Denise Duncan has worked in technology since the very beginning of the internet. Now, as the head for project management for Project Liberty, an initiative of Unfinished Labs, she uses tech to build a web that’s more inclusive and open.
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There are No Girls on the Internet. As a production of My Heart Radio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd, and this is there are no Girls on the Internet. So when I first started getting really into the Internet, I always assumed that I was an outlier. I never really saw imagery of women, let alone black women taking up a lot of space online and all the movies and media. I saw that people who were really into the Internet in those days were all men, and a specific kind of man at that, you know, nerdy and almost always white. So the story I let myself believe was that women and people of color and queer folks, all of us, we were all fighting to break into this industry that was pretty much a boys club. It wasn't until much later that I realized that story I've been telling myself it was wrong. We'd always been there. On the earliest days of computing and the Internet and technology, marginalized folks were at the forefront doing work of making it better. Now this realization allowed for a complete shift in my thinking technology and the Internet. It's our rightful domain. And even if our stories are not always told or appreciated, or worse, if they're intentionally left out of the narrative. We're still here taking up space, and we have been from the very beginning. Women like Denise Duncan are exactly who I'm talking about. Denise has been working in tech since the earliest days of the Internet, and today she's still there working to make sure the Internet is equitable and inclusive. Denise has had a front row seat to how the Internet has changed over the years, and voices like hers can help us understand where it's going next. So, you know, as a black woman in tech, what have your experience has been like? Like, first of all, like like what brought you to this work in general? Like how did you get here? I started working in tech in ninety six, started building websites kind of like as soon as you could make a living building websites. I got a I got an internship with a with an organization called x org, which was a consortium that ran a UI for Lennox called x Windows, and um it was like an incredible place, Like the people there were so nerdy and like a bunch of the people who worked there like went on to work at W three C you know, like like and they Okay, So this was nineties six, at that time, they were experimenting with cloud computing. Like they I saw an experiment of somebody running Windows, running Windows and Word on one machine and using it on another one in right, like they already like made that leap at that time, right, which is incredible. And I studied physics when I was in school, and um, like I said, I got involved like at the very very beginning of the Internet. So at my like works the job, I spent a lot of time, um browsing the web, you know, like and it was Netscape one you know. Um, we actually used something called links I think, which was like a text based browser and like let me just go like I'll beeek out a little bit more. We I actually like the whole four way foray into um kind of like the Internet. In the web was using Gopher and um Archie, which were like precursors to the Web. Like Archie would allow you to search a bunch of different archives and stuff for files and everything, and Gopher was like almost like the Web, but it was very highly structured, so you had to like go through all these menus and stuff. Right. So anyway, like at my job, so I used like Archie Gopher for school, and stuff. And at my job, I started playing around with with Netscape because my boss was like she discovered the Internet and the web because she was a UM she would go coupon shopping right and like even at that time, like she was finding deals and deals. Anyway, I started playing around with it, and I just realized, like you know, it was very easy to actually figure out how it all worked, Like building a web page just took like looking at the source and the browser and working it out from there. So you know, I was kind of like at this place where I was like, Okay, I studied physics. I'm pretty sure I don't want to become a research scientist. Um, what am I going to do with this? So I got that internship at x org and like, um that the rest is history to some extent. So you you know, you talked a little bit about sort of you know, seeing all this wild stuff like the cloud, the early cloud computing and all that, and he talked about how it was sort of all this geeky, nerdy stuff. Did you feel like I have found my people when you were doing this early internet work, where you like I have found my people or did you feel like this is what I want to be doing, but showing up here as myself in this space feels fraught, Like like, what what were the feelings like being at the forefront of the Internet in this way? Oh wow, that's such an interesting question, and I've never really thought about that. I think in a lot of ways, I did feel like these are my people because I think in those early days, like, let me say this, I think the Internet changed completely around two thousand seven two eight, when the when the iPhone came around, right, I think before that it was a really different universe where it was kind of populated by geeks and nerds who just vibed on being geeks and nerds together, right, and like it didn't matter, like um, like it was just like we're cool because like you know, uh, yeah, we're cool because like we're going on all dot whatever and checking out you know, Melvin songs or D and D tips together or whatever. Right, So, like there was and there was all of this experimentation, like there were so many sites that were just like nonsense or like weird art projects and stuff like that. And so I did feel like I found my people because like I was, I'm all about that, like just like creating for creating sake, and you know there's like such a short feedback loop, especially at the web with the Web at that time, like building a web page, like you just saw stuff instantly, right, So it was really good, like creative medium. I think, Like I'll tell you about my first paying job that I got. It was a place called the Internet Company that literally owned the domain internet dot com. Um we used to get um okay, so we had like oup at internet dot com. Right. Every once in a while we get like an awesome one like hey Internet, where's the poor neat? Oh my god. And the guys that I worked with, they're like so I think like two or three of the guys who founded the Internet Company were in like the Boston Phoenix, like their free paper. They're like the who's who the Internet at that time. Um, so they like understood what was coming and they owned all they Like one of the guys in me off my office owned the domain god dot com. Right. So another funny story, like somebody wrote him as like dear God and the guitarist from my band and he wrote back and he was like, sorry, I play bass. I love that anyone does. Sort of you sort of get this sense that these were folks who, like you said, they knew what was coming, and they were really putting down infrastructure, camping out in domain names that they knew were going to be big um. And so you really had a front seat to a lot of that early architecture of what we know as the Internet. Because she had such a foundational role of building out the earliest architecture of what the Internet would eventually become, Denise feels a real sense of responsibility to work to make it better, which show word our Project Liberty, an initiative of Unfinished Labs that tries to transform how the Internet works and who benefits from the digital economy by creating new civic architecture for our digital world. At Project Liberty, Denise uses blockchain, a digital ledger of transactions that allow for digital information to be recorded and distributed to build civic technology to imagine the next generation of the Web, one that serves people, not platforms. That's actually why, like what attracted me to the project, the Project Liberty is because like I was there, and you know, in all honesty, like I feel some responsibility for where we've ended up, right um, where the web has ended up, and like I'm not I know, I'm not responsible, but here's why. Right, Like at the beginning, we were all like, Okay, this is cool, but like how are we going to make money? Like how do we keep these awesome jobs? Right? Um? And like eventually and and you know when you were talking about finding your people, like we would have um barbecues. We go to this group pub every Friday, right the Internet company, and hang out and drank a whole lot and talk and talk and talk and and like so we learned a lot about each other's like philosophies. Right, So a lot of people there the Internet was about like freedom, Like the web was about the ability for people to broadcast. It was all about like individuals being able to speak for themselves, right, Like all of us believe that that's why we were there, in order to enable people to have a voice. But what happened was at some point, you know, Google started, ad tech started, and all of a sudden, like, oh, we are making money, right, we are able to support this. We have to sell out a little bit in order to do it right, but we can do it right. And so like at that point, I became like super ambivalent about working in the tech industry because that felt like a real betrayal of like that, like it's about letting people speak, right it, you know, it wasn't about little people speak. It was about surveilling people at that point. Right. So, when um, I talked to Braxton about Project Liberty, he and I go back a little while, Like, um, he was saying, like, I know, you're interested in doing something a little different, like maybe moving on from tech, moving into you know, something a little bit more mission driven, like let me tell you about this. And it was a perfect marriage, right of the knowledge and experience I have from um, you know, working in tech for so long, and the desire I had to to move into a space where I was doing things for people, because I think the other part of my ambivalence was, like, you know, I realized, like the tech industry is a great way to make a living and one of the only good ways to make a living in this country right now, right, And so why is that right? And and why is Facebook like a technology company requiring people to move to San Francisco to work for them, right like you know, So anyway, so I really saw it as an opportunity to help do a little reset back to the original ideas of what the web was founded on. I mean, as far as i'm concer let's take a quick right, how a back. I know that Project Liberty is all about sort of using tech to make sure the web is you know, open and equitable and really centered on people. Can you talk us through a little bit about how you how you are speaking to accomplish that, how you do that? Yeah? So it's been a journey for us, right, because what we're trying to do is not with the tech industry is motivated by us naturally, Right, We're trying to build this public infrastructure to help take social networks, the social graph, right is the technical term for it. Take the social graph and make it a you know, a universally owned property so that every individual can decide what they want to do with the information that you know exists in that social breath. And it also means that you know, these companies that are dominating the space now don't get to hold onto your data and don't get to hold onto your relationships like you own those connections. Right because right now, if you leave Facebook, you leave you're leaving like I leave Facebook and leaving like five connections that I've built up over the years and why is that right? So the idea behind Project Liberty is what we have to do is make the social graph of public good and then see what that unleashes as far as innovation creativity, because you know, one of the things that we're doing is building this this protocol on top of the blockchain, okay, and and and we're doing that because that allows us to manage identity and manage state in a way that we can't in other places. And it also gives us an avenue to building an ecosystem where we can can really build in incentives for people to come aboard. And in that way, it's really different than the model that exist in Silicon Valley, right, which is you know, it's about who you know, it's about those venture capitalists. With the blockchain, what we have the opportunity for, like you can invest in the project that you're interested in. We're going to take advantage of that, right and and figure out some ways to, like I said, create those incentives to bring different types of people um into this uh in a way that we can't now um with the with the current system. Yeah, I mean when people hear things like blockchain, I feel like automatically what you condropt is like Bro was talking about crypto, and I do wish that we could broaden the conversation to folks who are doing things like yourself to bring more people in to try to build more equitable systems and you know, kind of build that into it. I wish I wish that it was something that had a it was didn't automatically conjurupt the bros talking crypto, that it conjured up what you're talking about, you know, but that I think like that's the opportunity that we have right now, right because what we have, what we have to do with this project is create this diverse coalition of people who were going to support it. And like I don't I don't just mean like people with color or women or l l G B t Q. I mean like the diversity of thought. Right. Like one of the issues with technology right now is it like it's a certain type of person um with with a certain type of background who's creating all of these apps and programs, and so naturally that's gonna you know, impact how and what they create UM And and also like we've seen it with you know, what's happened with some of the the social networks that are out there. A lot in the impacts that we're experiencing, you know, they weren't unknown. It was because like people who had the knowledge weren't included in the conversation, right, And so um, that's what we aren't. That's a part of Project Liberty. We know we have to to create We have to create this community that includes as much different expertise and background and experience as possible, because that's the only way we're going to be able to create something that's usable by you know us. All Um, I've I almost I almost started snapping, and then I remembered recording a podcast. I mean, that's it, right, That's like I have said this so many times on the show. People are probably rolling their eyes. But the reason why we need to make sure tech and the people that build it tech leadership are inclusive not just because it's it's the good, the nice thing to do, which it is. It's because the folks who are building these tools and these platforms that dictate so much about our world, if they're all homogeneous, there's a big chance for harm, right, and we know that harm will be focused on people who are already marginalized and so it's not just the nicest exactly exactly. Um, So I guess I have to ask, given all that and given what we know about the state of you know, technology and platforms, are you like hopeful I'm at the future of the web, the future of the internet, the future of platforms, Like do you feel like you are thinking that things on the horizon are going to be better? Are going to be worse? Like what's your what's your take? Oh, I think things are going to be better, Like, you know, maybe like a year or two ago, I would have said something different, but I think the level of awareness that people have on the impact that technol legy is having on their lives has shifted in a really significant way, and people are ready to you know, I think like, um, when like the iPhone came about and Facebook became like a dominant mode of communication, people are just like, yeah, this works, this is how it goes, and yeah, I'll give up my data because everything's free. Right, But now a few years in people are like what does that mean? And so there are really really meaningful conversations happening right now, um, in spaces that I didn't think they would take place. In you know, Like, Okay, I was listening to a basketball podcast and they started talking about blockchain and n f T right, and like it was just like like it just made me realize how like this stuff is just everywhere, everywhere, everywhere, and and and I think it's everywhere, and the level of understanding is a level deeper than it was maybe a year or two ago. And so like we have a real opportunity to to share with people and say like, hey, you know what, if you're looking for something different, we have something different, and for them to be able to understand it, right, and and and like I just don't mean project liberty. I think there's all kinds of projects and people who um have this opportunity right now. I I agree with you. I mean, I think it's easy to feel dejected and downtrodden and depressed, you know, when you look at the state of the Internet. But I think that like, like you said that you were describing the early crew of Internet weirdos, and I just think that there's something about it when you bring a bunch of weird like people who are committed to thinking differently together. I believe in the power of that. I believe that that that gives me a lot of hope. Uh, that's that's pretty nice. More after a quick break, m let's get right back into it, um, one more question for you. So I know that you're a musician. You were a drummer for the Transmissions, the Transmission, the Transmissions. Wow. Thanks, Oh my god, not like you were like playing South myself West in two thousand six, like early days. I mean talk about like being foundational to all these different places. I guess my question is like do you see you know you were talking about sort of like the creativity and the innovation of um, the Internet, Like do you are those things related to you? Like the creativity and the um, you know, the creativity of being a musician and making music and making things creatively, Like are are these sort of like is it a ben diagram for you where they related? Oh my god? Like you read my mind right there, Bridget, and it totally is Like for me, it's my experience playing music was part of what fueled the way that I could think about technology. It was just like, uh, I don't know if other musicians or creative people have this experience, but like I really was conscious of using like a different part of myself in my brain when I was playing drums and performing and stuff, and it just let me and helped me like access some different things when I actually like went to work, right like I you know, learning how to perform. I use that stuff every day. I really really do, like in meetings and and stuff. Right. Um, the I mean like just like real basic like the experience of like getting to south By Southwest with my bandmates, Like what an incredible experience for us? Like what a confidence booster for us? You know, like we did that ourselves, you know what I mean? And like, yeah, all of this stuff is additive. And then like like just like on the plane of like thinking about how to build things creatively and collaborating with people like I drew out draws so much from you know, the bands that I played with, the collectives that I've been in to to the tech that I work in. It's it's there's totally a line um for me there women like Denise or what makes me excited to tell the stories of all the underrepresented voices and identities behind tech and the Internet and the ways we were always there working to make things better, more inclusive, more creative. Even if our stories go overlooked and not often told, and I'm so excited to join women like Denise for my very first ever live There Are No Girls on the Internet taping on September at Unfinished Live. Unfinished Live as a convening of technologists, journalists, artists, and change makers in person at the Shed in New York City and virtually online. It'll be two days of talks about how we can all use ethical tech to build a fairer economy and a stronger democracy, alongside leading minds shaping that future. Just go to live dot Unfinished dot com and use promo code tangodi. That's T A N G O T I and I can't wait to see all there got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi? You can be us at Hello at tangodi dot com. You can also find transcripts for today's episode at tangodi dot com. There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by me Bridget tod. It's a production of I Heart Radio and Unboss creative Jonathan Strickland as our executive producer. Terry Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michaelmato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, bridget Dad. If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, check out the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. And then I have to w