 

The keynote address was in an auditorium that seats about 300 people, so there were microphones set up for the Q&A session. It would never occur to me to ask a question at one of these things, but there are people who live for the opportunity to ask a really insightful, carefully worded question in a public setting. Identity politics bores me to death, but I couldn't help but notice that all four of the questioners were white men in their late 30s and early 40s. Every question was prefaced by a 50-plus word statement that demonstrated the questioner's wide-ranging understanding of all things data. It was like an audition. And who knows, maybe it worked. Maybe this very senior Fed pulled his assistant aside after the Q&A session and said "That guy in the blue striped oxford shirt who asked that really sharp question about extract-transform-load--get me his number. I need him on staff ASAP." 

After the keynote address, we collected swag from exhibitors, and then attended break-out sessions, which were only slightly too-technical; just enough that I felt that I was learning something. In one session (the most technical), the speaker quoted Bill Gates' two rules of automation. To paraphrase: 

1. Automation applied to an efficient process will magnify the efficiency. 
2. Automation applied to an inefficient process will magnify the inefficiency. 

Commenting on artificial intelligence, the same speaker (a scientist who probably understands the topic as well as anyone) said that no one really understands AI at all. "You'll never understand how it got the answer; you just have to decide if the answer is believable." 

How should I feel about this? Reassured that it's not just me who can't wrap my head around something so complicated? Or terrified that a senior Federal government scientist can stand in front of a room full of Feds and contractors and blithely claim that a technology that controls more and more of the world every day is a total mystery even to the initiated, and that we shouldn't worry about it? Yeah, definitely the latter. Not reassuring at all.

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I actually love going to these conferences. I always learn something, and I get to watch people. And I love to watch people, wherever they are--in a hospital emergency room when they're tired and confused and vulnerable; or at a professional conference, when they're well-dressed and well-prepared and polished like diamonds. They're all interesting. More interesting than birds. And much more interesting than data.