NYT: “MEN invented the internet” - Boing Boing
It was only about a week ago that I announced a thematic shift to this Tumblog and here we are, day three, and I have a great piece to share that fits into two of my three newly decided concerns.
I am ever mortified at the amount of male-washing that goes across the board, effectively erasing women from their rightful dues in some of our most loved modern technologies and conveniences. I recall vividly when I first took a real shine to internet culture, coding, gadgetry, engineering and the like. I frequently inform those who are kind enough to listen that the first “computers” were women, stripped of their importance with a name now assigned to the motionless robots upon which we bestow endless love and abuse. That’s to say nothing of one of the first widely adopted coding language, Ada, based on Pascal and named for the women most popularly know as the first computer programmer.
When Xeni Jardin of BoingBoing posted the above response to a distastefully [read: blatantly wrong] introduced article in the New York Time, I was floored. One of the very few US dailies of which I am quite fond fell inexorably in my eye. I can leave aside the author of the piece but not the multiple editors that allowed this to pass their desks unmarked and approved for publication.
The women integral to the creation of the Internet (and virtually every little digital thing we do daily) deserve so much better. To them I extend my regret that they have, in 2012, been so sorely disrespected.
