A recent article in The Baffler by Astra Taylor and Joanne McNeil entitled “The Dads of Tech” has a nice reference to The Computer Boys Take Over. The article is an insightful history of sexism in various tech industries, with particular reference to recent outbreaks like Gamergate.
Fastcompany has just published a profile of Robin Hauser Reynolds and her work on the forthcoming documentary CODE: Debugging the Gender Gap (which recently made a stellar fund-raising debut on Indiegogo). I met with Reynolds recently to film some material for CODE. This is going to be important and I expect influential film. Keep your eyes out!
The Fastcompany piece refers favorably to The Computer Boys Take Over, and mentions my work on the Computer Girls article from Cosmo.
The “computer revolution” of the mid-20th century is widely considered to be one of the defining moments of contemporary history. And yet very little is known about its principal revolutionaries, the computer programmers, systems analysts, and other technical experts who made possible the computerization of modern society. The story of how the “computer boys” took over, how they constructed for themselves a professional identity, and how they were simultaneously admired and resented by their corporate peers and employers, reveals the complex relationship between technological innovation, organizational politics, and social disruption that continue to define the relationship between computers and society.
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