So disheartening that you would immediately receive negative feedback on your witty (and important) comment. Better luck next time when you try and say something socially progressive around here. Nice comment +1
Seriously. A lot of these comments are along the lines of 'Hey, me and my awesome smart hacker brain have all of the evidence, so I don't need to acknowledge this serious issue,' and then the argument dies. It's alright, maybe in another few thousand years or so people will start to use those big hacker brains to take a minute to contextualize the issue instead of brushing it off...
You are ignoring a larger history and the institutionalized sexism that currently exists in all sects of government, industry, and society as a whole.
Of course you would feel the same if there were no male speakers, because men haven't had to suffer through centuries of exclusion, therefore it would not threaten the position of men. When you take a deeper look at the issue and realize that we have the utility to create a gender-balanced (and gender-fluid if you want to trim some more ignorance) society, it is upsetting that yet another conference has no female speakers. The comment by the dunce about race/body-type/ablism etc completely undermines the position of those speaking out. The people pointing out that women are underrepresented are the same people that will also point out those other imbalances. They are working on their own fight--and yes, there is still largely internalized ignorance of race/gender-identity/ablism and beyond within the movement, but that does not mean they should completely abandon progress just to appease someone that thinks it is only 'perceived bias'. Thoughts?
To say that having a conference which does not represent a certain group threatens the position of this group is hyperbolic.
When you take a deeper look at the issue and realize that we have the utility to create a gender-balanced (and gender-fluid if you want to trim some more ignorance) society, it is upsetting that yet another conference has no female speakers.
Your comment on "trimming some more ignorance" in relation to postmodern gender theory does not speak well. I'm not sure what you even mean by a "genderfluid" society. Your statement implies that gender is learned rather than innate, which if John Money's (the person who pioneered this hypothesis) research is anything to show, is dubious.
I am not ignoring anything. This particular conference was not called to address historical issues with gender favoritism. This is a scientific / academic conference dealing with actual ongoing research not related to gender studies. If there is a woman in this group that has something relevant to speak about she should definitely be considered but I don't think that the controlling board should be required to select a woman just to make the speaker list look statistically better to activists.
They are free to boycott the conference though I do not think they are doing themselves any favors. They will only cause those not involved in this gender conspiracy to lose patience and empathy with them.
Are there biased men AND women out there? Yes. Are they in complete control of all current events? No.
So sorry to interrupt 'actual ongoing research'! Oh no! How dare progress be stopped!? There is an actual ongoing struggle for women to feel just as appreciated as men and not feel like they have to fly to the moon in order to be taken just as seriously as their male counterparts. Sure, they don't NEED to be required to select women--exactly the point! This article is useful in that it points out the disadvantaged position women still face. If a board does not intervene to try and create a gender balance, then there will be no gender balance, precisely because the issue is unregulated and ignored. Hmmm... sounds a lot like ignoring regulation on economics--clearly there are actual ongoing issues that can be solved by the private sector and so we should just ignore the potential solutions of the people so that the private sector can really get things done. Your argument is underdeveloped. It seems to make logical sense, yes, I credit you that, but the logic is baseless if you ignore the larger picture.
Just curious, do you have any evidence at all to back up your assumptions that without forceful intervention this particular organization will have a gender imbalance from now until the end of time?
I completely agree with the sentiments expressed in your response. Just because we live in a society where massive technology corporations need to maintain a positive image and keep release cycles under wraps does not mean this kid should be treated like a criminal. I would rather smartphones not even exist if this is the way we are going to treat people. #buildingARocketAndLeaving
It looks like a lot of unsuspecting participants blinded by effective marketing are about to get ripped off hard. "Retail Purchase Fee: $4.00" From https://www.t-mobilemoneyservices.com/NeedHelp/Fees Let's just hope folks using the service have a T-Mobile number! With the average debit card holder making about 18.3 purchases per month (and likely more for the targeted demographic because many in this starvation-wage tier have to make more purchases due to lack of sufficient storage or time), it looks like a nice $75/mo unannounced subscription fee.
The phrasing of "No charge at participating T-Mobile stores; if purchased elsewhere, the fee will be refunded to card account within 30 days" makes me suspect that fee is actually just the cost of getting the initial card.
Does anybody think there is space for a "CS Students against Weaponry" alliance? I go to Umass Amherst, and there are tons of people who end up working for Raytheon upon graduation. Sure, the 100k / yr is quite tempting when you just came from community college and a retail job just years before, but perhaps some education may stop students from agreeing to internships and careers at Raytheon, etc. It's oftentimes good students who are mostly oblivious to why their skills are being exploited. Maybe we could affect this mindset and bring a larger student audience into the ethical discussion. It is becoming harder and harder to distinguish your contributions to the indirect damages caused to innocent third-parties. And with CS, it's not like there is a shortage of jobs. But that may be a misguided view--it's obvious that students take these jobs because they 'have to' or risk suffering anywhere from 10k to 300k of debt, depending on the school and their financial background. It's all very much a shame.
Educational institutions are the battleground for mindshare between the military-industrial and the peace-lovers. Don't ask the question whether you should start a "CS Students against Weaponry" movement or not: just simply do it.
You have to make peace, it doesn't just happen. Same with war, incidentally ..
> It's oftentimes good students who are mostly oblivious to why their skills are being exploited.
I'm not sure I agree with that, but if that's what you think it doesn't make sense to try and keep the "good" students away from military contractors. If they're going to build weapons (that use/require code) I'd rather they have the best developers available. Hiring bad programmers certainly isn't going to decrease civilian casualties.
Thank you for this! Seriously, I try and explain to people that the reason for conglomerating every service into one is to tell tales of high G+ user-base for greater ad revenue. It's like boasting about how Android has the largest phone deployment, while the UX and satisfaction of iOS far outweighs Android's ecosystem (no bias either way). Everything is turning into a big numbers sham with no care for the intelligence and technical navigational experience of user.
But now I am frustrated with my use of the internet and the interconnectedness of everything. I don’t like being a node in a graph full of properties, incoming, and outgoing edges. I don’t like being inspected everyday, by the companies with the wealth to do so, like I am an anonymous bug in an experiment.
I don’t like brands anymore. Even if the companies have great people, I still loathe a brand name. It’s embedded; they spread it like an infectious disease. It pervades all spaces of the web. Of my web—my web personalized for me. They tell me what I need. I don’t tell them. Because the algorithms are smart, really, they are. But they are blind to what matters—to what matters to me.
Maybe I am the sum of my likes. Maybe my interests help them learn so they can bring me the things they think I’ll like.
It only makes it worse. Everything is too familiar, too formulaic, and all very much the same. For communication, I love the formula. Messages are sent to every different type of person you can imagine, and they can all understand perfectly well. But it is the message that is the problem. The message, as I said, is always the same. It’s a tagline, a ‘service’, and a subscription fee.
Our technology is a burden to psychology. Within our society, it is a weapon. It’s a tool. And it’s digging up and targeting you. The technology needs a divorce if it will help. It needs to divorce itself from corporate wealth, from unregulated self-interest that harms people. People are hurting and people or mourning, and people wake up in the morning with no hope for a future but keep on going because that’s what they were told to do.
I wrote this yesterday and I was so delighted to see something so similar at the top of HN this afternoon.
