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Ditto. I get incredibly irritated with this naïve revisionism.
I spent a lot of my child hood seeking out broken and junk electronics anywhere it could be foun
Ditto. I get incredibly irritated with this naïve revisionism.
I spent a lot of my child hood seeking out broken and junk electronics anywhere it could be found, including dumpster diving behind the high school and businesses. One of the opening scenes in Robert Cringely's Triumph of the Nerds is most instructive. In the first few minutes, you're introduced to a 10 year old kid named Edwin Chin. Take a good long look at that kid, imagine yourself being back at that time and ask yourself, "What adult, except an adult nerd, would ever encourage any kid, male or female, to be like Edwin?". I was like Edwin myself.
The number of people that I knew that were adults interested in computers and technology was exactly one, Murali Mani, and I lived in Chappaqua, NY, which was the very model of a privileged well educated community. This was a community where many people worked at IBM's headquarters at the time, but every person I knew that worked for IBM, were suits. The successful people at IBM were not the engineers, but the suits. No one encouraged you to be an engineer. Everyone encouraged you to be interested in being a doctor, a lawyer or a suit. Engineering really only started to become a desirable career around the first dot-com boom. And even in the first dot-com boom, mostly founding engineers did very well. After the founding engineers, suits still took home a lot of the winnings. It was only post-dot-com bubble that engineering truly became a desirable career that people encouraged and supported you in pursuing instead of pushing you to be a doctor, lawyer or suit.
Beyond Murali, exactly no one encouraged me to get involved with computers. I eventually moved to Raleigh, NC and went to a small private school, that like most private schools, preps you for university. Tech and engineering was never a focus even when I graduated in 2000 at the height of the first bubble. Guy or girl, you were not encouraged to go into tech at all. You would be more likely to be encouraged to play a musical instrument, do art or some sport than do anything tech related.
The revisionists really need to spend some time reading Meredith Patterson's "When Nerds Collide" essay, since most of their real beef is not with hacker culture, but with bro culture that became a part of tech at best a few years after the first dot com bubble.
https://medium.com/@maradydd/when-nerds-collide-31895b01e68c#.9v8oka2x5 https://medium.com/@maradydd/when-nerds-collide-31895b01e68c...
Another thing worth considering about computing history is that that there is a huge huge huge difference between computing pre mini-computer and post-mini computer. The culture in tech from the 80s and 90s didn't destroy the culture in tech pre-1980s described in this article because #patriarchy, but because the tech industry 1980s was entirely wiped out like dinosaurs with the move from 5" HDDs to 3.5" HDDs and the move from mainframes to hobby personal computers. Clayton Christensen's "The Innovator's Dilemma" and AnnaLee Saxenian's "Regional Advantage" will do far more to explain why the engineering/computing world pre-1980s disappeared than any revisionist explanation.
Thanks for the nerd collide link, as its something that has been itching at the back of my mind as of late.
Please see my response to RustyNails above. I feel like you're rebutting an argument that the original poster never made.
I grew up in a pretty different milieu -- no IBM employees, no friends into computers. My dad knew one woman who worked at Cray and I visited her office once. Very super cool. I never bought a computer until I was in grad school as I was able to dumpster dive them all until then, other than the first, which my mom bought.
But I'll tell you this: being a girl, I never hung out with the boy computer nerds doing computer nerd stuff because they didn't seem to want to hang out with a girl. (I did hang out with the boy math nerds, so I don't think it's all boy/girl junior high awkwardness.) So I'm probably one of those people who didn't exist especially in the grandparent post, a non-existent girl computer nerd motivated by herself, because I too was too socially awkward to come in and somehow magically charm a roomful of junior high boys who scorned me proactively because they figured since I was a girl I probably hated them and computers.
Thank god for college and moving away from hometown.
Curious to hear more about the difference between the boy computer nerds and the boy math nerds, especially the differences in the computer or math based hanging out activities (i.e. extra curricular subject matter activities)
Also, re: "a roomful of junior high boys who scorned me proactively because they figured since I was a girl I probably hated them and computers."...
Did they say things along those lines or was this an assumption you made at the time? You clearly didn't hate computers, so I don't know how they would figure that unless you never demonstrated your interest in computers to them.
If they were actively discriminating against you because you were a girl, I'd expect you to have said something like: "a roomful of junior high boys who scorned me proactively because I was a girl despite the fact that they knew I loved computers."
First I want to thank you for your well considered and detail response. It's a huge breath of fresh air and reason in a debate that often include people who are quick to cry foul, jump to conclusions or condemn without stopping to think if they are succumbing to the fundamental attribution error.
1) Awesome. I'm happy your math experience was great.
2) That sucks. Fortunately access to a computer lab or the internet is sufficiently democratized that the unfortunate scenario you encountered shouldn't occur anymore. Having access to any computer and the internet today provides any child today orders of magnitude more privilege to learn and explore their passions than any kid growing up in the 80s, 90s and even 00s. I think there are still many communities that are still computing and internet poor, but we're getting closer and closer to the point where access to computing and the internet is inching closer to being considered a fundamental human right. At least now, it's only a minor socio-economic barrier and the height of that barrier is dropping rapidly, such that in the developed world, more and more people have access to a computing device and internet and the cost of acquiring a minimum viable general purpose computing device with a screen and keyboard can be had for less than $100.
3) From your description, it doesn't sound like many (or possibly any) of those boys were hackers (or became hackers). I think this is an important distinction to make that few people debating these issues do. If none of these boys were hackers, it sounds like you didn't really lose out socially from not being one of them. Hanging out with boys in the computer lab just to download porn sounds about as valuable as hanging out with a clique whose common bond is smoking weed. Not exactly a huge loss in the grand scheme of things. That said, it does sound like you lost out on access to the physical computing resources that would have allowed you to better partake in computing. Do you think this is a fair assessment in hindsight?
This difference between hackers and bros is actually a point Meredith Patterson astutely pointed out in her "When Nerds Collide" essay. Historically, software engineering culture since the birth of the mini-computer has been "hacker culture". It's only in the past 10 years, perhaps as long as 20 that two distinctly new groups become not only part of the industry, but part of the engineers in the industry: Brogrammers and Geek Feminists. Hacker culture on the other hand was born at a time where many people rarely met IRL (or did so long after forming a common bond), where you had short ungendered handles, where the cost of transferring bytes of an image were sufficiently costly that you didn't have avatars and photos that let people know you weren't a dog. It was only in the late 90s to the mid 2000s that people became involved in the industry as a career and not out of natural nerd proclivities. The big change was money. Once Bill Gates made a ton of money and then Google became huge, did people start looking at tech as a way to become rich and a viable career. That's when the Brogrammers and Geek Feminists showed up. The inability of many in this debate to distinguish between male hackers and bros is a huge frustration of mine and is as exemplary of the fundamental attribution error as anyone making assumptions about computing ability based on gender.
Out of curiosity, when were you in middle school? Middle school for me was 1992-1995. I'm particularly curious about dating when you'd be in school because it would help me get an idea of what you meant with some things you said like "a field with historical baggage", which is very very very different if you were in middle in the 80s, 90s or 00s.
Lastly, one particular type of intersectionality I take interest in is neurological diversity. Not everyone has the same brain chemistry and responds the same way to different stimuli (from social situations to loud noises for example) and when they do respond, the range of ways people respond can be direct and unfiltered to shy and measured. One of the concerns I have with neurological intersectionality, is that there is a fundamental incompatibility between an environment that is accommodating and comfortable for the unfiltered and an environment that is accommodating of the sensitive. An environment that tolerates the unfiltered is uncomfortable for those that are sensitive and and environment that is comfortable for the sensitive somewhat necessitates rules, policing and admonishment for violation of behaviors that cause discomfort for those that are sensitive. As someone who identifies as being sensitive, I'm curious about your thoughts are for this dilemma. On a related note, I'm also curious about your thoughts on this somewhat old essay about tact filters: http://www.mit.edu/~jcb/tact.html http://www.mit.edu/~jcb/tact.html
Given my interest in neurological diversity and my belief that there is a fundamental incompatibility between environments that are safe, welcoming and comfortable for the unfiltered versus the sensitive, I think it's important that we, as an industry recognize that need for multiple environments that are supportive of the breadth of cognitive diversity of people that can contribute to our field. Awareness of this cognitive diversity and the creation of well labeled spaces at least creates environments (a) where the unfiltered can participate knowing they need to police themselves in that sensitive space and environments where they can participate and not worry about being sensitive or tactful, and (b) where the sensitive can participate knowing they need to be tolerant of unintentional insensitivity and lack of tact and environments, where they can participate with little risk of being offended, hurt or triggered.
"The reason I ask for explanation is because I can also see that exact same group of male computer nerds assuming that most of their colleagues, male or female are a waste of time because "few people hack on computers". "
BOOM! You got me there. I overlooked the obvious counter to my own statement for whatever reason. I retract it.
"Related Reading from Meredith Patterson, "The Null Hypothesis Loves You and Wants You to Be Happy":"
I appreciate the article but I'm not sure it applies. The approach is certainly useful when you can do that. There's too many things, especially in social decision-making, that involve multiple factors working together in non-linear or inseparable ways. So, it's more like trying to identify the various factors, look at how they often play out, assess how they apply to a certain situation, and make an educated guess about what's likely to apply. Probabilistic and case-based reasoning dominates most things of any significant complexity and uncertainty.
We get a ton of mileage out of null hypothesis and associated analysis, though. Way more than I'd expect on occasion. The tricks people used to eliminate all variables but race or gender are a good example. Otherwise, we'd be looking at social situations weighing the odds as I described above. So, null hypothesis has limits but still worth attempting to use since we can't be sure of its real limits yet.
That's what's fun about it to me, though. So reliable, relatively simple, and yet so much more potential to find cool new ways to use it. :)