11 Feb
2013
11 Feb
'13
6:58 p.m.
On Mon, Feb 11, 2013 at 6:07 AM, James Harkins <jamshark70(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Right, I think getting into technology is maybe discouraged for women,
which is a shame. Or, as a woman I met at a party put it, "I got into
videogames because I was too young to know girls weren't supposed to
be into it".
Of course, when I was a kid, I was just flat out into computer music.
I wanted to create, and with a computer, you could have an entire band
at your fingertips. The technical skill followed.
On Feb 11, 2013 11:16 AM, "Louis"
<louis.gorenfeld(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I don't see how that could be the case. XCode is still a totally free
IDE, and you get all the tools necessary to build all kinds of apps
except for iOS stuff. It's not like Windows where Microsoft has
threatened to pull everything but Metro from their free version of
MSVC and otherwise crippled the free versions.
It's entirely possible that we'll see
attitudes change in upcoming
generations as more people are addicted to computers and catch the bug to
want to create software.
Unfortunately, the trend in the industry is toward mobile devices without
built-in developer toolkits. Maybe that will change eventually, but for now,
you need a computer to write for iOS or Android, and computers will, sooner
or later, become specialist tools. This makes it less likely that people
will discover the fun of tinkering with software, rather than more. Apple
seems to be steering in this direction, by locking iOS and charging for the
developer tools. A concrete impact in SuperCollider-land is that now, only a
small handful of developers are building and testing in OSX Btw,
there's a similar gender discrepancy in electronic music (as far as
I've noticed), and that requires no math... There's more going on here than
sexism, afaik.
You might not need to work directly with complex math formulas, but audio
engineering is highly technical. If someone feels discouraged to pursue
technical skills (because of social bias, say), then audio engineering won't
be a friendly place as soon as we start talking about filters' frequency
responses etc. We all win if
we find ways to eliminate social biases that can cause that to happen.
Right, and that's my main point. Of course, by definition, I think a
true "geek" will pursue something they like regardless of whether it
has society's stamp of approval.
What we need are more stubborn non-conformists.
I'd also like to put another point out there: I was at a super bowl
party at a bar a couple weeks ago, and the gender ratio was
surprisingly even. I don't know how many people on the list watch
stuff like this, but there was no woman on-screen who wasn't reduced
to a sex object. The entire program was aimed squarely at dudes.
However, this kind of sexism didn't discourage a relatively large
number of women from being interested in these sports. IMO, if you
look at mainstream society, it shoots down the idea that women aren't
interested in technology because of sexism in the workplace or even
necessarily school. There is something else going on, and it's
happening much earlier in peoples' development.
-Louis