Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Black Technologist Who Invented the First Internet Search Engine

daily.jstor.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 165 posts

Re: The Black Technologist Who Invented the First Internet Search Engine

#121

Post by pizza »

gragas wrote: post #50
bglazer wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can tell you why it's important to note the race of an underrepresented minority who made a notable contribution. I teach programming to a group of black young adults. Self image is very important to most young folks. Just seeing other black people who are successful computer programmers helps them imagine themselves as computer programmers. Identity matters to young people who are trying to shape their own self im…

Then why is it strictly forbidden to write an article with a title that caters specifically to young white children?

it implies some of the following:

- whites are a non-diverse group of people

- whites (of all types, as a group) have been as historically unempowered as nonwhites in America

- whites think whiteness is underrepresented in America

- whites aren't bothered by how nonwhiteness affects outcomes

- messages about race are currently at peak broadcast capacity, so talking about race is a zero-sum game where prioritizing one audience takes a potential piece of information away another audience

- race is something other than ingroup/outgroup attribution

Re: The Black Technologist Who Invented the First Internet Search Engine

#122

Post by erikbye »

Kinnard wrote: post #115
erikbye wrote: post #103

Reading "black technologist" my first thoughts goes to some malicious figure in a science-fantasy novel, not the color of ones skin. What is next, "the yellow programmer"? I'm so glad I don't define who I am based on my skin color. Is the color of your skin of any importance when we are talking about your achievements? If he was white, would making the first search engine be less remarkable?

I think it's pretty important if the descendant of someone who was kidnapped and enslaved to provide for a legally enforced illiterate underclass is able to not only read and write but read and write code and make significant contributions to the field of software engineering. Like if someone who lost a foot won the 100 meter in the olympics, not the paralympics . . .

"Alan Emtage was born in Barbados, the son of Sir Stephen and Lady Emtage."

Re: The Black Technologist Who Invented the First Internet Search Engine

#124

Post by wolfspider »

08-15 wrote: post #107
kristianc wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I don't understand why, with such alarming, metronomic regularity, is there always someone who pops up and says that race is a non-issue and that we shouldn't mention it. Or even in this case, that we shouldn't recognize his blackness. I mean really - would you go and tell him he wasn't black to his face because his skin wasn't dark enough? The guy's race matters because it's important that people from minorities…

> Or even in this case, that we shouldn't recognize his blackness. What?! He isn't black!! Dammit, look at him, he isn't even brown, never mind black! There is no blackness to acknowledge. > would you go and tell him he wasn't black to his face because his skin wasn't dark enough? Yes, for fuck's sake, because that is what black means: very dark skin. Not having black ancestors, not being a citizen of a black country…

Hopefully, your career doesn't include the use of any form of logic because by using your line of thinking many Asians and Inuits would be considered white? I think your probably the only person you really know.

Re: The Black Technologist Who Invented the First Internet Search Engine

#125

Post by [deleted] »

dbaupp wrote: post #66
treehau5 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Removing my comments because this thread has sparked unnecessary discourse and reactions that this comment is the cause of.

Ah yes, if you truly want to get rid of bugs in your software, then not mentioning them is the best way to get there. Start acting like your code has no bugs now! The status quo doesn't change if people don't talk about, analyse and challenge it.

[deleted]

Re: The Black Technologist Who Invented the First Internet Search Engine

#126

Post by danbruc »

libertymcateer wrote: post #98
treehau5 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[removed]

I understand if my tone came off as more condescending than necessary - I am a corporate lawyer I am prone to being a bit incisive - so I apologize for that. I do tend to adopt a bit of snark when writing online - it gets those precious, precious upvotes. However, in the end, my point is this: I am of the opinion that collective action is necessary to address this issue and I believe the weight of the evidence is on…

The point that you (appear) to have made, and I am reacting to, is that ignoring the problem is the best way to address it, and I think that is demonstrably ineffective.

I think you are misunderstanding the point treehau5 wanted to make. I think he wants to say the same thing as I [1], we should take action to boost disadvantaged groups in order to close existing gaps as quickly as possible but that should be done in away that avoids focusing on the distinction one wants to go away. It is not about ignoring an existing issue, it is about not additionally emphasizing it.

What good is it, if you want to get rid of racial bias, to point out the race in a context where it does not matter at all? Maybe you could argue that there are people believing that black people made no significant contributions to our world and you are trying to correct that but that does not seem a very strong argument to me.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13707121

Re: The Black Technologist Who Invented the First Internet Search Engine

#127

Post by danbruc »

Nomentatus wrote: post #119
danbruc wrote: post #56

This escalated quickly. But I would actually somewhat side with the commenters saying that it is odd to explicitly mention the race in the article. I get that it is Black History Month in the US and in that context it seems appropriate but I would question whether having a Black History Month is a good idea in the first place. It is not obvious to me that explicitly pointing out a distinction is the best way to get r…

Why mention his race 'cause there's no such thing as unconscious bias and Valley funding and hires are as diverse as society is and... ah... oops, no, wait...

This did not really add something to what I said, I did not deny the existence of the problem. You have to argue why mentioning the race is helpful, why it helps to reduces biases. Why does it not do the opposite, why does mentioning the race not reinforce its importance?

Re: The Black Technologist Who Invented the First Internet Search Engine

#128

Post by h4nkoslo »

rhcom2 wrote: post #16
h4nkoslo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be surprised, but in the American context numerous people considered "black" for political reasons clearly have microscopic amounts of black admixture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Johnson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamala_Harris https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Butterfield https://twitter.com/mayorvincegray https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Jealous

You can't necessarily discern a person's racial makeup from just their skin tone so assuming these people have "microscopic amounts of black admixture" seems pretty ignorant. Basically you just made a list of light skin black people.

That's a revolutionary discovery; you should probably publish it immediately since it refutes decades of genetic research.

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/9f67/21bf5954d1129d0212bc4f...

http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jour...

Re: The Black Technologist Who Invented the First Internet Search Engine

#129

Post by gragas »

pizza wrote: post #121
gragas wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then why is it strictly forbidden to write an article with a title that caters specifically to young white children?

it implies some of the following: - whites are a non-diverse group of people - whites (of all types, as a group) have been as historically unempowered as nonwhites in America - whites think whiteness is underrepresented in America - whites aren't bothered by how nonwhiteness affects outcomes - messages about race are currently at peak broadcast capacity, so talking about race is a zero-sum game where prioritizing one…

>whites are a non-diverse group of people

Even if we assume that this is true (despite the fact that it's not) what does it have to do with printing articles with headlines that read "{INSERT NON-WHITE RACE HERE} miraculously succeeds in life!"?

Re: The Black Technologist Who Invented the First Internet Search Engine

#130

Post by tyingq »

Nomentatus wrote: post #116
noobermin wrote: post #95

Was just thinking this earlier this week, can anything, at this point, hold a candle to Google in terms of search? Or possibly compete well with it such that people could switch? Recently heard about the news Google is discontinuing enterprise site search, not that that is such a huge problem, but it's just another example of the issues that arise from having a monopoly control everything with no alternatives. They c…

The cost of entry in the search market just went way, way up due to Google implementing neural nets extensively in its search algorithms (Deep Mind whatever.) No question about that. Someone else might find a way to do that better, however; if so they could now take the market away. (But that doesn't mean I think that's likely.)

The years of collected data on personalizing search results, what different demographics expect, etc...Is a big barrier as well.

I believe they are able, for example, to know I want "Apache" the software organization even if I've never typed it before, because they've seen my previous software related searches. And...Injected some behavior based on searches by other people like me.

Someone else is getting much different results for the same term...Again, even if it's for the first time.

When I hear people say they don't like duckduckgo's results for a search term, it seems to usually trace back to "no tracking equals no personalization".

Post reply on HN