The Women Tech Forgot

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/02/fashion/the-innovators-by-walter-isaacson-how-women-shaped-technology.html?ref=technology&_r=0

By NICK BILTONOCT. 1, 2014

‘The Innovators’ by Walter Isaacson: How Women Shaped Technology

•••••

It’s no secret that people are often erased from the history of big-tech companies. It’s so prevalent in Silicon Valley that it is known as “The Creation Myth.” But what may come as a surprise is the number of women who played a pivotal role but who are now forgotten.

•••••

That is one of the central themes in Mr. Isaacson’s new book, “The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution,” due out Tuesday. Unlike his previous four books, all biographies of individuals, his new work is about groups and how the greatest innovations were all shaped by them.

In many respects, the book could have been called “The Collaborators.” Each chapter reinforces the core premise that Mr. Isaacson made after 15 years of research: That every technology innovation, whether programming code, transistors, personal computers or the Internet, was built by groups of people (usually by borrowing from past ideas).

But while a number of the men have become celebrities, most of the women are lost in a distant fog.

Ms. Lovelace’s role in tech, for example, is so paramount that her story is the opening and closing chapter. An English mathematician and writer, she wrote the first-ever computer algorithm, put forth the idea that humanities and technology should coexist and dreamed up the concept of artificial intelligence.
Continue reading the main story

“Ada Lovelace defined the digital age,” Mr. Isaacson said in one of several recent interviews about the book. He was sitting outside the Blue Bottle coffee shop in Mint Plaza in San Francisco, known as a hothouse for programmers and venture capitalists. “Yet she, along with all these other women, was ignored or forgotten.”

“If it wasn’t for Ada Lovelace, there’s a chance that none of this would even exist,” Mr. Isaacson added as he waved his hand in the air, gesturing as if to encompass all of Silicon Valley and the techies sitting around us.

In her day, she was all but ignored, too.

•••••

But Ms. Lovelace is only the first of many women excluded from the annals of computing history. One infuriating moment in Mr. Isaacson’s book tells the story of Eniac, the first electronic general-purpose computer, built during World War II to calculate the firing trajectory of artillery.

As Mr. Isaacson tells it, a prominent dinner was held on Feb. 14, 1946, at the University of Pennsylvania to celebrate the public demonstration of Eniac before the media, but none of the women who programmed Eniac, including Jean Jennings and Betty Snyder, were invited.

“That night there was a candlelit dinner at Penn’s venerable Houston Hall,” Mr. Isaacson writes. “It was filled with scientific luminaries, military brass and most of the men who had worked on Eniac. But Jean Jennings and Betty Snyder were not there, nor were any other women programmers.”

Instead, the two women took the train home alone on a cold night while the men celebrated. “Betty and I were ignored and forgotten following the demonstration,” Ms. Jennings later said.

The exclusion of these women has not only reinforced stereotypes about women and technology, but has arguably had a self-fulfilling effect. In 1985, 37 percent of computer science undergraduate degrees were earned by women. By 2010, that number had fallen by half to 18 percent. Now just 0.4 percent of all female college freshmen say they plan to major in computer science.

This is sadly visible at major tech companies. At Google, men make up 83 percent of engineering employees. Of Google’s 36 top-ranking executives and managers, only three are women. At Apple, male tech employees account for 80 percent of the work force. And at Facebook, 85 percent of the company’s tech workers are men.

“Stereotypes are very reinforcing because as human beings we expect what is familiar,” said Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook and author of “Lean In,” in an interview. “In tech, girls don’t code because girls don’t code.”

•••••

“If women had been more prominently talked about in computing, both in the history books and schools, we literally would not have the lack of women programmers that we do today,” Ms. Saujani said. “It’s about role models. You can’t be what you cannot see.”

To that end, the classrooms at Girls Who Code were named after pioneers like Ms. Lovelace and Grace Hopper, who created the programming language Cobol and coined the term “computer bugs” after discovering a dead moth in a computer.

Part of the problem, Mr. Isaacson writes in “The Innovators,” is how the creation myth seeks to make heroes out of individuals, rather than the group. And when the contribution of the collective is ignored, it is usually a man who gets the credit.

“Most of the great advances of the digital age were done collaboratively,” he said. “There is no light bulb moment in the garage when someone comes up with a new idea.”

•••••