Podcast Interview with Sun's Tim Bray and Radia Perlman
Last night I published the first part of my interview with two senior Sun Microsystems engineers, Tim Bray (Director of Web Technologies) and Radia Perlman (Distinguished Engineer). The interview was to celebrate the 15th birthday of the Web this week.
Several commenters on the Slashdot thread about my post said they'd prefer to get the whole context, rather than just my write-up of it. So here now is the full interview as a podcast [37 minutes, 17MB]. The audio quality is not great at the start (due to a bad telephone connection), but it gets better after a couple of minutes. Note that this is instead of me doing a separate write-up of Part 2.
Subjects discussed
Some of the subjects discussed in the full interview podcast are:
- The past and future of the Web - and where Sun fits into the picture.
- Peer-to-Peer (P2P) and why Tim and Radia don't think it will be a major driver on the Web.
- Web-connected devices (music players, TV, games machines, etc) and the future of the browser.
- Web Office - do Tim and Radia think a browser-based office suite will ever be competitive with MS Office? Sun has StarOffice, which is a desktop alternative to MS Office. Will it go web-based?
- How does Sun fit into the Web 2.0 era we're currently in - e.g. social software, apps that leverage collective intelligence.
- How will RSS and ATOM be used going forward; and thoughts on Google's data format GData.
- Security on the Web
- Where will the Web be at in another 15 years?!
Key Quotes from Part 2
Some key quotes not featured in Part 1:
- Tim on media on the Web: "I do not expect the Internet to be a suitable medium for broadcast video, at any kind of acceptable level of quality that we've come to expect on our TV screen, any time soon. The architecture isn't built to do that and the bandwidth isn't there."
- Tim on Web Office: "Anything that can migrate onto the Web absolutely will."
- Radia on security on the Web and stopping the bad guys: "People ought to be trying to make it easy and cheap, rather than trying to make money out of security."
Hope you enjoy the podcast. I plan to interview more Web industry luminaries over the next few months.
Share
Comments
Subscribe to comments for this post OR Subscribe to comments for all ReadWriteWeb posts
Raw mp3 url :
http://media.odeo.com/2/8/6/rww_sun_interview.mp3
Radia is nervous about false information, but faulty information does not last long on the NET. Several commentators have tried to mess with Wiki data. They were all thwarted in short order. There are many smart eyes. It is too important that everyone have the truth.
Radia is obviously a smart person, but she has under estimated how quickly false information is corrected. The reality is very different than what one expects. Information does not suffer from entropy on the Net. The viewers will quickly set it right.
George, I hope you are right... because I see the 'participatory' nature of the Web as one of its great strengths for the future.
I agree that, if you ask a question on the web and you get 9 true answers and one false answer, 'good information tends to drive out bad information', but I am uneasy about taking that for granted in the long term.
As an Identity monomaniac, I am interested in how reliably the Web can give access to 'good' identity information about people while making it clear which information is 'bad'. Pervasive 'good' information is harder to subvert than isolated 'good' information.
Mr. Macmanus,
I just saw (and am disappointed) that you won't be doing a part 2 of this story. I wrote a response to your Slashdot comment (responding to my original post) which I was hoping would be relevant to the 2nd story. While it seems that the feedback no longer matters in regards to this piece, you did mention some upcoming works that are along the same lines (i.e. interviews with high-caliber members of the technical community). I ask that you take the opinions into account for your next interview piece.
P.S. Sorry about the "simpering imp" comment. I've always enjoyed your writing, was just a bit hasty when I clicked the "submit" button.
*Response to your post on Slashdot: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=193536&cid=15874336
"Mr. MacManus... Glad to make your acquaintance. I know this reply is a couple of days late, so I hope you get it before you've completed part 2 of this piece.
First off, I must apologize for the "simpering imp" comment. I have a great deal of respect for most writers, as I do quite a bit of it and know exactly how difficult a profession it is. All that aside, while I maintain my original stance, I'm not one to poke holes in others work without providing anything constructive in return. First, I must admit that my views are a bit one-sided; I work primarily in the network & network security side of the industry where Radia Perlman is held in extremely high regard. Second, these are only my opinions, so take them however you like:
1) Both of the interviewees are exceptionally intelligent people, and while I've only heard Ms. Perlman speak in person, my guess is they are both quite articulate speakers. That being said, don't paraphrase what they have to say. The original article came off like the author just wanted to see his own words in print. (Being a good interviewer is as difficult a skill as being a good writer. With people of this caliber, show off your interviewing skills).
2) Consider your audience. The majority would much prefer a strait question & answer, interview style article (with most of the content coming in the form of "" of the interviewees).
3) Ask each of them different questions. These two people may both work in "IT" & both write code, but that's pretty much where the similarities end. You have the rare opportunity to get a front-end/back-end perspective on the main topic. Get Tim's views on the past, present, and future of the web from the front-end perspective, and Radia's perspective on the back-end. For example:
- Ask Tim: How XML came into being, how it changed the web as it grew in popularity, and where it is going, as well as how it will grow to meet the needs of "Web 2.0". Ask about XML offshoots (i.e SAML, etc.), ask about Atom, ask about AJAX, etc. I believe he's from Lebanon, ask for some political commentary. Point being, keep the questions concise and relevant to his background, & let Tim's comments fill the article.
- Ask Radia: If she had the opportunity to do it over, what (if anything) would she do differently in regards to her work with Spanning-Tree, with ISIS, and in regards to the ISO vs. IETF, etc. Ask her about the pending transition to IPv6, how she believes it will impact the web, and the global Internet as a whole. Ask her where she believes network security is going, what threats does she expect to see, and what needs to be done to make the next generation of Internet services secure. Find out what major projects she has on the table. Hell, just ask her what she'd like to discuss & have written. She's a phenomenal writer, with the rare ability to take very dry content & make it interesting and lucid, ask her opinion as an author. (I could continue, but it would be a very long list & I'm guessing you get my point).
Again, I know how difficult a job you have, but you've been given a great opportunity to get your name in print next to these two. Don't try to show off how well you can spin their words, show off how well you can interview people of this caliber. Being a good interviewer is an equally difficult skill, but that's the skill that you want to accentuate in this instance.
I wish you the best in part 2 and am looking forward to reading it."
Thanks Greg, your comments are helpful. I will indeed adopt the Q&A style next time. I should also mention that I got very short notice about having the chance to interview Tim and Radia (literally I was told of the opportunity the same day I conducted the interview). So I didn't have much time to prepare questions. It's fair to say my interests are more in the Web (Tim's focus) than in the security/networking side of things (Radia's focus), so the questions probably were slanted to the Web.
Live and learn though :-) I certainly now know what to do to make /. readers happy next time I interview a computing industry luminary! I hope you get a chance to listen to the podcast though, as I think you'll enjoy Tim and Radia's comments in their full context (despite my clumsy interviewing style). Thanks, Richard