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Grace Hopper Documentary Edges on Successful Crowdfunding
mikejuk (1801200) writes "Born With Curiosity is a proposed biopic about computer pioneer Grace Hopper. With a week to go before it closes on June 7, a crowdfunding campaign on Indigogo has so far raised 94% of its $45,000 target. Although there have been a couple of books devoted to Grace Hopper and she recently was the subject of a Google Doodle, her story hasn't made it to celluloid, which is something that Melissa Pierce finds anomalous, stating on the Born With Curiosity Indigogo page: 'Steve Jobs had 8 films made about him, with another in pre-production! Without Grace Hopper, Steve might have been a door to door calculator salesman! Even with that fact,there isn't one documentary about Grace and her legacy. It's time to change that.'"
" her story hasn't made it to celluloid, which is something that Melissa Pierce finds anomalous, stating on the Born With Curiosity Indigogo page: 'Steve Jobs had 8 films made about him, with another in pre-production! Without Grace Hopper, Steve might have been a door to door calculator salesman! Most of history has been written by and about men. Our aim is to bring to life the untold and lost stories of women."
Uh, her story has been told in the media, quite a bit. She was, for example, featured by 60 minutes. She's mentioned in nearly every CS textbook; I've seen her name pop up in movies and anime. Damn near any techie worth their salt has heard of Hopper. Any CS grad certainly has. She has a ship named after her; she was exempted from retirement guidelines, constantly promoted, to become one of the oldest and longest serving officers. She spent something like a decade, hired by DEC, to go around and lecture. She's in Arlington National Cemetery.
Comparing her to Jobs's pop culture fame is idiotic. On one hand, the head of a major consumer electronics company who was a consummate showman and redefined PERSONAL computing, versus someone who worked on mainframes during+after WW2 on languages most of the population has never heard of, and died more than two decades ago, well before personal computers could be found in most homes? When she passed in 1992, I was one of a handful of kids in my town who had a personal computer in the house, and I lived in a pretty well-off suburb of a tech corridor.
Please help metamoderate.
I hope they are careful to show her life story as it was, warts and all, instead of Hollywood-izing it into some overdramatized biopic of a saint.
Everyone and everything in computing is compared to St Jobs without whom nothing would ever have been invented. In fact, didn't you know that Steve invented Flowmatic and Cobol and Fortran and, well, you name it...
Most of history has been written by and about men.
Which is why Alan Kay had thirteen movies made about him! Oh, wait...
Ezekiel 23:20
Didn't you know... women cannot communicate with the world on equal terms. Everything has to be couched in victimhood and oppression.
In other words Grace Hopper suddenly becomes part of the battle against male oppression... even though her story is actually proof that capable women had success and achievement without a lot of feminist whining and tantrum throwing.
Steve did not redefine personal computing, just a designer who sponged off other's engineering accomplishments. He invented nothing, conceived nothing other than perhaps artistic case and keyboard designs.
Sponging off his engineering friend, and avoiding paying for or acknowledging his daughter. In short, perfecting his Human Turd technique
Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, PhD. [ http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/tap/Files/hopper-story.html ] is an iconic figure in the history of computing and computer science. How anyone could not be aware of her achievements baffles me. Yep, comparing Grace Hopper to Steve Jobs is tantamount to heresy for anyone earning a degree in mathematics, computer science, or engineering.
That's the thing though isn't it. I respect the shit out of Grace Hopper, just like I respect any man or woman that just says, hey, I'm going to do this - then buckles down and gets it done. They earn that respect instead of expecting it on account of genitalia or highly suspect historical-cultural narratives. This is unfortunately the exact opposite of the kind of woman that feminism's eternal victimhood and collectivised pressure creates.
As a kid I loved Aliens and have watched it many times since, but women like Ripley are thinner on the ground than ever before, to my lasting disappointment.