Stymied by a 13-year-old
Peter the Pittsburgh plumber's son was supposed to be my saviour, my boy genius in electronic armour, ready and able to lead us on a quest for cyber gold on the Web.
Instead I'd like to fire the kid. But I'm afraid of getting bombed through the Internet.
Besides my work as a financial and technology journalist, I'm also a publisher of a small and decidedly rocky monthly newsletter called The Quality Executive. My partner is a big-time management pundit, something of a world expert in that mysterious (at least to me) thing called the quality movement. You know, worker teams. Empowered managers. Demings. Everything we've read about in the business magazines but were too embarrassed to admit that we didn't have a clue what it actually meant. Just like modern art, really.
Anyway, like every publisher with an IQ higher than the average midnight temperature, the thought came to me: We need a home page. We need to be out there with the big boys and girls, strutting our stuff on the Net for the online world to see. To paraphrase Jessie Jackson, I thought we could be a Some Body.
Visions of quick riches were dancing in my head. Hm, there are so many people out there cruising the Web that we're bound to stumble across a few thousand of them willing and able to expense-account a subscription to our humble product. No more mass, expensive mailed solicitations to lists bought with precious marketing dollars. No more constant stress over managing the in and out, the ying and yang, of the mail-a-sample-mail-an-invoice-hope-they-buy cycle of boom and bust. (Actually, we've pretty much missed the boom part, but that's another story.)
On the Web, they'll come, they'll see, they'll buy. Or so I told myself.
But what to do to get up and running on the Web? I had a sense, just barely, of the game plan, but excuse me for not getting goose bumps all over when someone breathlessly mentions java scripting.
It was obvious that if we were to implement this grand strategy we would have to take on a newcomer to our little publishing group. But just a morning of phone calling had me in the dumps: We simply couldn't afford a real, honest to goodness Web designer, at $100-an-hour.
Enter the family plumber. As fate would have it, he arrived at our house early one morning when I was playing on the computer with child uno. (Remember, we provincial Americans actually know our plumbers.) Soon the talk turned to his miracle 13-year-old son, the kid with his home page who was starting to hire himself out as a Web designer.
To cut ahead through a few scenes, an initial meeting was arranged. I was to meet the teenaged Wizard of the New Oz.
And at first encounter, I was optimistic. The kid clearly knew his Internet lingo. He had, too, an incredible dexterity with the keyboard, able to type faster than anyone I've ever met and all without even looking down.
But the more I got to know young Peter, the more I realised that there is - right now - a hidden world out there of teenagers who simply know more about online technology than just about any adult I've ever met. They are the masters-in-waiting for the coming Networked Age, just biding their time until puberty and a driver's license and a chance to claim their spots at the top of the new pecking order. You think Bill Gates was young when he passed the billion-dollar mark. My prediction: We haven't seen anything yet on the youthful wealth front. Just wait and see.
And I soon came to another realisation, one that is a bit depressing to us middle-aged types. The fact is that nowadays, anyone over 20 or so is a dinosaur. If you're over 20, you grew up with TV as the dominant media influence. Under 20, and you are cruising the Web while the rest of us watch reruns of I Love Lucy.
Some of these young whiz kids, meanwhile, apply their skills toward mostly healthy pursuits, like making money honestly. The New York Times recently profiled a spate of 15 to 17-year-olds who work for software companies or have their own Web design companies. One broke into the six figure salary range by age 18.
But some of the younger set seem intent on less socially constructive activities. Perhaps that's because their technical skills have outpaced their sense of responsibility.
Young Peter, I was to learn quickly, skewed toward the latter group. He belongs to an international, cyber-connected cabal of mostly young male teenagers who share tales of hacking and phreaking (that's using one computer to dial to another phone, from where you can hack the evening away merrily without a chance of getting caught) with each other through late-night online chatting and e-mails.
And they have a lot of power - a lot of power - to do what ever they want with their computers and modems.
During one meeting to discuss our progress, the topic of switching Internet access providers came up. Peter thought it would be a good idea to test how securely the prospective new company protected its online 'back room'.
Zow. In literally seconds, the kid had himself behind the fire wall and was expanding encoded, encrypted files looking for embedded clues to decipher passwords and unlock a database of account names and details. Had I not expressed some discomfort in the exercise, I'm sure he would have cracked the secrets in no time.
Another time, Peter told me how he and his mates had developed something we will refer to here as Online Hell. That's a software program that allows them to create false accounts for one of the biggest and best known consumer online services, and from there spend a lot of free hours touring the cyber world. Apparently, it takes the online company's subscriber management system 17 days to recognise a false account, at which times the young cyber thugs simply create new ones.
(For obvious reasons, names here have been changed to protect the guilty. And me.)
But what really sent a few shivers down the spine was Peter's talk of sending e-mail grenades to those who fall out of his favour. Once the unfortunate victim clicks to open what appears to be an innocent e-mail message, well, it's time to get out the credit card for a replacement hard drive. And to remember the adage that there are two types of computer users. Those who back up. And idiots.
While I certainly do not condone the kid's cyber mischievousness, I thought it best not to let it interfere with my desire to get a home page at a fraction of the cost of what a mainstream Web design firm might charge. I'm on the road to online victory, after all, and moralising over evil youth won't change much.
But first I'm still trying to get over a few speed bumps, namely a 13-year-old's inability to operate with any sense at all of business propriety.
It's not just that he sleeps well past noon many days. Or that making an appointment for, say, a telephone meeting, has about as much chance of being honoured as I have of inviting the Pope down to the corner strip bar.
The real frustration is being unable to explain a strategic business need and the imperative to actually look at things the way your customers would cover.
The second used some advanced animation software to produce a wavy, slinky visual effect that might have been nice if we were selling tee-shirts to the mescalin crowd, but was hardly the look that might make a corporate executive want to push the 'request a sample copy' button.
So, two months into my work with the young Peter, I'm still without a home page. Soon, he tells me.
I'll get to the next design, he promises. Soon.
You'll love it, he insists.
And for my part, I'm too petrified of that unexpected e-mail to push too hard. The moral of this tale: If you're in the market to build a Web site for your company, hire an adult. They cost more, but they're likely to get to bed on time.