Vannevar Bush's "roomful of girls"
Vannevar Bush may have been a technological visionary, but, like most writers in the 1940s, his predictions are rife with myopic gender expectations that changed every bit as much as the technology. In "
As we may think," the 1945 article worshipped by librarians and HCI folk around the world, he talks about scientists and assistants. The scientists (and mathematicians, and really, anyone doing any kind of higher thinking) are all men, and the assistants (stenographers, typists) are all women. For example:
"[A computer] will take instructions and data from a roomful of girls arms with simple keyboard punches, and will deliver sheets of computed results every few minutes."
It's insulting, humorous, and forgivable--in that order--to read Bush. Given the historical context, of course his experience was with roomsful of women piecing away at WWII cryptography. All of the big writers are guilty of it. Englebart (1963) talks of "augmenting man's intellect" and Licklider (1960) describes "man-computer symbiosis." But it's too bad their enlightenment wasn't reflected in gender-neutral pronouns.
Comments
On the positive side, when my copy of Security and Usability arrived, i was glad to see that the O'Reilly editor had heeded my plea to revert the pronouns in my chapter back to gender-neutrality, as they were originally written.
Personally, I dislike gender-neutral pronouns. Should we start using gender-neutral pronouns for child-bearers, just in case in fifty years men will be able to bare children?
</rant>
But P, you'd love Egalia's Daughters.
I guess Pittsburgh has its fair share of idiosyncracies to keep you interested.
I havent exactly read the authors you have mentioned and so have no idea whether each one of them intended the use of gender-specific words but then it could be that people were just having slips of the tongue. Rather than attempt to be politically correct all the time and devote a large part of their conscious existence towards this, they might have expected people to bear with them while they outline their broader ideas since after all importance is placed on the ideas rather than the words used to describe them.
On a less serious note, Alan Turing slogged his balls off along with a few other notable male mathematicians on crypto puzzles and so would have been sharing the same room as those women you mentioned. So, does that not mean those women were considered on par with the procreator of the field of theoretical computer science?
On an even less serious note, Turing was gay. ;-)
yeah, we know. you've only read 1984. :P
i'm with P on not being a fan of gender-neutral pronoun, but i can understand your objection to bush's writing.
but your objection to the others' (writing) i don't see. as far as i know, the use of "man" to refer to all humans was pretty much the norm at the time. is it really fair to judge these authors by today's norms? (gasp, i've reaveled by relativism!)
or am i missing the context that these quotes come from?
That's beautiful. I Thank you for your grace.