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"They were marketed almost exclusively to boys" Back before anyone was really marketing computers in any mainstream way, I remember gathering around the few th
by crusso 12y ago
"They were marketed almost exclusively to boys"
Back before anyone was really marketing computers in any mainstream way, I remember gathering around the few that were available in the school library or in a math teacher's classroom.
The only people interested EVER were boys.
It had nothing to do with marketing.
- nether 12y agoWhich came first, tool-toy companies interested in boys, or boys interested in them?
- JoeAltmaier 12y agoMaybe it doesn't matter. Once a group becomes predominantly one culture, it rapidly slides to that corner of the culture space. Lots of reasons - people hire people they feel comfortable with. People value people they understand more, regarding them as more intelligent or harder working.
- onewaystreet 12y agoYou say "ever" but the early history of computing was filled with women. Something caused a change.
- tsotha 12y agoThe field was too small at the time to draw any useful conclusions.
- kaitai 12y agoI was interested in high school but felt like I wasn't allowed in the computer room. It was full of boys who knew the teacher, and I didn't know the teacher and wasn't a boy, and just didn't really want to deal with the social discomfort given that I had a computer at home and could use that for an hour in the evening. Instead I skipped class in a computer-less room with the IB coordinator's blessing. That hour or two a day of skipping class or eating lunch would have had a different effect if I'd spent all the time playing with computers. I started making up for it in college as a CS class was required, I couldn't afford my own computer & so discovered the trash and Linux, and there was a badass female sysadmin who demonstrated perfect ease in owning the computer lab.