91–100 of 117 posts
I don't actually hold this opinion, because I don't know the truth of it, but I remember reading a comment about women in tech that entertained the idea of why there isn't many women in tech. The opinion was that women are more socially aware than men. CS/tech with its mainstream stereotypes of nerds wasn't something that most women wanted to be associated with. If I entertained the thought put forth by this TC artic…
No one has or should have stranglehold on nor should claim to own an industry (territorialism). Industries just are -they don't care who the constituents are. People come and go. Does it matter what it once was, and what it's becoming? No. Stop the provincialism and the bemoaning of the illegitimate successors. Things change. They are meant to. People will always try to seek success wherever it can be found, now it's…
If non nerds want to come to the party, that's despoiling things? Groupies didn't spoil rock & roll (!) But I don't think that's really the debate.
No one has or should have stranglehold on nor should claim to own an industry (territorialism). Industries just are -they don't care who the constituents are. People come and go. Does it matter what it once was, and what it's becoming? No. Stop the provincialism and the bemoaning of the illegitimate successors. Things change. They are meant to. People will always try to seek success wherever it can be found, now it's…
Funny how the nerd stereotype is used in different contexts. In the context of diversity in tech, nerds are a subculture dominated by White males. This culture has a misogynistic dark side, and it is important to show that you don't have to conform to this subculture to succeed in tech. However, in the context of the corporatization of tech, suddenly the nerds are the good guys. And funnily enough, nerd culture was a…
There is an important thread connecting the two: In the context of diversity in tech, nerds are a subculture dominated by White males. This culture has a misogynistic dark side... This is a popular and powerful attack line used by "pretty people" seeking power in tech. It's used to demonize the old guard. When the old guard tries to intellectually dispute it, as is their custom, one can then attack their person direc…
It isn't a zero sum game. People looking to make a quick buck don't stop misfits from playing with computers. As if one must be a social misfit or physically misshapen to be involved with computers in the first place, which is itself a ridiculous premise.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"I think that's enough to critique your original way of phrasing the problem." Then I don't think much of your thinking. Making up scenarios that are trivially refuted by a moment's thought is silly. How about 4) Aliens come down every night and surgically remove the bits of women's brains that are used in programming tasks. There, now I've really addressed the issue. See why 'making stuff up' isn't actually some mar…
Right, so even in fields you've been able to pick, you've not been able to show that women are the majority of the winners. You can say they're a little less frequently trumped by men. But you still have minorities in both cases. Where are all these competent women who are eschewing tech because of the lack of hot guys? Which fields are they dominating?
No one has or should have stranglehold on nor should claim to own an industry (territorialism). Industries just are -they don't care who the constituents are. People come and go. Does it matter what it once was, and what it's becoming? No. Stop the provincialism and the bemoaning of the illegitimate successors. Things change. They are meant to. People will always try to seek success wherever it can be found, now it's…
I guess my take away was that when weirdness becomes mainstream it becomes nothing more than a toothless affectation. That you should beware of the savvy newcomers who have learned how to adopt a style formed out of rebellion but will use it to push traditional objectives. They will push out the rule breakers while co-opting their mission statements.
So yeah, it's a pretty standard statement about any fashion cycle. The point of the article then is to warn the weirdos, the divergent thinkers who birthed this industry to not let the handsome dudes laughing at them get them down. It's a cute narrative about larger issues. It's about the status quo's tendency to prevent really weird and innovative ideas to take off out of fear it will spoil their comfortable fun. The people who show up after all the weird work is done weren't their in the start because they don't take risks like that.
It's a decent read. It's called "Beware of the Pretty People" and it is written for the freaks. Reminding them to keep on freaking people out, even when it's no longer the standard game plan.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
objective and meritocratic nerd hiring practices (e.g. hire-by-github, death by brainteaser) That selects for adequately privileged (generally) white males with the spare time to create projects on github and a particular interest in brain-teasers. To my knowledge, hiring in all fields is an utter joke, with essentially zero research ever having been performed. It's entirely based on bias and guided by HR-fueled fear…
There are plenty of non-white people in github. If there are still too many white people on github, you're free to analyse other programmers from websites other than github, such as this Chinese one: https://code.csdn.net/dwzteam/dwz_jui All "colours" of people have free time to create projects.
I'd like to see how you analyzed the race of github contributors. I'd also like to know what "plenty" means. Personally, I strongly suspect that you'll see fairly small set of race/location/income combinations.
All "colours" of people have free time to create projects.
Given that we're not really talking about color, per se, I seriously hope that you don't honestly believe that statement.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why are you so exorcised by the word privilege? My point was nothing to do with what you seem to have a problem with. My point was that what is seen as 'merit' is a function of a whole bunch of other factors, which means it isn't somehow a racists discussion stopping thing to point out that Asian men have higher levels of 'merit' (when merit is defined in the way I understood it to be in the post I was responding to)…
I don't know why you think I'm "exorcised" by a word. I'm simply pointing out that you are using a completely different definition of it than myself and hackeruser, and as a result your posts are completely missing the point. If privilege means "probabilistic causes of non-equal representation", then that's a very broad definition and every non-deterministic unequal representation is caused by privilege. But you were…
In this case, I think one version of "privilege" is the idea that our society involves unipolar power relations where one group/ideology is privileged and enjoys special advantages. Individual people might in some ways align with this group/ideologies, and in other ways not (this is called "intersectionality"). But when they do align with this group/ideology they receive some of its benefits.
Sago's version is that privilege is just another word for any group having any advantage for any reason. I.e. "privilege" stripped of its underlying assumptions about societies power structure. It's unfortunate that Sago feel so strongly that they represent sociological research, when I think that almost all sociologists use the other definition.
Sago says that Asians might be privileged simply because their culture [0]. The orthodox view would be that Asians only receive White privilege, by their willingness to accept both the White lifestyle, working under a capitalist system, and adopt White views on Black/White race relations. To the extend that Asians also study harder, that would be an accident of history, and probably something an orthodox sociologist would try to downplay (e.g. by looking at Nth generation Asians).
No one has or should have stranglehold on nor should claim to own an industry (territorialism). Industries just are -they don't care who the constituents are. People come and go. Does it matter what it once was, and what it's becoming? No. Stop the provincialism and the bemoaning of the illegitimate successors. Things change. They are meant to. People will always try to seek success wherever it can be found, now it's…
"Accept that things which become mainstream have to acquire aspects of the mainstream." I guess my take away was that when weirdness becomes mainstream it becomes nothing more than a toothless affectation. That you should beware of the savvy newcomers who have learned how to adopt a style formed out of rebellion but will use it to push traditional objectives. They will push out the rule breakers while co-opting their…
This article preys on people's weaknesses --like feeling that their values or lifestyles are being co-opted -as if that were bad in and of itself. If you have solid beliefs, what others do or don't do are irrelevant to you.
I don't think tech crunch really believes in what they say but rather they believe that what they say will resonate with their audience and will result in more income for them. They couldn't possibly care any less about the principles of technologists --whatever alignment there is, is coincidental. Let's ask this, have they ever run articles which would drive down their readership? They may run something with some ironic distance, etc. but that's just a form of co-opting their audience.