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(Mis)Uses of Technology

by Mike Masnick

Wed, Jan 28th 2004 10:01am





Men Are From Microsoft, Women Are From...

from the not-getting-the-message-across dept

It's no secret that techie professions seem to attract more men than women. However, it's reasonable to ask if this is a vicious cycle that feeds on itself? An attendee at a Microsoft conference introducing their next generation operating system to the software companies they hope will write applications for it, noticed that almost everyone in the room was male. That suggests that the folks writing the applications are almost all going to be male. He wonders if that's going to be a problem, because the software being developed is only going to be written from the male perspective.

4 Comments | Leave a Comment..


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  1.  

    Take Back The Night

    identicon
    dorpus, Jan 28th, 2004 @ 6:11pm

    If women were in charge of computers, they would have furry box covers, hundreds of color scheme choices, reset buttons that can only be pushed with long fingernails, "dressers" instead of "folders", and "Tremendously Fast" Ethernets.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  

    Re: Take Back The Night

    identicon
    dorpus, Jan 28th, 2004 @ 6:26pm

    Oh, and we would have technologies with acronyms like TWILL, CHIFFON, PERCALE, YEAST, TEASEL, FENNEL, LARCH, MIDWIFE, WAITER.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  3.  

    No Subject Given

    identicon
    TAD, Jan 29th, 2004 @ 5:54am

    Well, my wife is a programmer, and she was at the Microsoft PDC last year. In my team of about 8 developers, two are women. Most of the UI designers at the company I work for (a large retail software company) seem to be women. Many of the graphic design artists I know in the industry are women.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  4.  

    Re: Take Back The Night

    identicon
    thecaptain, Jan 29th, 2004 @ 7:25am

    I never thought I'd come close to agreeing with Dopus but he's got (a somewhat exagerated) point.

    When I or my friends shop for a computer..we look at CPU, RAM, hard drive capacity etc.

    My SO (and several exes) drive me crazy because she wants a Mac because "Its just so cute"
    I-Macs just about drove me up the wall when they came on the market.

    Basically I agree that beige boxes are ugly...but seriously, isn't our society already over the top when it comes to "style over substance"? I mean the way a PC LOOKS should NEVER take priority over what it can do.

    I know with my current SO she knows she'll get an argument whenever she suggests getting an I-mac. I'll take a more powerful PC over a goodlooking expensive doorstop any day of the week.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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