I don’t cry easily.
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Category: Culture
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Women in Tech: Maria Webster
Virginia DeBolt has posted another in her series on Women in Technology, this one about Maria Webster from .51. It’s a terrific interview, and appreciations to Virginia in her effort to promote more awareness of women in tech.
Maria is an Über geek, with interests that cross the lines from computers to electrical engineering, ham radio, to physics, and all points between. And Tron, which reminded that I hadn’t seen this movie in years.
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Men do big ideas, women write stories
3quarksdaily points to a Guardian story where the author, Alison Flood, wonders if there’s a gender divide between writing books on big ideas, and writing stories:
Julia Cheiffetz, blogging at publishing website HarperStudio, dubs the genre “big think” books – making serious non-fiction subjects accessible and popular. “The point is, all of them promise access to a club whose sole activity is the exchange of ideas; all of them promise, however covertly, to make us feel smarter. And all of them are written by men,” she writes, also singling out The World is Flat by Thomas L Friedman, The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki and Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely.
“It is hard to know whether women are better at telling stories than propagating ideas (I’m thinking of Susan Orlean, Mary Roach, Karen Abbott), or whether the intellectual audacity required to sell our hypotheses about the world simply isn’t in our genetic makeup.”
The real story to this post, though, is happening in comments. Commenters have proposed explanations for the seeming disparity ranging from women are not encouraged to speak out, to publishers being less likely to accept a “big think” book proposal from a woman. Additionally, commenters have also pointed out “big think” books in the bestseller lists by women, that the Guardian article author “seems” to have missed in her cataloging of big books.
From what I can see in weblogging, I would say that the commenters to the story have the right idea: not encouraged, not seen. Sadly, also as demonstrated in weblogging, pointing out the problems doesn’t bring about any change, either.
Then there’s my recent look at Seth Godin’s Tribes. I know that a fairer review would come from reading the book, rather than just the Kindle sample, but from looking at a video Godin gave in reference to his book, I also know my opinion of the book wouldn’t change. These books may typically be written by men, but I don’t think that’s necessarily an insult to women, or a flattery to men.
A positive side effect to the story is that I now have several new books to try out, starting with Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine. I also found Bookninja.
Virginia DeBolt has another Women in Technology series entry, this one on the Drupal community’s Addison Berry.
Addison demonstrates something I’ve noticed: Drupal attracts the women in technology. There’s something about the Drupal that has made the Drupal community friendly and encouraging to women. Other applications/companies/organizations should take note.
The interview with Addison is excellent, a lot more positive and upbeat than mine was.
I was reading posts and comments at Mathew Ingram’s weblog, when I ran into a comment where the person referenced “Google haters”, and I stopped reading the comment at that point. I no longer cared to read what the person had to say.
I have developed an intense dislike, loathing really, of the term “hater”. It’s little different than the term “hysterical” when applied to women commenters in order to demean the person or persons referenced, rather than views, attitudes, writings, or other work. It’s a lazy noun by lazy people who don’t want to take the time to write about why they agree or disagree with what the person is saying—just use the word “hater” and that should be sufficient. And quick, too.
I feel towards “hater” about the way I feel towards moonbat, wingnut, or any of the other terms used by indifferent writers incapable of writing a detailed, thoughtful criticism or disagreement. These writers don’t have time to spend on their arguments, because they’re too busy looking for the next hater, moonbat, or wingnut to vilify. My suggestion to them is to pick their targets and write well, rather than quickly. Don’t use epithets like shotgun pellets, firing haters, wingnuts, or moonbats hither and yon in an effort to blanket as many people as possible. This approach might net them a bigger following, but of what kind of people? The barely literate xenophobe?
I’m also becoming less enamored of the “us” and “them” writing where entire groups of people are lumped into categories, with little or no individuality allowed. I must admit to my own share of “us” and “them” writing based on the current election, but all I can see that this has accomplished is seeing how long our thrown mud sticks on the wall between us. It may feel good to throw the mud, perhaps even empowering, but eventually the mud will dry, fall off the wall, crumble into dirt, and be trodden under foot. A well-formed argument forces us to question the bundle of assumptions that supposedly make up our “side”, and fragments what was once a perhaps incorrectly aggregated whole. Effective writing shouldn’t make us angry, it should make us stumble, caught awkwardly on our assumptions and expectations.
Last night on television, the reporters were interviewing people waiting to get in to here Bill Clinton speak at a high school down the road from where I live. One woman said that she normally votes Republican, because she’s pro-life, but this year she had to weight all the issues and all the problems and in the end, made a decision to vote for Obama. She didn’t draw lines of divisiveness, or make one reference to “hater” or “moonbat”. What she did do, with a few simple, eloquent sentences, was fragment the cliched clump of expectations we have about voters; she made me re-think my own opinion about what “pro-life” really means to people. I wanted to sit and talk with her and explain what I really mean when I say I’m pro-choice. I, for one moment, actually believed that both “sides” might be able to find an accord some day. It was a stunning moment in an election remarkable only for its vile level of vituperation and equally vile dependence on clichés.
But I digress. To return to the “haters”, the “wingnuts”, and the “moonbats” we find littering our current discourse, there is no greater demonstration of skill in both writing and reasoning than a thoughtfully crafted disagreement or criticism. It can have a stinging bite, or only nibble playfully, and painfully, at the edges of a topic; it can flash brightly, or send whispers of fog to obscure; it can elevate, or bury, with equal panache. In my opinion, an effective argument is one that never makes people mad, but frequently leaves people worried.