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Google Conducted Hollywood 'Interventions' To Change Look of Computer Scientists (usatoday.com)
theodp writes: Most TV computer scientists are still white men," USA Today reports. "Google wants to change that. Google is calling on Hollywood to give equal screen time to women and minorities after a new study the internet giant funded found that most computer scientists on television shows and in the movies are played by white men. The problem with the hackneyed stereotype of the socially inept, hoodie-clad white male coder? It does not inspire underrepresented groups to pursue careers in computer science, says Daraiha Greene, Google CS in Media program manager, multicultural strategy." According to a Google-funded study conducted by Prof. Stacy L. Smith and the Media, Diversity, & Social Change Initiative at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, Google's Computer Science in Media team conducted "CS interventions" with "like-minded people" to create "Google influenced storytelling." The executive summary for a USC study entitled Cracking the Code: The Prevalence and Nature of Computer Science Depictions in Media notes that "Google influenced" TV programs include HBO's Silicon Valley and AMC's Halt and Catch Fire. The USC researchers also note that "non-tech focused programs may offer prime opportunities to showcase CS in unique and counter-stereotypical ways. As the Google Team moves forward in its work with series such as Empire, Girl Meets World, Gortimer Gibbons Life on Normal Street, or The Amazing Adventures of Gumball, it appears the Team is seizing these opportunities to integrate CS into storytelling without a primary tech focus." The study adds, "In the case of certain series, we provided on-going advisement. The Fosters, Miles from Tomorrowland, Halt and Catch Fire, Ready, Jet, Go, The Powerpuff Girls and Odd Squad are examples of this. In addition to our continuing interactions, we engaged in extensive PR and marketing support including social media outreach, events and press."
Google's TV interventions have even spilled over into public education -- one of Google-sponsored Code.org's signature Hour of Code tutorials last December was Gumball's Coding Adventure, inspired by the Google-advised Cartoon Network series, The Amazing Adventures of Gumball. "We need more students around the world pursuing an education in CS, particularly girls and minorities, who have historically been underrepresented in the field," explains a Google CS First presentation for educators on the search giant's Hour of Code partnership with Cartoon Network. "Based on our research, one of the reasons girls and underrepresented minorities are not pursuing computer science is because of the negative perception of computer scientists and the relevance of the field beyond coding." According to a 2015 USC report, President Obama was kept abreast of efforts to challenge media's stereotypical portrayals of women; White House Visitor Records show that USC's Smith, the Google-funded study's lead author, and Google CS Education in Media Program Manager Julie Ann Crommett (now at Disney) were among those present when the White House Council on Women and Girls met earlier that year with representatives of the nation's leading toy makers, media giants, retailers, educators, scientists, the U.S. Dept. of Education, and philanthropists.
Google's TV interventions have even spilled over into public education -- one of Google-sponsored Code.org's signature Hour of Code tutorials last December was Gumball's Coding Adventure, inspired by the Google-advised Cartoon Network series, The Amazing Adventures of Gumball. "We need more students around the world pursuing an education in CS, particularly girls and minorities, who have historically been underrepresented in the field," explains a Google CS First presentation for educators on the search giant's Hour of Code partnership with Cartoon Network. "Based on our research, one of the reasons girls and underrepresented minorities are not pursuing computer science is because of the negative perception of computer scientists and the relevance of the field beyond coding." According to a 2015 USC report, President Obama was kept abreast of efforts to challenge media's stereotypical portrayals of women; White House Visitor Records show that USC's Smith, the Google-funded study's lead author, and Google CS Education in Media Program Manager Julie Ann Crommett (now at Disney) were among those present when the White House Council on Women and Girls met earlier that year with representatives of the nation's leading toy makers, media giants, retailers, educators, scientists, the U.S. Dept. of Education, and philanthropists.
" The problem with the hackneyed stereotype of the socially inept, hoodie-clad white male coder? It does not inspire underrepresented groups to pursue careers in computer science.."
So it's not INACCURATE, just uninspiring.
Because *everything* needs to be about achieving purported social justice agendas?
-Styopa
At least make it consistent with reality and either put in a Chinese undergrad or underpaid Indian dude.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
i dont see many white males represented in rap videos. i guess that is the reason that there is a under representation of white males in rap. we should start a change.org petition demanding that white males be equally represented in rap videos in order to grow the number of white males in rap
According to a 2015 USC report, President Obama was kept abreast of efforts to challenge media's stereotypical portrayals of women...
This news piece talks of the absence of male teachers.
I'd like to have an effort targeted to this imbalance too. Google, anyone?
An experiment has been conducted many times where they throw a load of female toys (typically dolls) and male toys (typically trucks) around a monkey enclosure. Every time it is conducted, the female monkeys play with the dolls and the male monkey's play with the trucks. Here's a video of the experiment being carried out on BBC's Horizon:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bm9xXyw2f7g
The simple fact is, men and women are different and therefore have different interests. The reason women are under-represented in computer science is because most women aren't interested in the subject. It's the same reason men are under-represented in child care - most men have no interest in looking after young children.
What Google are doing is fascist style propaganda that ignores the truth and pushes the party narrative. They then severely punish anyone who questions the narrative.
Google is true evil.
What minorities are you talking about? Indians and other Asians?
Why not you?
"The problem with the hackneyed stereotype of the socially inept, hoodie-clad white male coder? It does not inspire underrepresented groups to pursue careers in computer science..."
Yeah, because Aristotle, Euclid, Pythagoras, Archimedes, Bacon, Newton, Leibniz, and all the groundbreaking mathematicians, scientists and technologists up through Einstein, Turing, Feynman and Berners-Lee took up science and technology because they were inspired by someone they saw on TV.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Same reason feminists love to talk about how more other women should be coders but don't want to be coders themselves.
I just went DuckDuckGo
You know who else wasn't inspired by stereotypical white nerds wearing hoodies to go into tech?
Me, a fucking white male. I went into tech because I enjoy it, not because of socially retarded idiots on tv.
This line seems to be taken from a document about the movie Hidden Figures.
That "Made with Code" project seems particularly absurd. They're trying to trick girls into learning how to program by making it about clothes and fashion. Feminism seems more intent on reinforcing stereotypes than those they accuse of misogyny.
This is the Hollywood image of coders that I grew up with.
Have gnu, will travel.
Power corrupts.
Back when Google behaved well - text ads, "do no evil", non-commercial search result ranking - they were new, and essentially powerless.
However, Google acquired considerable power consequent to its abandonment of those good behaviors. Corruption breeds more corruption; corruption also breeds power.
It's no surprise that they have now decided to impose social engineering on the population at large. The only remaining question is if the current trend in their behavior will be impacted by any challengers. Doesn't really look like it.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
My older sister went from being able to change an alternator (never what you'd call a 'competent wrench') to not being able to change a tire.
What happened in the interim? She learned to bounce her tits at her boyfriends and have them do the work.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
NCIS has prominently featured a female hacker for more than a decade now. A female hacker who possesses all the same superpowers as every male hacker: she can get through any encryption in as much under 44 minutes as is required to advance the plot.
Warehouse 13 prominently featured a female hacker for very nearly the entirety of its 5 year run, beginning 8 years ago. She didn't exhibit her hacking superpowers nearly as frequently as Abby in NCIS, but Allison Scagliotti made up for it by being improbably beautiful.
Leverage prominently featured a black male hacker for the entirety of its 4 year run, beginning 9 years ago. He too had all the requisite hacking superpowers Hollywood insists on depicting.
Hell, we can go all the way back to Hackers, in 1995, to find a very young Angelina Jolie playing yet another improbably beautiful female hacker. We don't know if she had hacking superpowers because real computers didn't actually appear in that movie, but I'm sure if there were any, she would have.
Other examples are plentiful. In short, Hollywood has been injecting minorities and women into a predominantly white male role for more than a generation, predating even the existence of Google. It doesn't matter. In the face of persistent, even pervasive propaganda for an entire generation, the number of women getting CS degrees has gone down, not up. It's almost as if people object to fake role models routinely doing the impossible, especially when they know damn well that the job is simultaneously boring (to their minds) and insanely complicated, and nothing like what's depicted on TV, because guess what, everybody can use a computer, and nearly everybody has, at least a little, so they know the reality is far different.
Bullshit propaganda is bullshit, and also a demonstrated failure. But you just keep on keepin' on, Google. I'm sure it'll start working. Aaaaany minute now...
(Actually, white males should probably be thanking Google for these efforts. After 25 years of anti-correlation, their propaganda seems to have had the affect of reinforcing their dominance of the field. Want a fake hacker? Hire a pretty girl or a black man. Want your computer fixed? Hire a white man.)
You know when I hear people like Paul Joseph Watson and Infowars as a whole rail about cultural Marxism I mostly just chuckle at it for the comedy that it mostly is. But every so often assholes in the tech industry prove the other crazies correct by their very actions. People at Google are so damn obsessed with diversity of skin ton and genital shape that it's starting to ignore the very concept of Google as a money making company in favor of being a vehicle for social change.
Jesus, Google couldn't get the right mix or woman and the 'correct' kind of racial minority in positions of power by hiring them... so they got people in the media to PRETEND that it's that way?? Actually I aint even mad. I'm just flat out amused at how pathetic both Hollywood and Google is in in this. They want to make sure people doing FAKE HACKING and IT work while say shit like 'I'm rerouting through the firewall with encryption!' Oh man, that's just comedy gold.
I actually tried. Apparently I wasn't 'passionate' enough about teaching. The gatekeepers want it to be a vocation rather than just a job.
As to why other guys don't, it's a thankless low paid job and just an accusation of sexual impropriety can run you out of the profession.
The worst that women have to deal with in IT is variable hygiene standards and some non-PC jokes. (Okay, they have to deal with a bunch of other stuff as well, but they aren't IT specific).
The problem I have with this statement is that it seems equivalent to saying that "girls and underrepresented minorities" are somehow more likely to care what other people think about them if they otherwise did try to pursue a field that they believed was interesting, to such a degree that they will not try to pursue such a field in the first place if they feel that they may be negatively perceived because of it. Of course, one may argue that they are more likely to care about it because of all the other discrimination against them, and I do not wish to be dismissive of such unjust discrimination, but in the end, it still amounts to them caring more about what other people think.
Which, to be blunt... and I hate to sound insensitive here, is really their own effing problem. If the only real thing stopping you from pursuing a field, regardless of what it is, is the fear of what other people are going to think of you if you did, then I'm pretty darn sure that you probably wouldn't be a good fit for that field in the first place.
Find something that you love to do enough that it won't matter what other people are going to think, or else you will never be happy. That much is going to be true for both men and women, and people of all races and demographics.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Turner classic movies had two sci-fi classics yesterday: 2001 A Space Odyssey, and Westworld (with Yul Brenner). Re-watched both.
Odyssey was 1968 and Kubrick. Westworld was 1973 and Michael Crichton.
It bothers me now, to see that Odyssey had _zero_ diversity. I was critically looking for anyone, even background cast that just walks past the camera, or is in a shot.
Westworld had diversity. Both as scientific types in the underground control center, as well as being visitors to the leisure worlds.
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
"Based on our research, one of the reasons girls and underrepresented minorities are not pursuing computer science is because of the negative perception of computer scientists and the relevance of the field beyond coding."
Funny how no one cared about the stereotypes men would face for being so nerdy/geeky/whatever when computers weren't as profitable or such a big part of society.
I would consider it a major achievement if Hollywood just acknowledged the difference between IT guys, software developers and cyber security specialists. Instead the tube is filled with Felicity Smoaks who alternate among hacking into metropolitan CCTV systems, writing applications to sift and parse through data they've just downloaded from a satellite (that they also hacked into) and re-wiring routers to transmit on a different frequency. These people don't exist in any race or gender in real life.
Why does it seem like the "news" is dominated by "fake" or "stupid" in various ways? Oh yeah. I seem to have forgotten where the fish started rotting...
The "Don't be evil" fantasy at the google died long ago. I'm pretty sure you just didn't notice until "the last year", and the minor question is "What blinded you?" Maybe your dreams of getting hired by the google died?
The google's primary motto has become "All your attention are belong to us so we can sell more advertising as we [the google] seek perfection defined by infinite profit." This is actually tightly linked to the evolution of the google's mission statement. Turned out that all of the world's information was too overwhelming and the metric of utility was too unclear. They fixed that by focusing on making the advertisers' ads the highest priority information and using profit as the primary metric of utility. Which finally leads us to the religious part of it:
"There is no gawd but profit, and Apple, Gilead, Google, Exxon, and some giant gamblers are profit's prophets."
That's based on Fortune's ranking, and I'm grouping banks, speculators, and money changers as "gamblers". Other sources define "profits" slightly differently and come up with different lists. I just saw one with Exxon higher up and Samsung included. Plus the prophets change over time.
I've come to believe that a problem without a solution is meaningless. Since I can prove that the so-called "problem" of "more profit" has no solution, I reject it. The proof is simple. There are infinite numbers, therefore there is no maximum profit. If you want a more technical proof, you can use any of the infinite set proofs. Personally I like the infinite prime numbers.
I think it would be better if our economic system were organized around two different principles: (1) Increasing freedom, and (2) Improving the use of our limited time. As a result of practicing those principles, I don't have the money to bribe the cheapest politicians to rig the rules of the game in favor of larger profits. In contrast, the google has become a YUGE lobbyist.
You don't want to get me started on fake individuals. Suffice it to say that corporations are NOT human beings.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
The different incarceration rates based on gender correlate to testosterone.
Completely true, and if you're a bully you'll want to mock them for it (e.g. men think with their dicks).
On the other hand, pointing out the other things that correlate with testosterone levels, like willingness to take risks or mechanical aptitude, is wrong-think. Men and women must identical ... except when women are better.
And given that men have much higher levels of testosterone, this would explain the higher male prison population.
It explains part of it, but not all of it. Even when you only look at non-violent, first-time offenders men get longer sentences and higher fines for the same crimes than women do.
Consider that both chemical and surgical castration [nih.gov] reduce the rate of repeat pedophile offenders from 50% to between 2% and 5%. Testosterone clearly plays a role.
Ok, but is that a change in risk-taking, libido, or some vague 'badness' that you obviously think men have?