Q: Weren’t you worried about Corporate Security finding out you were writing about the company at The Daily Bugle? Making fun of them?
A: No.
I didn’t use my computer at work for anything to do with The Daily Bugle.
At home, on my web site, I called Lucent Technologies Suent Scientific.
They had no reason to suspect Lucent Technologies was Suent Scientific.
They could search for bad things said about Lucent Technologies and not find me because I was writing about Suent Scientific. Without knowing that key, there was not much way they could have found out what I was doing and looking for Suent Scientific.
It would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Not even a needle disguised as a needle. An actual needle. The web was too big, my needle was too small.
Q: So you weren’t worried?
A: I was worried.
The Old Rollback was coming.
You could feel it.
People had nothing better to do than search for a job and surf the net.
There weren’t any other jobs.
People had time on their hands.
I was afraid a co-worker would type my name in a search engine, get a hit on me, and find The Daily Bugle that way.
Then they would see what I was doing.
My secret would be revealed.
It would spread
like wildfire.
Q: Why do you think that didn’t happen?
A: I think nobody could conceive of a technical writer having a wed site where he serialized comic novels about his conditions of production.
Where his hero, or main character, was a disgruntled technical writer.
I never knew another technical writer who was a writer. A literary writer.
Neither did any of them, I guess.
Q: You didn’t brag about it?
A: I didn’t breathe a word to a soul.
I was discreet.
Q: You had a double life. A secret life.
A: Yes.
Like nobody at The Daily Bugle knew Peter Parker was
really