@lightWhenComputersWere1999
note: the highlighting on this pdf was off so I annotated less of the doc and what was annotated may be highlighted strangely
[!info] - Cite Key: @lightWhenComputersWere1999 - Link: JSTOR Full Text PDF - Bibliography: Light, JS. 1999 When Computers Were Women. Technology and Culture 40(3): 455–483.
Annotations¶
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Imported on 2023-03-19 12:47 pm¶
Agree¶
[!quote|#5fb236] Highlight as human "computers," performing ballistics computations dur ing the war. Six of them were selected to program a machine that, ironically, would take their name and replace them, a machine whose technical expertise would become vastly more celebrated than their own.1
It is interesting upon retrospect how digital computers are so celebrated but the job of computer was seen as simple, easy labor.
Page 2 [[2023-03-08#12:35 pm]]
[!quote|#5fb236] Highlight more women in the labor market did not nec essarily mean more equality with men.
This seems to still be an argument made to this day where women being in the workforce at all is seen as "all the diversity we need" and actual equality is seen as "too far"
Page 4 [[2023-03-08#5:38 pm]]
[!quote|#5fb236] Highlight Until the 1950s, published copies of photographs that each woman scanned bore her name. Yet eventually the status of these women's work eroded. Later publications were subsumed under the name of the lab leader, inevitably a man, and publicity photographs rarely, showcased women's contributions.
It is important to talk about historical instances of this sort of erasure occurring because it shows how just introducing women into a field is not sufficient to create an equal field and that gender inequality isn't a case of lack of interest but concious or unconcious bias
Page 6 [[2023-03-15#11:53 am]]
[!quote|#5fb236] Highlight 5 The result is a distorted history of technological development that has rendered women's contributions invis ible and promoted a diminished view of women's capabilities in this field. These incomplete stories emphasize the notion that programming and coding are, and were, masculine activities. As computers saturate daily life, it becomes critical to write women back into the history they were always a part of, in action if not in memory.
I strongly agree
Page 30 [[2023-03-18#10:03 pm]]
Definitions / concepts¶
[!quote|#2ea8e5] Highlight ale technicians whom existing computer histories have rendered invisible. In particular, it examines how the job of programmer, perceived in recent years as masculine work, originated as feminized clerical
As a woman in the field of computer science I find this transition especially interesting as about 80% of my peers are male. While as when this field was new it was not coveted and was seen as simple work
Page 2 [[2023-03-08#12:39 pm]]
[!quote|#2ea8e5] Highlight paradox by revealing wide spread ambivalence about women's work. While celebrating women's pres ence, wartime writing minimized the complexities of their actual work. While describing the difficulty of their tasks, it classified their occupations
This feels true to this day to some degree
Page 3 [[2023-03-08#5:31 pm]]
[!quote|#2ea8e5] Highlight Physicist Cecil Powell's request for "three more microscopes and three girls"
This sounds so objectifying
Page 6 [[2023-03-15#11:53 am]]
[!quote|#2ea8e5] Highlight 3 In a number of laboratories, scientists described women not as individuals, but rather as a collective, defined by their lab leader ("Cecil's Beauty Chorus") or by their machines ("scanner girls"). Likewise in the ENIAC project, female operators are referred to as "[John] Holberton's group" or as "ENIAC girls."
Also note the use of girls and not women in all these cases, this is another way people demean and lessen women by implying them to be no more than children
Page 6 [[2023-03-15#11:55 am]]
[!quote|#2ea8e5] Highlight s. A "computer" was a human being until approximately 1945. After that date the term referred to a machine, and the former human computers became "operators."40
Its interesting how quickly that term shifted
Page 16 [[2023-03-15#12:21 pm]]
[!quote|#2ea8e5] Highlight . Newspaper accounts characterize ENIAC's ability to perform tasks as "intelligent" but the women doing the same computing tasks did not receive similar acclaim.57
That is very true and an aspect I've never considered of this transition where in it was seen as "simple repetitive work" when it was done by women but once its been automated by machine its considered extremely intelligent
Page 20 [[2023-03-16#3:06 pm]]
[!quote|#2ea8e5] Highlight mes of 15 February 1946 described Arthur Burks's pub lic demonstration: "The ENIAC was then told to solve a difficult problem that would have required several weeks' work by a trained man. The ENIAC did it in exactly 15 seconds."59 The "15 seconds" claim ignores the time women spent setting up each problem on the machine. Accom
Page 21 [[2023-03-18#4:17 pm]]
[!quote|#2ea8e5] Highlight the project. Assistance was also given by many others at the school_[The machine is] doing eas ily what had been done laboriously by many trained men. . . . Had it not been available the job would have kept busy 100 trained men for a whole year."60 While this account alludes to the participation of many individuals other than Eckert and Mauchly, the hypothetical hundred are described as men. Why didn't the article report that the machine easily did calculations that would have kept one hundred trained women busy, since BRL and the Moore School hired women almost exclusively as computers? Even in
This is almost certainly because women's time was seen as less valuable. Especially during wartime where men could be off fighting on the front while as most women weren't given the same opportunity
Page 21 [[2023-03-18#4:19 pm]]
[!quote|#2ea8e5] Highlight More surprising still, the media reports did not highlight Adele Goldstine, despite her leadership position and her expertise in a technical
Page 24 [[2023-03-18#4:23 pm]]
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