6 ms·

I'm not sure if I can see the correlation between the story being told and the fact that the author is female. It seems to be briefly mentioned in the first and

by hzy 14y ago

I'm not sure if I can see the correlation between the story being told and the fact that the author is female. It seems to be briefly mentioned in the first and last paragraphs.

kmm 14y ago
I assumed the point was that it doesn't matter. Kids get interested in computers regardless of their gender. But you're right, it probably isn't the most descriptive title.
- rmurphey3 14y ago
  Yes, the point of the post was that it had a lot more to do with being a kid with a computer than with being male or female. The point of the title was that it was a story of ... a girl and her computers :)
  - Dylan16807 14y ago
    'Girls' has a very different meaning from 'a girl'.
  - jacalata 14y ago
    The switch from 'a girl and her computers' to 'girls and computers' is a problem in itself (pop culture ref: http://xkcd.com/385/ http://xkcd.com/385/). Would you take a story of a boy and his first computer and call it 'boys and computers'? Why is one girl representative of the group?
joe_the_user 14y ago
The argument of the article is that when computers were new, they were new to everyone of either genders whereas at present gender-based expectations can take over in expectations and decisions about who would play or work with computers. "In some ways, it is like the very ubiquity of technology has led us back to a world where socially normative gender roles take hold all over again"
- bermanoid 14y ago
  It's a nice story, but it sounds just-so to me. Probably because most women that grew up in the 80s did not in significant numbers show the same fascination with computers that the author did. In fact, the current state of the mid-to-senior level job market reflects the interest level from exactly that time period, and it's just as lopsided in favor of men as it's ever been.
  - parfe 14y ago
    "In 1967, when Cosmo’s “The Computer Girls” article ran, 11 percent of computer science majors were women. In the late 1970s, the percentage of women in the field approached and exceeded the same figure we are applauding today: 25 percent. The portion of women earning computer science degrees continued to rise steadily, reaching its peak — 37 percent — in 1984. Then, over the next two decades, women left computer science in droves — just as their numbers were increasing steadily across all other science, technology, engineering, and math fields. By 2006, the portion of women in computer science had dropped to 20 percent." http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/when-computer-programming-was-womens-work/2011/08/24/gIQAdixGgJ_story.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/when-computer-program... The Computer Science/Tech/IT industry created an unwelcoming environment for women; the women left. A random sampling of how IT can be hostile to women: I sat one empty seat away from a long-haired friend in a Computer Architecture class with around 15 students attending lectures in a room with theater style seating and the entrances to the rear. Plenty of room to spread out. On a regular basis, guys would enter from the rear and sit directly next to my long haired friend. No empty seat between. Only after sitting down did these guys realize the woman they just sat next to was actually a goateed dude. These creepers would then get up and quietly leave the classroom horribly embarrassed. This happened for half a semester until enough of these guys learned. I can't imagine how a woman would feel if she had her personal space invaded on a regular basis when clearly there was plenty of room to spread out. Then if a woman gets to the professional world she gets invited to a hackathon where the women will be serving drinks to the men. Or she sits near the front door and visitors assume she is a secretary. Or she "gets" to run the party planning committee. Those experiences add up over time and make life unpleasant.
novalis 14y ago
I saw it as a female who loved computers since she was little sort of correlation.
msbarnett 14y ago
> I'm not sure if I can see the correlation between the story being told and the fact that the author is female. I saw a quip the other day that was along the lines of "Hacker News posters consistently make the mistake of assuming that, because a post shows up on Hacker News, the author is somehow 'making a big deal out of it'". The "correlation" is that the author, after a spate of sexism stories regarding women in tech, got to thinking about how she got started as a woman in tech, and wrote a blog post sharing the story. It's a slice of a story of someone's life, nothing more, nothing less. Don't try to read too much into it looking for larger correlations and grand overarching Big Deal Points.
- kiiski 14y ago
  You're probably right, but the post is titled "Girls and Computers", which kind of seems to imply some deep, and general, theorizing about girls and computers.
  - msbarnett 14y ago
    > You're probably right, but the post is titled "Girls and Computers", which kind of seems to imply some deep, and general, theorizing about girls and computers. Or that she's been spending some time thinking about "girls and computers" after the news stories about girls and computers and it made her think of her own story. That's how I read it, anyways. Obsessing about the "deeper meaning" of a 3 word title and whether or not it is the best description of the content seems a bit pointless.
    - Strallus 14y ago
      Article titles should match their content.
      - msbarnett 14y ago
        I'm not convinced it doesn't, but either way, this is pedantry of the most unproductive sort.
  - 14y ago
Tichy 14y ago
I think that is kind of the point.
roguecoder 14y ago
It's a woman's story. The fact that gender isn't relevant is the point. So many people in "the software/start up/tech community" continue to make it relevant by shoehorning human sexuality onto things that should be about the joy of technology, of making things happen, of being real live sorcerers.

by hzy 14y ago

I'm not sure if I can see the correlation between the story being told and the fact that the author is female. It seems to be briefly mentioned in the first and last paragraphs.

kmm 14y ago

I assumed the point was that it doesn't matter. Kids get interested in computers regardless of their gender. But you're right, it probably isn't the most descriptive title.

rmurphey3 14y ago
Yes, the point of the post was that it had a lot more to do with being a kid with a computer than with being male or female. The point of the title was that it was a story of ... a girl and her computers :)
- Dylan16807 14y ago
  'Girls' has a very different meaning from 'a girl'.
- jacalata 14y ago
  The switch from 'a girl and her computers' to 'girls and computers' is a problem in itself (pop culture ref: http://xkcd.com/385/ http://xkcd.com/385/). Would you take a story of a boy and his first computer and call it 'boys and computers'? Why is one girl representative of the group?

joe_the_user 14y ago

The argument of the article is that when computers were new, they were new to everyone of either genders whereas at present gender-based expectations can take over in expectations and decisions about who would play or work with computers. "In some ways, it is like the very ubiquity of technology has led us back to a world where socially normative gender roles take hold all over again"

bermanoid 14y ago
It's a nice story, but it sounds just-so to me. Probably because most women that grew up in the 80s did not in significant numbers show the same fascination with computers that the author did. In fact, the current state of the mid-to-senior level job market reflects the interest level from exactly that time period, and it's just as lopsided in favor of men as it's ever been.
- parfe 14y ago
  "In 1967, when Cosmo’s “The Computer Girls” article ran, 11 percent of computer science majors were women. In the late 1970s, the percentage of women in the field approached and exceeded the same figure we are applauding today: 25 percent. The portion of women earning computer science degrees continued to rise steadily, reaching its peak — 37 percent — in 1984. Then, over the next two decades, women left computer science in droves — just as their numbers were increasing steadily across all other science, technology, engineering, and math fields. By 2006, the portion of women in computer science had dropped to 20 percent." http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/when-computer-programming-was-womens-work/2011/08/24/gIQAdixGgJ_story.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/when-computer-program... The Computer Science/Tech/IT industry created an unwelcoming environment for women; the women left. A random sampling of how IT can be hostile to women: I sat one empty seat away from a long-haired friend in a Computer Architecture class with around 15 students attending lectures in a room with theater style seating and the entrances to the rear. Plenty of room to spread out. On a regular basis, guys would enter from the rear and sit directly next to my long haired friend. No empty seat between. Only after sitting down did these guys realize the woman they just sat next to was actually a goateed dude. These creepers would then get up and quietly leave the classroom horribly embarrassed. This happened for half a semester until enough of these guys learned. I can't imagine how a woman would feel if she had her personal space invaded on a regular basis when clearly there was plenty of room to spread out. Then if a woman gets to the professional world she gets invited to a hackathon where the women will be serving drinks to the men. Or she sits near the front door and visitors assume she is a secretary. Or she "gets" to run the party planning committee. Those experiences add up over time and make life unpleasant.

novalis 14y ago

I saw it as a female who loved computers since she was little sort of correlation.

msbarnett 14y ago

> I'm not sure if I can see the correlation between the story being told and the fact that the author is female. I saw a quip the other day that was along the lines of "Hacker News posters consistently make the mistake of assuming that, because a post shows up on Hacker News, the author is somehow 'making a big deal out of it'". The "correlation" is that the author, after a spate of sexism stories regarding women in tech, got to thinking about how she got started as a woman in tech, and wrote a blog post sharing the story. It's a slice of a story of someone's life, nothing more, nothing less. Don't try to read too much into it looking for larger correlations and grand overarching Big Deal Points.

kiiski 14y ago
You're probably right, but the post is titled "Girls and Computers", which kind of seems to imply some deep, and general, theorizing about girls and computers.
- msbarnett 14y ago
  > You're probably right, but the post is titled "Girls and Computers", which kind of seems to imply some deep, and general, theorizing about girls and computers. Or that she's been spending some time thinking about "girls and computers" after the news stories about girls and computers and it made her think of her own story. That's how I read it, anyways. Obsessing about the "deeper meaning" of a 3 word title and whether or not it is the best description of the content seems a bit pointless.
  - Strallus 14y ago
    Article titles should match their content.
    - msbarnett 14y ago
      I'm not convinced it doesn't, but either way, this is pedantry of the most unproductive sort.
- 14y ago

Tichy 14y ago

I think that is kind of the point.

roguecoder 14y ago

It's a woman's story. The fact that gender isn't relevant is the point. So many people in "the software/start up/tech community" continue to make it relevant by shoehorning human sexuality onto things that should be about the joy of technology, of making things happen, of being real live sorcerers.