BitTorrent : 'Do I Look Like a CEO

 

Cohen in San Francisco, where his quirks aren't seen as a big deal

Bram Cohen's brain works differently from most people's. He has Asperger's syndrome, a condition that keeps him rooted in the world of objects and patterns, puzzles and computers, but leaves him floating, disoriented, in the everyday swirl of human interactions.

When Cohen was in his late twenties he sat on a wooden chair with a Dell (DELL) keyboard on his lap for the better part of nine months writing a software program. In 2001 he introduced BitTorrent, an ingenious, disruptive, and controversial piece of technology that is available for free and lets people easily exchange huge amounts of digital information,from software upgrades to videos. Pirated movies have always been the most popular files shared. They, along with more legitimate files, now generate about half of all traffic on the Internet.

BitTorrent brought Cohen fame and notoriety. It turned him into a folk hero and a Hollywood villain. Later, to reclaim the program for himself and possibly for some greater good, Cohen was obliged to become something else he had never considered: a boss. Four years ago, at age 29, he co-founded a company, BitTorrent, to build a business around his software. He got good money from venture capitalists but is still trying to find a convincing strategy.

For Cohen, this has been a fraught journey into the sometimes bewildering world of the office. The social conventions that ease everyday interactions can still elude him. He doesn't like to shake hands or wear shoes or make small talk. He often plays with a Rubik's Cube. Sometimes when he is outraged, or more often when he is fatigued, he bursts forth with unwelcome candor. He can be oblivious, lecturing on solar cells or economic theory or euphemisms until someone stops him.

Cohen's predicament is not so unusual. Asperger's, only formally recognized in the mid-1990s, is being diagnosed with increasing frequency. Many psychologists view it as a mild form of autism, though that definition is controversial; some advocates believe it is simply a different way of being. In the coming years more people like Cohen will arrive in the workplace, and their presence will have significant consequences, perhaps most obviously in the way we communicate.

Cohen's childhood in Manhattan was one of isolation. He lived comfortably enough with his mother and father and younger brother, Ross, and they shared a vigorous intellectual life. But he had no friends. At 16, he could program in three languages. Yet he could not comprehend the social hierarchies of adolescence. "I was picked on a lot," he says. "There was something obviously wrong with me. But it wasn't acknowledged until I was much older that something had always been off-kilter. Were I to have to redo high school, I would just drop out immediately." He attended the State University of New York at Buffalo for one miserable year and then left.

"THIS IS STUPID"

Back in Manhattan, staying with his parents, he struggled in the working world as a computer programmer. "At first he would be enthusiastic, and then pretty soon he would tell the people who were running the startup they were doing things wrong," says his father, Barry, a writer who had returned to school to study computer science. "If they didn't listen to him—and they never did—he would say 'this is stupid' and he would quit."

By 1997 the code rush was on, and Cohen went west. In San Francisco he felt at ease, and even a bit elated, surrounded by other computer geeks. Here his trouble deciphering human complexities, his seeming indifference to social imperatives, and all his quirks of character were mostly viewed as beside the point. The point was what he could accomplish. In this, Silicon Valley is not as distinct a place as it might seem. Psychologists have noticed clusters of people with Asperger's wherever there is a concentration of high-tech companies.

It took Cohen a few years and several more startups before he discovered what he wanted to do: find an efficient way to share huge amounts of digital data.