Last week someone at work brought to my attention the Google Manifesto shenanigan over the previous weekend. As a woman in tech, I hear about things like this all the time, but I'm too caught up with other activities to respond. I try to be a positive person, so instead of dwelling on all the lame comments that pepper social media, I'm just going to share the responses I found helpful.

And before anybody asks, yes, I read the manifesto.

A Brief History of Women in Computing

What I love about this article is that it pointed out what I felt was the biggest problem in the Google Manfiesto. The manifesto presented several biological research to try to justify why women could be less suited for computing. However, as this article points out, the jump was too big. The biological components pointed out may explain certain traits, but not how those traits exactly cause an interest (or lack thereof) in computing specifically.

Personally, the manifesto sounded like it was motivated by the author's deeply held stereotypes about women and he tried to back up his beliefs retroactively. Additionally, the manifesto does not address how modern computing environments were shaped by men and optimized for their behaviour. Because let's face it: a profession's environment affects its workers, while workers in turn affect the environment. The relationship is symbiotic. Several of the manifesto's points pertain more to computing environments rather than the actual task. For example, it said that computing is a high-stress profession requiring less empathy and social interactivity. But are those qualities unchangeable? Are those inherent to computing, or inherent to man caves? Is it possible that women, with their different biology, could thrive in a different, yet equally productive, computing environment? I don't know, and I think it would be more productive to conduct research on it than to rely on stereotypes to make leaps in conclusion.

So, About this Googler's Manifesto

What I like about this article is his explanation about how engineering isn't an isolated endeavour. And thus, it debunks the notion that computing is "unsocial" and that women cannot thrive in it.

Tech's Damaging Myth of the Loner Genius Nerd

This article expands further on the misconception of engineering as a solo task. What's even more important is that it points out that even if it were true, this solitary "quality" of computing environments is not even something we want to persist.

One of the things that really annoy me in the Artificial Intelligence / Deep Learning sector today: engineers seem to be developing tools for things that I don't think many people will use. Take for example, machines that beat other players in a very particular game. What is this doing for the world at large? For people who are not gamers? For people from low-income households or third-world countries? What is this doing for the environment, for our healths, for improving society in general?

As a computer scientist, making a positive impact in the world is my life goal, and it can be puzzling to hear that advancements in my chosen concentration mostly serve such a tiny niche. Every week you hear about that new deep neural net that can now replace a writer or an artist, but how about helping marginalized creators reach the audience who want to read their work? When did voices of machines become more important than the voices of humans? Especially when you know that these machines have been trained on a very particular subset of work that are most likely mainstream already. This article explains a little bit more on why empathy might be the key to averting this trend.