Grace introduces one of the central themes of Season 2: how the physical layers of our digital world interact with the human layers of the stack. We then are introduced to Fen Aldrich, who explains his role at Equinix as a Developer Advocate…and how their hair color (“Absinthe”) is a reflection of their arts & technology background - from music theory to hardware infrastructure. Fen expresses how they resonated with episode 3 of Season 1, “Network,” and how they related to the connections in infrastructure. We then hear a quote from Jack Waters from that episode, explaining how the early days of infrastructure were designed to change the way we communicate.
Grace then discusses how the history of technology is about interconnection. It’s the key to more powerful and inclusive tech. Fen & Grace conclude with a talk discussing what topics they’d like to see covered in Season 2: With an over-arching theme of the human aspects of tech, Fen hopes to discover the “fingerprints” in what we’ve built. How do you preserve the Internet? What is “Digital Anthropology” and how is it applied to hardware infrastructure?
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Fen Aldrich:
I'm very big in the world of the DevOps movement. Our efforts are largely intersectional. Just because we work in different teams and have slightly different tools that we aim with, we still have the same goals and uniting around those goals and understanding how we can pull together instead of being at odds, we can build a better thing and it'll be more powerful and more interesting and longer lasting.
Grace Ewura-Esi:
You're listening to Traceroute, a podcast about the inner workings of our digital world. For Equinix, I'm Grace Grace Ewura-Esi. As you've probably surmised by now, Traceroute is evolving, but don't worry, we'll continue to explore the physical layers that make up our digital world, but we'll be doing that by investigating potentially the most important layer of all, the human layer of the stack. Now, as I mentioned, I'm going to need a very special team to help me present these stories. Last time, we met Shweta Saraf, who we dubbed the Pioneer because of her knack for exploring new ideas and making connections between people and technologies. This week, we're going to round out my Starship crew with a navigator, someone who can help steer the ship in directions I might not have thought of myself.
Fen Aldrich:
I'm Fen Aldrich. I am a developer advocate at Equinix, which means I get to represent the company I work for to the communities that we want to reach and be a part of, but I also get to represent that community back to the company. And so it gets to be a lot of storytelling and saying like, "Hey, here's a story we're kind of telling. If you relate to this, we can probably help you out and ease some pain points and get you where you want to go, technology wise." But at the other side, I get to say like, "Hey, here's what I'm hearing in the community and in the tech world at large, and here are the stories being told, are we in alignment with that? Are we running against that?" Like, how is this going to connect with that group?
Grace Ewura-Esi:
Well, before we get started and we're talking all about technology, I want to talk about colors.
Fen Aldrich:
All right.
Grace Ewura-Esi:
Your hair is an exquisite shade of sea foam. It's giving me under the sea, and it's also giving me a dash of Lisa Frank. I got to ask, what is the name of this color?
Fen Aldrich:
The main color is absinthe and a little bit of guardian, which is a very bright green, and a little bit of, I think it's aquatic, which is a darker teal.
Grace Ewura-Esi:
I got close with my-
Fen Aldrich:
Like you're picking up all the right vibes that are coming out.
Grace Ewura-Esi:
Wonderful. I love when that happens in my life. Well, and that leads me to my opening question. What's so bright and beautiful about where your experience comes from?
Fen Aldrich:
My background is arts and technology and that intersection. I've always been interested in how things work. How does it actually make the thing and how do I get the results I want rather than just, "Oh, I kind of like these, but why do I like these and how can I pick more intelligently to get an effect I want?" I always loved learning how to play music, and then I got into music theory because it was like, "Well, how do I affect the way the music comes through, and what can we do to evoke certain emotions and doing things in very specific ways to lead the very intentional results." Infrastructure connects with me really well too. I've always loved all that connective tissue that really allows everything else to go. When I was doing music, as much as I love playing music, I love engineering it as well, and running the soundboard and making sure everything comes together, which just creates this space for other people to play in, and you're like, "You do your thing and don't worry about it. I'm going to bring it all together." When I get to do events for advocacy and get to organize things and do things like that, I really enjoy that because it's bringing together all these speakers and an audience and people and knitting it together in a way that says, "Okay, you're all going to do what you're really great at, and I'm just going to present it and bring it all together and do it all at once and make one beautiful show all together."
Grace Ewura-Esi:
When you were talking, I kept imagining you as a conductor, and that's kind of how I see your role this season is I think that bringing together of, and some people don't realize how powerful conductors are. They're like, "Well, that person's up there with that stick, just waving it around." But it is guiding and it is world building for the people who are following the conduction. But with that in mind, tell me about season one. Did you have an episode you liked or did you think, "It's all great and Grace is my favorite?" No pressure.
Fen Aldrich:
Of course, all of it was wonderful.
Grace Ewura-Esi:
Right?
Fen Aldrich:
Networks was the first one that caught my attention if only because I'm the weirdo, walks around a city and is like, "Ooh, how does this infrastructure get connected? What's the construction happening here? What are they bringing together? Where are they running things? What's going on?"
Grace Ewura-Esi:
Jack Waters actually talked about that in episode three.
Speaker 3:
There are very physical things. There are fibers and switches and routers, and they get interconnected. We wanted to build something from scratch. We had lots of folks who had construction backgrounds. They were the folks that went and dug up the ground and threw conduits in the ground and threw fiber in the conduits and hooked up optical equipment to the fiber and hooked up routers to the optical equipment. That notion of boundaryless communications was something that struck me as, "Wow, if this really takes hold, it's going to change the way we communicate."
Fen Aldrich:
Talking about things like the early internet infrastructure of running all that early fiber and running all these early interconnects. I remember this turning point of the early millennium where we went from all dial up legacy phone networks, tying together multiple phone lines to try and get any sort of connectivity and speed to suddenly, you could get that speed at home over cable or over DSL or something, and largely thanks to all these fiber networks that started to get built and interconnect and be able to transfer so much more data, so much faster. Open source, I think was the other one that ties into the people aspect and talking about hardware and software and that dichotomy and bringing it together just connects over and over again with themes of my life like, our efforts are largely intersectional just because we work in different teams and have slightly different tools that we aim with, we still have the same goals and uniting around those goals and understanding how we can pull together instead of being at odds, we can build a better thing. It'll be more powerful and more interesting and longer lasting.
Grace Ewura-Esi:
All of my co-hosts this season have talked about this point in particular. It's been interesting because we've all spoken about interconnection and not the product we have at the company, but the interconnection of the way that the history of technology has been and the future must be if we're going to build something that is even more inclusive, more adaptive, more welcoming, and also more powerful. We need everyone to join in in order to bring the greatest tools that they've got and to combine them with what we know in order to build the future. And it makes me think, what's our future? What are we going to be talking about in season two? What do you hope to explore in this season that we're co-hosting together?
Fen Aldrich:
The human aspect of technology is kind of the overarching theme I think that we have for this, and I love that the fingerprints that people put on the work that they do. I'm always interested in the concepts of Easter eggs or all these little things left behind and really digging into that technical anthropology. What are all of these fingerprints and everything that's been left behind over the years as people have built this technology? People have built the internet, and so there's all these little assembly error codes that get spit out, that spell things because it's text to decimal so you've got letters and it's like, "That's hilarious." It's just someone thought it was funny at the time. It reminds you all this technology was built by a bunch of nerds who thought it would be cool if computers could talk. There's so much that digs into that like, how do you preserve so much of the internet too? I think of with my kids who the modern world of Tiktoks and these short videos and these memes that come and go and you create your own and they're all rapid fire. I remember when it was like you had to go to ytmnd.com and your meme was some words over a video audio clip, framed in the same picture over and over again.
Grace Ewura-Esi:
I think digital or technical anthropology is such a good way to frame what we're going to talk about because I think you and I are going to be talking about lots, the connection, the fingerprint, you're saying. I love that imagery because it's something that you're born with and it's unique to you, and I think that when we work inside of these structures, we do bring something that's unique to us, and I love when we can create together because what's created together is usually really difficult to destroy because everyone has touched it. I do really enjoy that imagery of fingerprints. And as we kind of wind it down, I've been encouraging everyone to create their own sign off. I've got my own sign off, so I'm not going to create anymore. I've been given a couple that I really like, so I'm going to stick with them. But I'm curious, if you had to have a sign off, if you had to put yourself in one or two words, a moniker for saying farewell to the people, what would your handle effectively be?
Fen Aldrich:
It's so stressful. I have no idea what I would come up with. There's an infinite world of possibilities. There's so many words you could possibly use, and I have no idea. I want to find the right ones, but I don't know what they are.
Grace Ewura-Esi:
That's okay. I am sticking by the conductor for you. I think that that is broad, but it's also specific somehow and it talks about organizing and movement and it's open to interpretation dependent on the work that needs to be done. I think I would stick with the conductor for you. What do you think?
Fen Aldrich:
It's a good start. I like it.
Grace Ewura-Esi:
All right, let's tell the people where they can find us on these here, Internets. I am on Twitter, more so a watcher than an active tweeter, but you can find me at @GraceEwuraEsi, which is G-R-A-C-E E-W-U-R-A E-S-I. And where can they find you?
Fen Aldrich:
I am also on Twitter more than anywhere else, but just about everywhere. It's @crayzeigh, C-R-A-Y-Z-E-I-G-H.
Grace Ewura-Esi:
You can also find us on Origins_dev on Twitter, so hit us up with any of your questions, any of the things you're interested in hearing us talk about, and just participate in the community with us. Fen, why don't we go ahead and try our sign offs? I'll get started. I'm Grace Ewura-Esi, the storyteller, AKA, the philosopher.
Fen Aldrich:
And I'm Fen Aldrich, the conductor.
Grace Ewura-Esi:
Stick around for season two. It's going to be fun. Traceroute is a podcast about the inner workings of our digital world from Equinix, the world's digital infrastructure company. If you'd like to take a deeper dive, check out origins.dev for an up close and personal look at our digital world through a creative lens. You can search Equinix Developers on YouTube for developer led live-streamed technical content. We also invite you to join our conversation on Twitter by following our account @Origins_dev. Links are in the show notes. Traceroute is a production of Stories Bureau. This episode was produced by Mathr de Leon and John Taylor. It was edited by Joshua Ramsey with additional editing by Janelle Monique. It was mixed by Jeremy Tuttle and Tim Balint with Music Supervision by Gabe Schatz. Our theme song was composed by Ty Gibbons. Be sure to subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you've enjoyed the show, we'd appreciate your ratings and reviews. I'm Grace Ewura-Esi. Thanks for listening.
- Produced by Math-ar de Leon and John Taylor.
- Edited by Joshua Ramsey with additional editing by Jhenelle Monique.
- Mixed by Jeremy Tuttle and Tim Balint, with music supervision by Gabe Schatz.
- Theme song was composed by Ty Gibbons.