{"id":670,"date":"2017-08-11T04:25:59","date_gmt":"2017-08-11T09:25:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mariehicks.net\/blog\/?p=670"},"modified":"2017-08-11T04:32:02","modified_gmt":"2017-08-11T09:32:02","slug":"the-history-of-computing-is-more-relevant-than-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marhicks.com\/blog\/?p=670","title":{"rendered":"The History of Computing is More Relevant Than Ever"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I recently <a href=\"http:\/\/What the Google gender 'manifesto' really says about Silicon Valley\">wrote a piece<\/a> for the <em>Washington Post<\/em> using history to debunk the infamous &#8220;Google Memo&#8221; and its contention that women are somehow less innately suited to technical pursuits. Truth is, for a long time women were predominant in the field of computing because technical work wasn&#8217;t seen as important. Their disappearance has everything to do with structural discrimination and little to do with &#8220;innate&#8221; differences.<\/p>\n<p>I was also very glad to get a few mentions in <em>The Guardian<\/em>. See this (delightfully acerbic) <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2017\/aug\/09\/google-memo-man-women-tech-original-computer-programmers\">article<\/a> about memogate in general, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/careers\/2017\/aug\/10\/how-the-tech-industry-wrote-women-out-of-history\">this one<\/a> that&#8217;s specifically about the history of computing&#8217;s role in helping us better understand power and (the lack of) diversity in our technological landscape in the present.<\/p>\n<p>Quick note about the latter article&#8211;it made a little bit of a mistake in the first few lines (<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/histoftech\/status\/895778262592434177\">read more here<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/histoftech\/status\/895779225982164997\">here<\/a>). Both SUSIE and SADIE were computers. The typist\/programmer in the ad was unnamed.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"width: 447px\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/pbs.twimg.com\/media\/DG5xk6mXgAAwKUY.jpg\" width=\"443\" height=\"622\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">BCL Computer ad from 1967 that talks all about the &#8220;typist&#8221; that will program your newly-purchased computer for you.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I recently wrote a piece for the Washington Post using history to debunk the infamous &#8220;Google Memo&#8221; and its contention that women are somehow less innately suited to technical pursuits. Truth is, for a long time women were predominant in the field of computing because technical work wasn&#8217;t seen as important. Their disappearance has everything [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,25,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history-of-computing","category-sts","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marhicks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marhicks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marhicks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marhicks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marhicks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=670"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/marhicks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":673,"href":"https:\/\/marhicks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670\/revisions\/673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marhicks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marhicks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marhicks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}