Slashdot Mirror
What Bell Labs Was Like C.1967 (theguardian.com)
New submitter niittyniemi writes: There's a rather interesting photo-gallery over at The Guardian
which gives an indication of what life was like at Bell Labs c.1967.
This was the year that Dennis
Ritchie joined Bell Labs and went on to produce a body of work which has
been pretty much unrivaled in its influence on the modern computing
landscape, even some 50 years later.
What's noticeable about the pictures, is that they are of woman. I don't
think this is a result of the photographer just photographing "eye candy." I
think it's because he was surrounded by women, whom from his comments he
very much respected and hence photographed.
In those times, wrangling with a computer was very much seen as "clerical
work" and therefore the domain of woman. This can be seen as far back as
Bletchley Park and before that Ada Lovelace.
Yet 50 years later, the IT industry has turned full-circle. Look at any IT
company and the percentage of women doing software development or similar is
woeful. Why and how has this happened? Discuss.
I think the simplest explanation for why women fled the tech industry is that the industry became toxic due to
It turns out software development is engineering, not clerical work.
Yet 50 years later, the IT industry has turned full-circle. Look at any IT company and the percentage of women doing software development or similar is woeful. Why and how has this happened? Discuss.
The women who first worked with computers were treated like underling eye-candy, and told their daughters to avoid that shit like the plague? And their granddaughters now see it as a field where wages are going down, where they still get treated like second rate coders (even when they are not), and they are still avoiding that shit like the plague?
Shit, I'm not sure why any male wants to get into IT these days, never mind the ladies.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
Bullshit, I've been reading this since before 9/11. While I will admit that articles "like this" were not nearly as common back then, there was a ton of other not really relevant or great stuff back then too. Remember Jon Katz? This site was always a mix of democrats and conservatives, with a socially liberal, fiscally conservative lean if you had to assign it one. This summary doesn't beg some kind of SJW agenda either, it simply begs a question. How is asking how demographics in the workplace changed being a "justice warrior"? I think a lot of people are sort of mystified why there aren't more women in tech (usually those who don't actually work in it).
Bullshit. Slashdot has had a wide variety of articles and a wide variety of viewpoints back in the day.
What has made Slashdot into "what it is today" are neaderthal neckbeards like yourself who have the self control of a toddler and can't simply scroll past articles that don't interest them. Instead, they come into them and shit all over the place and get modded up by their equally ignorant and intolerant cronies.
These neanderthal neckbeards weren't what made Slashdot - but they are what is destroying it.
The English language is being pummeled into submission by reddit style reporting on the front page. Discuss.
Take a look at how male software people treat women and you got your answer. The main reason a -admittedly good-looking- female friend of mine doesn't have a degree in CS is that she was shocked by all the drooling guys in college. During the new student orientation week, there was always this 'magic number' buzzing around: How many females dared to show up. I sometimes really felt embarrassed by my fellow male students.
Exactly. I thought we were done with Friday's are SJW day. Please no more penis and vagina counting articles. That is part of the reason why this website started to seriously go down hill. Let some other website handle those kinds of political articles and just stick to tech stories. Slashdot is so much better than that junk, let reddit handle it.
-GeekPoet
It's ironic that all the things they accuse "SJWs" of - being perpetually offended, wanting to silence others and shut down debates, demanding everyone agree with them and labelling any dissent as abuse and harassment - is all the stuff they themselves are doing.
Then they tell you to grow a thicker skin, while being unable to scroll past articles they don't like without getting offended themselves.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I would characterise it more as "somewhat weird, possibly creepy". If you look at the notes accompanying the photos, it seems like the guy was also responsible for hiring them all. He then bought them materials to make artwork for the walls. That's just a wee bit odd.
You should keep in mind the The Guardian chose those photos from a larger collection to highlight the presence (and hairstyles) of computer women of the 60s. I don't think buying art supplies for your team is necessarily any more creepy than buying them Nerf guns, fitbits, or a foosball table. Pick distractions that fit the tastes and interests of your team.
Sorry, did you just use massive generalisations in an attempt to show why someone else's generalisation is incorrect?
Also, how can women being looked down upon be anything other than sexism? You glossed right over that claim.
Your post sounds like a fantasy you concocted, drenched with generalisations that point at women being the culprits, and then drifts off into some weird rant which has absolutely nothing to do with this discussion at all.
You are trying too hard.
Well note how he describes some of these women;
"smartest of the bunch"
"a smart single mom"
"a soft-spoken newlywed "
The first suggests he identified, and ranked the intelligence of, these people as a separate group, based on their gender rather than their occupation. Bea may have been the "smartest of the bunch", but she still gets lumped into together with the lowliest female clerk.
The other two he identifies by the fact they have children and their marital status. Would he do the same if he was describing male colleagues? I think not.
So he isn't completely free of the prejudices of the period.
Bell Labs created the transistor, Unix, c, comsats, and goodness knows what else.
As Jerry Pournelle used to say. Bell Labs was the closest thing to an R&D department for the human race we have ever seen.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.