#linktails

[emwdrinksalon]

More Community Links on PROGRESS and Diversity from Awesome People Neha Narula & Jean Yang

For our salon in January, we asked our featured guests to submit any links they felt to be helpful to their own thinking and way of being in the world. Jean & Neha led a conversation at the January Drink Salon on Tech & Ethics on diversity issues in STEM.

Here are some links they sent us to share with the Drink Salon community!

Recommended Articles:

Scott Aaron’s comment #171

Silent Technical Privilege in Slate, January 2014

Why women leave the tech industry in LA Times, December 2014

What Silicon Valley Thinks of Women in Newsweek, February 2015

Teams with more women do better in Harvard Business Review, June 2011

Fields where people are thought to require “brilliance” have fewer women in Science, January 2015

On women and performance reviews from FastCompany, August 2014

Group Projects and the Secretary Effect in The Atlantic, January 2015

Writing by Neha & Jean:

Neha, Jean, and Elena on "Why Gender Still Matters" in Wired, December 2012

Jean’s response to Scott Aaronson’s Comment #171 on Quora

"Unintended Consequences," Neha's blog post on female participation in online forums

"C is Manly, Python is for “n00bs”: How False Stereotypes Turn Into Technical “Truths”," Jean’s essay with colleague Ari Rabkin on how social bias masquerades as technical bias when it comes to programming languages in Model View Culture, January 2015

Jean’s Technical Privilege Reading List

[emwdrinksalon]

Community Links Round Up for PROGRESS

After our first Drink Salon at EMW in November, many community members told the Drink Salon team they would enjoy a curated collection of links, readings, media, and more to go along with each salon.  Our February theme is L<3VE & Relationships, so if you have any fav reads or whatevs, send them to our team at [email protected] with a brief intro or a couple sentences on why you dug it so much.

A couple articles the Drink Salon team really enjoyed thinking about this month while prepping for the February salon:

"Searching for Sex" by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz in The New York Times

"What Mathematics Reveals About the Secret of Lasting Relationships and the Myth of Compromise" by Maria Popova on Brain Pickings on Hannah Fry's book The Mathematics of Love

And here are the much awaited links on PROGRESS sent in by community members Amanda Zhang, Sara M. Watson, and more!

From Sara M. Watson:

“Women and Children First: Technology And Moral Panic” by Ben Rooney in The Wall Street Journal, July 2011

“The Disruption Machine” by Jill Lepore in The New Yorker, June 2014

“Back to the Future, Time Travel, and the Secret History of the 1980s” by Tim Carmody in Medium, January 2015

From Amanda Zhang:

“Why I’m Not a Maker” by Debbie Chachra in The Atlantic, January 2015

From a community member who preferred to remain anonymous:

“Shop Class as Soulcraft” by Matthew Crawford in The New Atlantis, Summer 2006

I read a book by the same author as this piece (the piece is a short version of the book Shop Class as Soulcraft), and even though I wouldn't have described it as about "progress" at the time, I keep bringing it and its conceptual framework up in conversations about "progress" and technology. 

The basic takeaway for me is that there are elements to human experience that much of mass marketed consumer technology (smart phones are the flagship example) is actively diminishing with each generation of "technological consumer progress." These include challenge, journey, mystery, a host of cognitive abilities, and also work with our hands and other senses besides reading a page or image.

Note: I definitely think these conversations about progress, technology, and "white vs blue collar" work that the author talks about are multifaceted and complex. I don't think Crawford has all the answers or that his work aptly captures all of the social justice and political implications of his arguments. But I think it's been a valuable building block added to my knowledge base on the issues.

From C. An:

"Data is the New “___” "by Sara M. Watson in DIS Magazine, February 2015

“The Inner Life of Rebellion” with Parker Palmer, Courtney Martin & Krista Tippett on On Being, January 2015