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If you were hacking since age 8, it means you were privileged

geekfeminism.org

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Re: If you were hacking since age 8, it means you were privileged

#81

Post by quadhome »

starkfist wrote: post #44
quadhome wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because? Presuming you're referring to Chad Hurley, you think that Google bought YouTube because he married Jim Clark's daughter? Jim Clark, who as far as I can tell, didn't invest in Google, doesn't work for them, and isn't on their board.

Jim Clark got them the investment from Sequoia. Google would have bought them, but the reason they bought them for a billion dollars instead of a hundred million is because of the intertwined social aspect of all the people at Google and Sequoia involved with the deal.

Both firms were funded by and had close ties with Sequoia.

And that's why Google bought YouTube for more than they were worth?

Re: If you were hacking since age 8, it means you were privileged

#82

Post by starkfist »

quadhome wrote: post #81
starkfist wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jim Clark got them the investment from Sequoia. Google would have bought them, but the reason they bought them for a billion dollars instead of a hundred million is because of the intertwined social aspect of all the people at Google and Sequoia involved with the deal.

Both firms were funded by and had close ties with Sequoia. And that's why Google bought YouTube for more than they were worth?

No.

Re: If you were hacking since age 8, it means you were privileged

#83

Post by rdtsc »

hbd wrote: post #79
rdtsc wrote: post #32

That is simply not true. We weren't poor growing up but we were not far from it (at least according to the Western standards). I remember having to eat only once a day and wearing clothes with holes in them because we couldn't afford to go clothes shopping. My father, a good engineer with a university degree lost his job after the Soviet collapse and my mom had to work 2 janitor jobs. However, if my father knew someo…

"My father, a good engineer with a university degree" Are you sure you (and those who upvoted) know what social class is? To be fair there are many definitions, but having a university degree would be put your father as middle class in most of them. "All it matters is to have good parents who really support and nurture education." And that's in most cases parents who themselves are educated, which has been shown in c…

> And that's in most cases parents who themselves are educated.

Read my comment again. My mom wasn't educated past 7th grade. She knows simple arithmetic enough to count money and pay bills. She doesn't know what an isosceles triangle is though.

My father was educated well but he had lost his job and didn't have work for years. We didn't have enough food to eat. But what my parents had, was a desire for me to be educated. Not by forcing me to necessarily get good grades but by encouraging my hobbies.

EDIT: removed an unclear sentence

> Are you sure you (and those who upvoted) know what social class is? ... having a university degree would be put your father as middle class in most of them.

What about a homeless person on the streets who has a PhD? What class are they in? I would say they are in the "poor" class. What about not being able to buy food or clothes? What class is that? I would say in the Western society nowadays that would qualify as "poor". Granted there were some who didn't have a place to live and fared a lot worse, but we were not far from it either (at least that's how I felt and remember it). Education and social class don't necessarily go together.

> Just because you have a different experience doesn't mean you're the norm or that the argument is invalid.

Of course. I think that is implied since that statement is followed by my personal story. However I knew some kids my age that went through a similar experience.

It seems in general these type of situations are common in countries that have decent education but ultimately suffer an economic meltdown. So my experience was probably more common for those who grew up in ex-Soviet union and experienced its collapse. We ended up with a lot of educated people who, despite their education, became very poor.

Re: If you were hacking since age 8, it means you were privileged

#84

Post by quadhome »

starkfist wrote: post #82
quadhome wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both firms were funded by and had close ties with Sequoia. And that's why Google bought YouTube for more than they were worth?

No.

I don't understand then. :-(

Thanks for your time and responses.

Re: If you were hacking since age 8, it means you were privileged

#85

Post by tibbon »

mattkern wrote: post #67
JanezStupar wrote: post #49

Whatever, moar feminist fascism. I did get my first computer when I was age 8. That was back in 1991 and all I got was nearly 10 year old ZX Spectrum. I guess I WAS privileged, but the privilege was that my parents, although old (mother was 41 when she conceived) and uneducated, they both only have primary schools - father is barely literate, mother heavily dyslectic. But they have seen the future and wanted a piece…

Sorry, but hardly fascism. It's appalling how few people actually know what fascist means.

Feminist fascism doesn't have to imply everything about fascism. Its a compound phrase. Just as 'fly fishing' has little to do with the wright brothers. He's more talking about militant feminism (again, which has little to do with the military). Militant Feminism seems is where women try to find every reason in the book that white, middle class, men are the root of all evil. It may or may not be a real thing, but that's what people are thinking of when they say this.

Re: If you were hacking since age 8, it means you were privileged

#86

Post by tibbon »

I am white, grew up middle classed, able-bodied, raised christian, in the US, had two parents, and I am a man. What am I supposed to do?

Should I feel guilty? Should I make all efforts to use affirmative action to always hire women/minorities over men? Should I no longer meet with like-minded people and talk about our experiences in computing? Should I quit my job and go into teaching social studies in public school instead?

The article makes a few interesting points, but I am not convinced of the correlation and they are grasping at air. Plenty of us weren't rich kids, and not all rich kids went into technology. Not everyone with a computer at home went into technology either! My younger sister has had a computer available for a longer percentage of her life than me, and isn't in technology either.

Re: If you were hacking since age 8, it means you were privileged

#87

Post by zandorg »

First, I skimmed the article and it doesn't surprise me to hear feminist rhetoric like this.

My parents are only middle-class and got a Sharp MZ-700 in 1985, when I was 7. It had MS-BASIC (loaded from tape!) but had no decent games. Then, I got a C64 from an aunt and uncle in 1987, and it was great. A disk drive and freezer cartridge in 1988 and I learned 6502 programming.

So I was hacking since 8, but not especially privileged. Some of my friends had computers too, but they never learned to program. I did.

[EDIT] My parents weren't scientists, University educators or or computer scientists as in a lot of Silicon Valley cases.

Re: If you were hacking since age 8, it means you were privileged

#88

Post by kd0amg »

mattlanger wrote: post #58

Interesting how many of the comments in this thread take the form of "This article is bullshit! I started coding when I was eight because I got my first computer by way of [something other than privilege or affluence]." Because if you've been coding since you were eight then you should probably know by now the difference between anecdotes and data. [Full disclosure: I did my first hacking with BASIC and Rexx at aroun…

Because if you've been coding since you were eight then you should probably know by now the difference between anecdotes and data.

And that enjoying a privilege despite limited resources doesn't make it not a privilege. And that most of them relied on decisions made by an adult, not by the future hacker (parents stretching their budgets, teachers/schools offering use of their computers, etc.).

Re: If you were hacking since age 8, it means you were privileged

#89

Post by kd0amg »

tkahn6 wrote: post #48
knowtheory wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how do you figure? I presume that they weren't interviewing school children for the survey. You can hardly say that, because 39% adults thought that a computer was unnecessary, deciding (rightly or wrongly) to not get a PC wouldn't disadvantage their potential hacker children, when compared to hacker children who did have parents who jobs required them to have computers.

The article argues that most hackers are hackers because their parents were wealthy. At some point you must accept that this argument is no longer applies for some generation of hackers and those that follow it. I submit that 10 years ago, economics no longer played a role in whether some one could afford a computer. Your point could apply to any generation of hackers because it's analogous to "what if some parents d…

At some point you must accept that this argument is no longer applies for some generation of hackers and those that follow it.

Of course, but it looks to me like most of those working in the industry are still a fair bit older than I am (and it's been a few years since I was an incoming undergrad).

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