I'm ashamed to say I did not know about this person before today; what an interesting life she led.
A true giant both for industry and people.
Shame on all of "us" for missing the date.
Lynn Conway has died
231–240 of 429 posts
Re: Lynn Conway has died
#232[flagged]
Why would it be an ' or ' thing? Each of these by itself is a big accomplishment: * Inventing super-scalar architecture * Writing THE book on VLSI * Becoming an accomplished professor, a favorite and recognized teacher to many of the "greats" in the field. * Undergoing (then new and much riskier) gender reassignment surgery despite the legal and social consequences that it might (and ultimately did) entail - losing a…
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Re: Lynn Conway has died
#233Lynn Conway co-wrote "the book" on VLSI design, "Introduction to VLSI Systems", created and taught this historic VLSI Design Course in 1978, which was the first time students designed and fabricated their own integrated circuits, including James Clark (SGI) who made the Geometry Engine, and Guy L Steel (MIT) who made the Scheme Microprocessor. She invented superscalar architecture at IBM, just to be fired in 1968 aft…
I ended up teaching Carver Mead's course in its last year at Caltech, which was quite an experience. In many ways, the course was (and is) horribly out of date, and not just because of the fact that students were using open-source Berkeley tools to draw layouts. The real reason why this course was obsolete was that Mead and Conway so thoroughly won the argument on the idea of creating rigorous abstractions that people don't learn any other way.
It just seems so obvious today that you can create gates, you can create macros, you can create complex designs, and you can define the interface at every level so you can hook them up and they just work. That idea came out of Conway and the early pioneers of VLSI.
The same ideas are the core of how we work with libraries when doing software engineering, too.
Re: Lynn Conway has died
#234I recommend reading Lynn's story, written in her own words: https://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/RetrospectiveT.html It is amazing, tragic, and triumphant in so many ways.
I appreciate her making the effort to tell her story. I struggle sometimes to understand what it means when people say they feel born in the wrong gender. They way she describes it - not just about wanting to do 'girl' things but wanting to be soft and round and feminine - is eye-opening for me.
As much as "trapped in the wrong body" is a cliché, the physical aspect of gender dysphoria is profound, and often overlooked. I don't care about competing in women's sports, or what locker room I had to use. I cared about my body becoming grotesque and alien to me, and became overwhelmed with how profoundly wrong it felt. It's not that I want to look like a girl so I can be treated like one - I want to look like a girl, regardless of how I'm treated. My dysphoria is actually worse when I'm alone, because I can't distract myself with socializing. It's hard to empathize with physical dysphoria if you've never felt it, but I appreciate your struggle.
Re: Lynn Conway has died
#235#1 Most Talented Female Engineer
Stop putting peoples on #1 there are surprising examples, there is no #1 in any field, tesla, einstein or: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Lamarr#Inventing_career https://www.inventionandtech.com/content/hedy-lamarr-radio-c... ;)
Einstein wasn't even the best Einstein, that was that Super Dave Osborne!
Re: Lynn Conway has died
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you think that reaction is natural, given the patterns and preferences of most of human society?
This has little to do with human society. Western society, maybe. Plenty of other societies don't assert a distinct binary for gender (which doesn't even exist in sex; intersex people exist at the same rates as people that are red-headed, and you wouldnt call red heads unnatural). Even if it was "natural" you're making the choice to treat someone like shit. You can backpedal onto what all your peers are doing all you…
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Re: Lynn Conway has died
#237[flagged]
>> Is this volume of upvotes due to this person being accomplished in their field or because of the transgender thing Yes. >> What is it about computing that it has such a high concentration of trans people compared to other fields. First, prove your thesis: what is this “high concentration” and what “other fields” are you talking about? There seem to be a great deal of trans people in a great many places, and now th…
There's no thesis, we're just talking. I don't understand why I got called names and hostile responses. Meh.
The second part of your reply is great, I figured this would be the place to ask somebody who knows about it. I wish you'd have started and ended with that. I'm one of those very nerds who never cared about who wants to sleep with whom.
I must note that on occasion trans techies are aggressively hostile to none trans techies and I don't appreciate it anymore than you do when it flows the other way.
Re: Lynn Conway has died
#238> Although she had hoped to be allowed to transition on the job, IBM fired Conway in 1968 after she revealed her intention to transition.[19] IBM apologized for this in 2020. Given that in 2012 there was an entire IEEE magazine issue dedicated to her career and contributions to the field which really brought awareness of all her contributions...it's disappointing it took IBM so long to apologize, especially given the…
Have worked with several trans folks at major legacy corps like IBM and while I'm sure there may have been rank-and-file issues, discrimination was not tolerated by mgmt in the latter 90s. My memory is IBM and HP added non-discrimination policies around that time.
"discrimination was not tolerated by mgmt in the latter 90s"
That's a really nice thought. Having lived as a trans woman in the 90s, it does not match reality though.
Management is, always, a mixed bag. More and more managers indeed do not tolerate discrimination, but even in the face of policies, it exists. It certainly existed in the 90s, in very large patches.
As for corporate policies, IBM added theirs (gender identity specifically) in 2002. HP had GLEN in 1995 - "Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual employee network". You'll note gender identity isn't part of that, though. (And bisexual is a silent B, I guess ;) If anybody knows when they included gender identity, I'd love to hear about it!
Before that, it was patchwork-y, and your best bet was finding a corner of the corporation that was supportive. And never raising your head to far, just in case. (Many of us did anyways, but more often than not, that had indeed the expected outcome)
Don't get me wrong, I'm happy and grateful HP & IBM were at the forefront of these policies. But it wasn't quite as easy a transition.
Re: Lynn Conway has died
#239Re: Lynn Conway has died
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you think that reaction is natural, given the patterns and preferences of most of human society?
This has little to do with human society. Western society, maybe. Plenty of other societies don't assert a distinct binary for gender (which doesn't even exist in sex; intersex people exist at the same rates as people that are red-headed, and you wouldnt call red heads unnatural). Even if it was "natural" you're making the choice to treat someone like shit. You can backpedal onto what all your peers are doing all you…
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