Tag Archives: society

On being the only girl in the room

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Estimated reading time 3–5 minutes

Perhaps it is because I am settling into a new culture, or perhaps it is because my new time zone has altered the nature of what I see in my Twitter feed, but there seem to have been a spate of articles lately about sexism faced by women working in technology, which makes me very sad. This was on my mind when I received from a former colleague a copy of a report we had co-authored. As I read the list of names, I was struck by how wonderful a group of guys they were, how intelligent, creative, and technically knowledgeable, and what a pleasure it had been to be the only girl in the room. Those guys were utterly supportive, thoughtful, generous of spirit, and full of interest in and encouragement of my contributions.

I am from an editorial background and I don’t really write code, but never once in that group did I experience any kind of tech snobbery. Whenever there was something that I didn’t know about, or unfamiliar acronyms or jargon, someone would provide a clear explanation, without every being patronising, appearing bored or impatient, or making any assumptions about what anyone “ought” to know. I was never made to feel I had asked a stupid question, said something foolish, or that I did not belong. At the same time, these men were always keen and interested to hear my perspectives, and to learn from my experiences. The group dynamic was one of free and open exchange of ideas and of working collaboratively to find solutions to problems. All contributions were valued and everything was considered jointly and equally authored.

I didn’t remain the only girl in the room. I was learning so much in the meetings that I invited my (now former) colleague to join us, bringing a new set of expertise and skills that were welcomed. I had not a moment of concern about inviting a younger and even less technical female colleague in to the group, because I knew she would be made welcome and would have a fantastic opportunity to learn from some brilliant minds.

Of course I have encountered much sexism in my career, but it is not necessary and it is not inevitable. I hate the thought of young women being put off technology as a career because of fears of sexism and discrimination. I know this happens a lot – it happened to me, although I found my way into tech eventually. I do not know whether there is “more” sexism in technology – a charge some of the post I have read have levelled – than there is anywhere else, but I do know that there is sexism in all industries, so you might as well ignore it as a factor and choose a career based on aspects like intellectual stimulation or good career prospects. Technology certainly offers those. I personally have encountered sexism in so-called “female friendly” industries such as publishing and teaching, and I am quite sure it is suffered by nurses, waitresses, actresses, pop singers…. Since I have been working in technology, I have often been the only girl in the room but almost always that room has been a fascinating, welcoming, and inspiring place to be.

This is not primarily written for the specific individuals nor for all the other fantastic guys in tech I have met or worked with (there are so many I can’t possibly name them all), although I hope they enjoy it. This post is intended to promote positive male role models and examples of decent male behaviour for boys and young men to follow, and as a mythbuster for anyone who thinks sexism and geekiness are somehow intrinsically linked.

It is also written for women, as a reminder that although we must speak out against sexist and otherwise toxic behaviour when we encounter it, approval and affirmation are very powerful motivators of change, so we also help by shouting about and celebrating when we find fabulous guys in tech and in life who are getting it right.

The Social Life of Information

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Estimated reading time 3–5 minutes

The Social Life of Information by John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid is an info classic. It’s one of those delightful books that manages to be very erudite, cover a huge range of theory, but reads effortlessly and even had me laughing out loud from time to time. (My favourite anecdote was that BT’s answer to homeworkers’ sense of isolation was to pipe a soundtrack of canned background noise and chatter into their offices!)

Essentially, the book argues that information and information technology cannot be separated from its social context and ignoring the human factors in technology adoption and use leads to fundamental misunderstandings of what it can and does do. This may mean overestimating the potential of information technology to change pre-existing institutions and practices, on both a personal and collective scale, and underestimating the ability of people to adapt technology to suit their ends rather than those envisaged by the technologists.

The authors argue that many “infoenthusiasts” miss subtleties of communication, such as the implicit social negotiations that take place in face-to-face conversations or the social meanings conveyed by a document printed on high quality paper or a book with expensive leather binding. Such nuances are easily lost when the words from such communications are removed from their original context and placed in a new environment – such as an electronic database.

Similarly, although personalisation is often touted as a great advance – you can have your own uniquley customised version of a website or a newspaper – such personalisation diminishes the power of the information source to act as a binding-point for a community. If we all have different versions of the newspaper, then we can’t assume we share common knowledge of the same stories. We then have to put additional work into reconnecting and recreating our knowledge communities, so the benefits of personalisation do not come without costs.

The importance of negotiation, collaboration, and improvisation is argued to be highly significant but extremely hard to build into automated systems. The social nature of language and the complexities of learning how to be a member of a community of practice, including knowing when to break or bend rules, are also essential to how human beings operate but extremely difficult to replicate in technological systems.

The theme of balance runs throughout the book – for example between the need to control processes while allowing freedom for innovation in companies or between the need for communication amongst companies and the need to protect intellectual property (knowledge in companies was often either seen as too “sticky” – hard to transfer and use – or too “leaky” – flowing too easily to competitors). At an institutional level, balance is needed between the importance of stability for building trust and openness to evolution (the perception of the value of a degree is bound up with the established reputation of an educational institution).

I found this very interesting, as my brother has been trying to persuade me that Daoism with its emphasis on things moving gradually from one state to another is a more productive way at looking at complex systems than the Aristotelian view that something can be in one category, or its opposite, but never both at once. (Here is a sisterly plug for an article he has written on the application of Daoist ideas to environmentalism). It also fits in with the idea of balancing the stability of an ordered taxonomy with the fast-flowing nature of folksonomies and of finding a way of using social media to support rather than compete with more formalised knowledge management practice. Brown and Duguid say: “For all the advantages of fluidity, we should not forget that fixity still has its charms. Most of us prefer the checks we receive and the contracts we write to remain stable”, which seems particularly apt given the global credit crisis!