Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs … the mythos of Silicon Valley is saturated with men, the vast majority of them white. The tech bro is an archetype for a reason. But here (as in most places) you'll find a different story if you look past the biggest, flashiest names. Which women, LGBTQ+ folks, and people of color should be more firmly entrenched in the stories we tell about the tech world?
In 2016, writer Jessi Hempel wrote for WIRED about some of the women who were instrumental in kicking off the computer revolution. (Let me know who else ought to be on the list in the comments below her story!) These entrepreneurs, grad students, and executives did much of the unsexy, critical behind-the-scenes work that brought the technological world as we know it into being, yet you've probably heard of few, if any, of their names. Even today, when equity in tech is widely acknowledged to be an issue, members of underrepresented groups remain just that—underrepresented. I wonder what it will take to bring more people who aren't white men into these spaces, and then to give them the credit they deserve for their work.
Lately, it's been feeling like the rise of generative AI and proliferation of LLMs could be ushering in a new phase of digital life. (Forgive me for harping on this so much in this newsletter; it's a sign of the times.) If this is the case, that also makes me think: Who are the underrepresented people at the forefront of this next frontier whom we ought to be writing into history books now, not retroactively in WIRED articles about unsung heroes years down the line? If you have insights, I'd love it if you dropped those into the comments, too.
See you next week!
Eve
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حبيبي ليس يعدله حبيب *** ولا لسواه في قلبي نصيب حبيب غاب عن بصري وسمعي *** ولكن في فؤادي ما يغيب يا حبيب ...
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