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Hubris #2 (Steve Baggage)

When I arrived at SmartNet's offices in a 34 story building in the Financial District of Manhattan, I was wearing my standard interview attaire: conservative black overcoat, brown sweater over a dress shirt and tie, khaki pants and the plainest sort of Dr. Marten's shoes. When I entered the building I immediately felt underdressed. The lobby of the building had been kept up very well since when the building had first been errected, and though that had been many years ago the building still had some panache.

Hubris #1 (Heath Wagner)

Cy received his entree into the world of fast growing technology companies in the same manner most others had: through a friend. In January of 2000 he ran into a high school classmate on the corner of 34th and 7th in New York City after having not seen him for at least four years. During their accidental hiatus from one another the friend, Heath Wagner by name, had graduated cum laude from some semi-famous rocket science school but had decided to forgo the noble pursuit of intergalactic conquest in favor of working on a fascinating and Quixotic project launched by a young man he had met on the internet. Cy, in the meantime, had decided to drop his old career track and find a job providing computer support and repair for whoever would hire a religion major to do such a thing.

"Cy, why don't you apply at Cognativity? Our IT staff is woeful."

"Cognativity? That's what your company is called?"

"Yeah. Gene, the guy who started the company, is trying to build distributed AI [narrator's note: Artificial Intelligence]. If the company ever gets to the stage where we do advertising, I think they want to say something about the 'birth of connected thought.'"

"Huh."

"His idea is to build a computer program called SmartNet that can run on hundreds of computers, using their united power to think in a way that is structurally similar to the way human's do. He thinks if he can get the program to correctly mimic the structures of the human mind that artificial intelligence will naturally emerge."

"Huh."

"Anyway, it doesn't really matter because even if his design is correct, it'll take them 50 years to finish it."

"Hmmm.... So your not a believer anymore?"

"Heh. Not really. It's stupid though, because the project team that I'm working on has actually developed a product that the company could sell and make a lot of money with. But Gene has been fighting against us ever since we started it, even though SmartNet won't make any money at all until its finished..."

"... in 50 years. But you guys have venture capital now though, right?"

"Right, but if we want to get more we need to be able to show that we are doing something useful. SmartNet isn't smart enough yet, but my product is. Anyway, politics aside, Cognativity is a pretty good place to work. You should apply."

"Well, sure. It would be great to start interviewing someplace I know someone. Will you set something up for me or should I give someone there a call?"

"I'll take care of it and call you."