Sierra was a great company, but it’s not like pc games wouldn’t exist without them. It sucks that there aren’t more women in the games industry, though.
I don’t mind as much when supporting equitable efforts but it always bugs me when anyone claims something wouldn’t exist without X like nobody else contributed and/or advancements wouldn’t have been made without a specific individual and I feel like their are more constructive ways to communicate the significant value of women without the absurd claim that the web wouldn’t exist without the specific contributions from a very small subset of individual women in a field with many brilliant minds.
I agree. The section on web browsers mentioned that Nicola Pellow joined a team of 19 developers at CERN. It doesn’t say that she was the only woman on the team, but since she was singled out that is the way I interpreted it.
It’s a bit hard to say that web browsers would not have existed if one out of 20 team members was not there.
I don’t mind as much when supporting equitable efforts but it always bugs me when anyone claims something wouldn’t exist without X like nobody else contributed and/or advancements wouldn’t have been made without a specific individual
Well, you know. Few months ago I read an interview with a classical music performer.This woman wanted to perform some music by Alma Mahler. The organizing concert hall directors replied with : “Why don’t play some music of her husband ?” (???). When reading some more about the Mahler couple I read that the later famous Gustav Mahler demanded that his wife (Alma) would give up all musical aspirations. In that time that was not such an unusual thing but it did break her mentally. Still Alma Mahler has imho composed some beautiful music. My point is that it can be tempting in a male dominated world to be silent and hold back and “normalize” the male domination. Have a look at classical music and see the famous names : Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin, Bach, Ravell, Satie, and the list can go on and on. Think of a famous female in classical music ? Clara Wieck-Schumann is the only name I can think of right now, and when listening to music streams on the Internet or the radio, Clara’s music will not be heard very often. There’s stereotypes playing a role, even in our “modern” times. Someone wrote “How come that harp players are always women ?” If you search on YouTube it is obvious that not many men play the harp. A bit similar is with electric guitars. Decades ago a female playing guitar was pretty uncommon. What does that have to do with women and technology. For example, the TCP protocol is from ages ago. I can imagine that women were not encouraged or even stopped from being in the spotlight when it comes to technology. Male domination should be acknowledged, especially in history. After all, history is still taught at school, isn’t it ? (This is my “rambling” to all readers, not just a reply to the previous comment)
I do not disagree with you on any of your points and it’s why I said that it doesn’t bother me as much when done to support misrepresented groups.
Elon Musk isn’t a genius engineer that revolutionized anything. The brilliant minds at Tesla, women included did. The QB didn’t win the football game, the team did. The professor that has his or her name published and stuff named after him didn’t do all the work but it will usually be a white man unfortunately getting the credit which is garbage. Women and really anyone that isn’t a white male gets the short end of the stick.
I was saying that their are more honest ways of presenting these women’s accomplishments rather than saying the web wouldn’t exist.
Except it's almost universal that if your QB is shitty, your team is going nowhere. Can't really say that about a having a single shitty running back or defensive lineman or whatever. The QB is the cornerstone of the team.
Now baseball, however, that's a sport in which your analogy works.
Elon Musk isn’t a genius engineer that revolutionized anything. The brilliant minds at Tesla, women included did
This is partially correct. You are right when you say Elon didn't build Tesla all by himself. What he did though was have ambition and drive, and the money to seed fund it all. You can't argue that without Elon Musk, and his drive, and his money, all those brilliant engineers at Tesla and SpaceX wouldn't have built Tesla or SpaceX, they'd all have been working somewhere else.
I was saying that their are more honest ways of presenting these women’s accomplishments rather than saying the web wouldn’t exist.
Yes, I see your point. But despite me being a non native English speaker I figure (And I could be totally wrong) the “No web without women” can be interpreted in more than one way. It could also mean that in computer history women deserve to have their place be known to the public rather than forgotten or completely ignored or downplayed.
I appreciate you sharing your interpretation and I agree. The sciences are even worse. If we hire a service we have my wife handle the first conversation while I stay in another room to ensure we don’t hire anyone that is openly misogynistic. I couldn’t even begin to count how many people we’ve turned away due to some variation of “can I talk to your husband”.
This is needlessly divisive. Just because men share characteristics with a subset of people who opress and live life in easy mode does not mean they can’t be disenfranchised.
It’s a long read, at 34 pages, but is easier to read than the title might suggest, possibly because Duchin is a mathematician, which I speculate contributes to her pretty straightforward prose.
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