July 7, 2020 • 36 mins
Claire Evans is one half of the band Yacht. She’s also a tech historian who archives women’s contributions in tech and computing in her book Broadband. Claire lays out how women were always at the forefront of technology and computing and how our contributions were erased over time.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
There Are No Girls on the Internet. As a production
of I Heart Radio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd
and this is there are No Girls on the Internet. Okay,
So here's the story we get told about technology. Men
build computers and then they built the Internet, and women
we've been trying to break into this tech boys club
(00:26):
ever since. We pretty much always assume the default experience
online is male and white. But women are using technology
to build movements, create art, and connect with each other
despite dealing with some pretty vile ship just for daring
to be women online. And even before that, women and
other marginalized voices have always been at the ground floor
technology and the way it impacts culture. So that story
(00:46):
we get told it's bullshit. Tech has always been our domain.
So why is it always easy to see it that way? Okay,
let's take it back way back in the beginning, computers
were human. They were also women. In the early days
of computing, computer science was solidly women's work. Computing was
(01:07):
seen as administrative or secretarial type position. It was such
a women's job that after World War Two, computing power
was even measured in quote killer girls, which was understood
to be roughly the calculating ability of a thousand women.
If you've seen the film Hidden Figures that chronicles mathematicitions
Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and engineer Mary Jackson, then you
probably know what I'm talking about. Calculating and even before that.
(01:34):
Born in the eight hundreds, Ada Lovelace is widely considered
to be one of the world's first computer programmers. But
we're more than just literal computers. Women were involved in
every single step on our journey to our computers integration
into our everyday lives. And while the names like tech
icons like Katherine Johnson and Aida Lovelace might be familiar
to you, we still need monuments to the marginalized artists, organizers,
(01:55):
community builders, writers and thinkers who shaped what it means
to be online. So let's of them. So if you're
looking for women in the history of technology, it really
helps to look first where people are cared for. Claire
Evans is an artist, tech historian, and writer. Along with
(02:16):
her partner Jonah Bechtold, she's half of the Impeccable Cool
Grammy nominated electro band Yeats to Live in a Psychic City.
I never knew what would happen in a day. Claire
wrote the book on how women were raised from technology,
computers and the Internet. Literally, her book, Broadband Get It
(02:38):
shines a spotlight on the history of tech, spotlighting the
women who often go overlooked. Think of it as a
radical act of archival, so that no one will ever
be able to say that women weren't always on the
ground floor of technology. While the women led efforts of
World War two met the computing workforce was mostly female,
eventually things changed. The shift that you're describing between tech
as feminized labor and tech as you know, a site
(03:00):
of masculine entrepreneurship and innovation. You know, it happened in
like the slates sixties, early seventies through the eighties, the
sort of generational changing of the guard that happened where
the first wave of of early women programmers who came
out of you know, the programming efforts around World War
two and entered the early computing industry and essentially defined
it because that's where the computer industry began, and they
(03:22):
were the only people who knew how to do programming,
so of course they ran it at air bases here
and overseas. Women soldiers performed over twenty five technical jobs
war jobs now, but civilian Koreas later on as they
kind of aged out and were replaced by the next generation,
and the and the industry itself exploded and became you know,
(03:43):
massively financially valuable. Um, there was this sort of the
baton didn't quite get past. There wasn't uh, there weren't
opportunities for young women to come up and replace and
fill the shoes of the women that came before them,
for all the sort of systemic reasons that you would imagine,
you know, um, And I think part of that comes
down to just the fact that computing went from being
(04:03):
something that was wild and new and you know, more
associated with the war effort to something which was relatively
beginning to be established and which was a significant commercial enterprise. Money,
of course, is what changes things. And I think you know,
oftentimes people read my book and then they come and
talk to me, and you know, they say, wow, men
(04:23):
really ruined everything. But it's it's money. I mean, it's
money that ruined everything. It's it's all of a sudden,
the stakes were different and the players were different, and
you know, it was more cut throat and there were
less opportunities for people, and you know, mistakes were made
cumulatively and systemically that made it set up. There began
to be this un you know, unreasonable assumption that a
(04:46):
tech was for men, which was then you know, re
emphasized and reiterated through marketing and popular culture. And I
think the work that like advertisements for computers in the
seventies and film and TV in the eighties, it for
making text seemed like a boys club was you know,
that was it was really significant. I mean I grew
(05:06):
up in a time when you know, movies like Weird
Science were really popular, which is a movie about you know,
two nerds making a babe using a computer. Uh, you know,
that's the sort of sets of you know, it's it's
it's that's a pretty clear standard for what the culture
assumes is the point of interest for this technology. And
if you look at basically any computer ad from the
seventies and eighties, you know, print paper ads for anything
(05:29):
from hardware to suffware services, it's either you know a model,
you know, a woman's you know, sexy woman sitting on
top of the mainframe, or it's something explicitly condescending about
how this machine is going to replace all the nagging
you know, lady data programmers in the office. You know,
there's a lot of like really kind of dark, dark
marketing that is a part of this, and that's consider
(05:51):
created a generation that feels it, you know, as though
it's always been for them, um and that sense of
entitlement is really difficult to undo. But I think part
of the work of kind of digging up this history
is showing that, you know, if there is a boys
club that exists in tech, it's it's it's an anachronism,
you know, it's a historical anachronism wrong that needs to
and can be righted, hopefully in less than a generation.
(06:13):
Speaking of generations, Claire is a second generation computer nerd.
Her dad was a quota at IBM. She grew up online,
and that means she grew up feeling like the Internet
was her hometown. I came of age during an era
where there was kind of enough florescence of girls centric
early web content and girls centric computer games, but I
never really was interested in that. I I never thought
(06:36):
of the computer as being explicitly for boys or for girls,
you know, any more than like the TV or the
microwave was for boys or for girls. This is a thing,
you know, and what you did with it was more
about expressing your individual interests and your individual personality down
to really esoteric subjects. Um that it was about expressing
your gender in any way. But I do know that.
(06:58):
I mean, I certainly remember the computer or lab at
school when I was a kid being pretty dominated by
boys and you know, having to kind of elbow my
way into play my games during lunch break or whatever. Um.
There certainly was this idea when I was a kid
that that boys liked computer games and girls didn't. But
I think I was always more interested in, you know,
finding ways to empower myself and learn new things using
(07:20):
this amazing tool that happened to be in my bedroom.
So what kind of games with little baby Claire playing?
My favorite kinds of games were trivia games like I
love to play. There was this game that came with
Microsoft in Carter, which is a you know, Encyclopedia CD
ROM that was like a trivia through the Ages game.
(07:41):
I loved it. Couldn't get enough of that kind of thing.
Or there was a game a little bit later called
you Don't Know Jack that was again like a trivia
more of a game show style trivia game. But I
loved Yeah, I mean I honestly, I really loved learning.
And I know that sounds kind of you know, it
sounds like what it sounds like, but I love trivia games.
I loved like semi educational CD ROMs, like you know,
learning about Anatomy. There was a Gray's Anatomy c raum
(08:03):
I was really obsessed with when I was a kid.
By the way, we bonded a little bit here because
nerdy educational games is something that young Claire and young
me had in common growing up. If I had did
an hour of Mayvin's Beacon Typing Tutor, my parents rewarded
me with thirty minutes of math Blaster. Remember math Blaster.
Math Blaster was legitimately really fun. And it's funny that
you bring up Maybe Speaking because I started a chapter
(08:25):
of He Was Speaking that I ended up scrapping because
it wasn't it was kind of like too tangential to
the history of the Internet. But the story Maybe Speaking
is really interesting. I mean, she was the woman on
the box, you know, like a lot of people believed
that she was like a real typing expert, that Nave
Maybe Speaking was a real person and that she was
a champion typer, and there's all this kind of interesting
lore around her, Like there was a survey that was
(08:45):
done in the nineties where people were asked whether or
not maybe speaking was a real person, and people like
remembered seeing her on TV, Like everyone thought she was real,
but she was just this model that had been cast,
like I want to say, like she was at working
at the perfume counter at Sacks or something, and the
guy who made the game was like, this woman is amazing,
I need her. She has a beautiful lands. And so
(09:05):
she was on the box cover. Um, she was this
Trinidadian model and she kind of shed was Renee Less
barons Ow. I believe I pulled that out of my memory. Um.
But she didn't get a dime, of course, I mean,
because of the world is garbage. But she ended up
she left the States and there's like no one, no
one's really been able to find her, and she didn't
get any royalties, even though her face her likeness was
really like a huge part of what sold that game
(09:28):
or whatever that that piece of software. It was like, really,
I don't know, there's something really relatable about her. This
idea that this woman was this typing genius that could
teach you how to type. So Claire was pretty much
always fascinated by computers and being online. But after a
while she started to feel like the internet was no
longer her hometown, and where being online it once felt
(09:49):
like freedom and escape, it started to feel different. It's
this realization after many years of spending you know, the
lion's share of my waking life on the computer, that
I didn't feel good anymore on the computer. And when
I was a kid, I remember nothing but joy and
discovery and excitement and you know, self identification and all
kinds of positive things, and all of that had kind
(10:10):
of fallen by the wayside. Some of that is just
growing up, you know, and becoming aware that the world
doesn't revolve around you, and um, you know, taking things
for granted, and getting blase about things, and maybe even
getting out of step with what's going on in technology,
because of course, you know, tech culture evolves so quickly
that I'm sure teenagers on TikTok are having the same
feelings of self actualization that maybe I did playing City
(10:32):
Run games in the nineties. I hope so. Um, but yeah,
I don't know. I think as an adult all that
all of that joy kind of went away, and the
life online began to feel more like a burden or
you know, something that had to be accomplished in order
to become to remain part of culture and remain engaged
in the larger conversation around me, and not something I
(10:53):
did for fun or for joy. There's a lot of yeah,
I mean, there's a lot of reasons for that too.
I think, you know, the overlap between digital life and
real life, however you wanted to find that has certainly
changed a great deal in the last fifteen years. When
I was a kid, the Internet was something other. It
was something separate from the world as I understood it. It
It was an escape. It's not an escape anymore, you know.
(11:13):
I think, if anything, real life is an escape from
the Internet. Okay, so if you're under twenty five, this
probably means nothing to you because you've always grown up
carrying the Internet and a little square in your pocket.
But humor me, I still remember my early experiences online.
I was still a few years away from being lucky
enough to have a computer in my bedroom, so going
online meant logging on from the clunky family computer and
(11:36):
what we called the computer room, and if my dad
called you with a soda down there, watch out. Once
everyone was asleep, you could sneak downstairs and get online
and do whatever you wanted. I mean, forget just having
a coke in the computer room. You could be anyone.
Those days of being anonymous online we're kind of intoxicating
freedom for me and clear both. But while being anonymous
online back then meant freedom, today it's totally flipped. The
(11:59):
real world is where go to feel anonymous, not the Internet.
Something I think about a lot like the position of anonymity,
because I know that when I was a kid and
I was, you know, hanging out in chat rooms and
posting on message boards and surfing around the early Worldwide Web,
I was free because nobody knew who I was, and
I could be anybody I wanted to be. I could,
you know, create an avatar for myself, or create a
(12:20):
new identity for myself. I could pretend that was older
than I was. I could it was a different gender
than I was. I could pretend all kinds of things,
and everyone else was probably also pretending a little bit too.
And the excitement of being able to kind of redefine
who I was and and try on new things was
a really big part of the attraction of the early Internet.
I think for a lot of people. Uh, now, of
(12:41):
course it's the opposite. I mean, we have to be
who we are, you know, we have to have our
legal names on our Facebook profiles, and this kind of
the joy, of the creative joy of anonymity has been
replaced by a form of anonymity that is kind of differ,
that is really different in you and and on Amynty
is now something that's othanized to you know, persecute vulnerable
(13:03):
people on the Internet. It's it's not something that comes
from a place of delight. I mean there's very few
instances I think of people who have anonymous profiles who
are doing you know, because they just for the fun
of it. Um it's a different it's a different thing.
You either are forced to hide who you are because
you're because you want to bother other people, or because
you are being bothered by other people. Um so yeah,
(13:24):
So we're only anonymous now in the real world. We're
only anonymous when we're you know, walking down the street
or at home doing the things that you know, we
do during our time off from the internet. She's right.
The internet can be in that fun place, especially if
you're marginalized. And because we've allowed those once foundational marginalized
voices to be pushed so far outside of the tent
of tech, it only reinforces that it's not our domain,
(13:46):
that it's not where we'll go to have experiences that
involve protection, care, or freedom. It's a problem that as
far reaching consequences, not just for women but for everybody.
I think as we sort of as a culture begin
to digest the consequences of creating this kind of boys
club culture around technology, we will hopefully, um see that
(14:08):
the clearest antidote is too diversify these companies and platforms
as quickly as possible. Again, I don't know. I mean,
I am kind of a I don't Capitalism is a
is a mighty beast, and it's it'll take a lot
of work to kind of get at the heart of
this problem in some of these massive, massive tech companies,
especially as they you know, resist union efforts and resist
(14:33):
the regulation and resist all kinds of positive benefits. Um. Yeah,
it's a long fight. Yeah, it is a long fight.
We'll be right back after this quick rate. I was
watching this video of me speaking to prepare for this interview,
(14:54):
and something that you said was, if you're looking for
the history of women in tech, it helps to look
for places where people are cared for her. And I
guess to that end, what would it look like if
care was built into some of these tech platforms from
the very beginning, Well, we certainly wouldn't have social media
as it exists today, right, I mean, Um, I don't know,
it's funny. I I think that there's this kind of
(15:16):
actual um, what's the word. It's maybe it's not possible
to build things at the scale that the tech industry
seems to demand while still emphasizing and prioritizing care. I think,
you know, you look at the history of social media,
and you know, I profiled this community in my book
called Echo, which um, you know, was run by a
(15:37):
single person in an apartment in New York. Um, which
you know, a person who really deeply cared about her
community and who was really invested in the well being
of her community, and who kind of had the authority
to kick people out who were being hurtful, and who
could mediate conversations and you know, who was really part
of the community. And I think that that kind of
care is beautiful, and it's possible when your community is
(16:00):
two thousand people to ten tho people, maybe at most,
it's not really as possible when your community is in
the billions, when your community is essentially the you know,
the size of planet Earth. It's just so difficult to
have enough and the right kind of emotional investment to
take care of all those people. Um, it's impossible to
(16:21):
enforce you know, standards or rules across cultures, across subcultures,
across languages. It becomes kind of this, Yeah, it becomes
a folly, which is why we've kind which is why
social media platforms have outsourced the job of caring to
these kind of traumatized content moderators who are not part
of the community, who are not you know, deputized members
(16:42):
of of this of a dynamic community, who are helping
take care of their own but who are instead being
shown the worst of humanity, and who are who are
suffering greatly as a consequence of seeing and working through
all that material. Um, you know, they're being paid to care,
but we don't care about them. You know. It's I
think scale. I think scale and care might be mutually exclusive,
which means that the future of care in tech platforms
(17:05):
might look really different than what we're accustomed to. I
think we need to move beyond this idea of constantly growth,
hacking and trying to build you know, the biggest, biggest,
biggest communities, platforms, cultures, you know, programs, systems in the world,
and instead focus on empowering people to create platforms and
communities and uh and services which affect them and their
(17:27):
peers in maybe like an interconnected network of smaller communities,
which you know, maybe a world of neighborhoods rather than
one giant mega city I think would be a lot
more seen. There are different forms of connecting with others.
I mean, there's a time and place for you know,
kind of the speaker's corner where you can go out
in the street and like yell your peace and everyone
(17:47):
can hear you maybe or you know, you have the
capacity to go viral or whatever it is that you want.
I mean, the one too many audience thing is valuable
in certain instances, but most of the time, when we're
looking for meaningful engagement community interaction in real life and online,
it does happen in smaller groups. That happens, um. You know,
with people that you either know or you shared interest with,
(18:09):
or you share a geographical location with, or you share
something with something real, And I think, you know, part
of the joy of the early Internet was that because
users were kind of spread all over the world, people
came together on not based on geographic location necessarily, but
based on interest. And you know, most of those early
Internet communities were interest based communities. You know, people who
are really into star Trek, people who are really into gardening. Um.
(18:32):
And that's something really beautiful about that because it reminds
us what we have in common even when we're really different,
Whereas now we're supposed to kind of relate to the
billions with absolutely nothing to hold onto as as a
shared experience other than like basic civility and being human, which,
as we can see, has eroded completely um in the
in the wild wilderness of the feed basic civility. So far,
(18:53):
we've sort of danced around the elephant in the room
that Claire is hinting at here, which is that being
a woman online sometimes means dealing with harassment. So if
we're trying to write the history of women's experiences and
contributions to the Internet. Do we include the reality that
a lot of that history is involved having to deal
with harassment, And if I'm being honest, I struggled with
that when trying to put together this very podcast. Yeah,
I can totally relate to that. I mean, I kind
(19:14):
of made a choice that I didn't want my book
to be about about fighting back against the trolls. I
wanted my book to be, you know, a showcase for
all the amazing things that people accomplished despite the fact,
uh you know that they had to fight against the
trolls or whatever their their circumstances were. Um, you know,
I think I'm kind of was able to cop out
from that a little bit because my book ends basically
(19:34):
the collapse of the dot com bubble. And I'm not
saying that harassment didn't exist before then, certainly did. But
you know, things like game Regate and me to movement,
this sort of larger conversations that are happening as like
a consequence of systemic sexism in the text industry and
in the world, um, you know, sort of became much
much uglier more recently. And um, yeah, but I don't know,
(19:55):
I have this mantra that is like don't don't fight
the darkness, Bring the light, and the darkness will disappear.
And I think that I don't know. I think people
need to see how much light there really has been
and how much, how many fascinating, beautiful, interesting, you know,
dynamic contributions had been made um and by women, and
you know throughout history, and that it's it's not always
(20:17):
about having to it's not always about being a victim.
I don't want to always have that. I don't want
that to be like a core part of the identity
of the characters and that I profile in the book
because they're all they're not, you know, like they all
they're all tough as nails and super interesting and hard
working and have done great things in this world. And
maybe people didn't believe in them at the right time,
and maybe people have forgotten some of their contributions, but
(20:37):
that doesn't make them any less incredible. Definitely, you know,
that's one of the things I love about your book.
You know, as we speak, I have an Aida lovely
sticker on my computer at this very moment, But I
feel like your book really allows for these figures to
be full complex, three sixty degrees of who they were
not just boiled down to some sticker or poster or platitude. Yes,
I love that you clock that, because that's that's a
(20:59):
really big thing for me. I think, you know, and
I've been I've been interacting with us a lot since
the book came out, this kind of uh, you know,
inspirational poster version of you know, the history of women
in tech or like the sticker let's sticker on the
laptop version of women in tech. And I totally get it.
I mean, we have such a hunger representation in this
history that we want to trot out these women as perfect,
you know, idolizable heroes. And they are heroes, but their
(21:21):
heroes because of the complexity of their lives, not just
because you know, Ada Lovelace wrote the quote unquote first
computer program. I think she's interesting for so many more
reasons than that. And I don't think that, you know,
the opposite of a great man history is necessarily a
great woman history, because that's just reiterating the same thing.
That's just you know, laying all of the power and
(21:42):
clout and influence at the feet of exceptional individuals rather
than acknowledging a the collective nature of innovation and the
and the complicated collective nature of history in general, and
without acknowledging the complexity of individual people and and all
the things that they do. I mean, I don't want
to develop a super shold relationship with a character from history.
(22:03):
I want to know them. I want to really know them.
And I and I'm not necessarily um super inspired and
empowered by knowing that someone who came before me was
really really good at what they did and they are perfect.
That doesn't help me, That doesn't make me feel like
I can do things. I mean, I come from a
world of music and punk rock, and there's nothing more
empowering than seeing someone just like you do something kind
(22:26):
of badly and you think to yourself, hey, I could
do that too, you know, like that's punk. So I
kind of wanted to do that. I wanted to show that,
Yeah it a Lovelace was a genius, no doubt about it.
But she was also a drug addict, and she was
also you know, like prone to illness and really conflicted
about being a mother, and you know, had a really
weird relationship with her own mother and never knew her
(22:48):
father and all this stuff that really humanizes her and
makes her accomplishments, you know, more relatable in a weird
way because greatness emerge us out of out of conflict
and out of out of people's individual you know, the
complex combination of of strife and an inspiration that makes
people who they are. Um, yeah, they're sorrows and their
(23:10):
bad habits are just as important as their aptitude and
you know, their inspirational brilliance. It is punk rock like yeah,
I'm like, it's also really interesting, I mean for me
doing this, this survey of women throughout history, because my
books fans about two hundred ish years, and you know,
what it means to be a feminist or to be
a sort of a feminist icon changes a lot from
(23:33):
generation and generation. And you know, look at Grace Hopper
for example. I mean, she's sort of this classic feminist icon,
but she didn't think of resolved as a feminist. She
was actually kind of contemptuous of the idea of of
women's lid, Like, didn't you know I thought it was
kind of you know, I don't know what she thought.
It was like whiny, and she really like actively resisted
the characterization that she might have faced any challenges whatsoever
(23:54):
in an all male environment. Like she just wouldn't acknowledge
that that was a possibility. Um, and I think, you know,
the that make her less of a feminist icon. I
don't think so. I mean, I think we have to
we have to reach people within their time and understand,
you know, why they might be seeing the world that
they in the way that they see the world, and
m and why and and and understand like what I
understand that within their own context. And that's hard sometimes,
(24:16):
you know, history is messy, and sometimes doing it means
like holding multiple contradictory positions in your mind at the
same time. That's that's the joy of it. Anyway more,
there are no girls on the internet after this quick break.
(24:37):
History is important. It's also tenuous. The fact that there
could be entire movements spearheaded by women online that go
forgotten today. It's just an example of why we need
to fight to make sure that we're including nuanced depictions
of women and their contributions to history and our archives,
because they could disappear a lot quicker than you might think.
Even Claire's favorite woman field online movement that hyper feminist,
(25:00):
It's movement of the nineties. It was almost a thing
that went totally forgotten. I'm really into the sort of
mid nineties cyber feminist art movement because it sort of feels,
you know, I'm just to give a broad strokes for
your listenership. I mean, it was this. It was a
sort of arts culture literary movement in you know, pretty
much coinciding with the development of the World Wide Web,
(25:20):
and um, you know, the world with the arrival of
the World Wide Web is what brought women online really
in a major way. For the first time. The Internet
as a as a military and scientific strim structure was
was pretty male dominated. But as soon as the web
and the personal computer combined, um, women took over men
in terms of the population of of of online of
the Internet. And so there was this beautiful efflorescence of
(25:44):
of feminist, radical feminist thinking and art that coincided with that,
because I think a lot of these especially second wave feminists,
who were coming out of the late nineteen seventies world
of consciousness raising and quote unquote brow burning, were really
excited by the possibility of this new medium that would
allow them to kind of do consciousness raising on a
global scale and and reach women and feminists all around
(26:05):
the world and kind of create new spaces, define their
own spaces, and and do all kinds of you know,
fluid and exciting experimentation about identity and gender and and
all the things that are really fun and interesting. So
they made a lot of radical art. There's some wild
CD rom games and wild early websites, great manifestos. The
(26:26):
Cyber Feminist Manifesto was one of my favorite texts of
all time. It's truly wonderful, and it definitely comes from
a time before comments sections, because the language is just
so bold and and raw and and and like radical
and kind of gross and and just wild, and that
kind of free, free, exciting experimentation in a new medium
(26:48):
is just really beautiful to look at in the rear view.
It had its own problems, of course, like everything, and
it kind of disappeared pretty quickly after the World Wide
Web became kind of normalized in culture, and the artist
who contributed to that movement all went off and did
their own things. But it's an interesting moment I think,
when when feminists sort of saw the World Wide Web
as an opportunity and not necessarily as you know, I
(27:10):
don't know a place that I've sort of a social
system which would replicate um the social dynamics of the
culture that they existed and already. Okay, So I learned
about the cyber feminist movement from reading your book. I
had never heard of it before. And I'm someone who's
looking for these kinds of things, you know, I'm actively
on the lookout for women doing cool shit online, and
yet it went totally overlooked by me. So it's a
will to me that this huge movement began and ended
(27:32):
and had all of these cool women making this radical
art in the nineties online and I had never even
heard of it. It's awfuly what motivated me to write
the book, because I had the same exact experience. I
was looking for something. This is a classic like Wikipedia
moment that I had. I was looking for something else.
I found myself, I don't know how all on the
Wikipedia page for this art collective, the VN S Matrix,
who wrote the cyber Feminist Manifesto that I mentioned earlier,
(27:54):
And I was like, what, how do I not know
about this? You know, It's one of those like late
night Wikipedia deep dives where I looked like I'd followed
some long chain and I was there and I was like,
what is this How is there this crazy like cyberpunk
feminist art movement that I didn't know because I felt
the same way I had always felt really invested in
these histories. I've been writing about these histories for a
long time. I thought I knew kind of everything about
(28:15):
this about the early Internet, or not everything, but I
thought I knew like the broad strokes and lots of
the thing stuff that had happened, and I completely missed it.
And I think it's a combination of the fact that
as a movement it was, you know, relatively short lived.
It happened at the very beginning of the worldwide Web,
the world wide it up has a remarkable tendency to
erase and rewrite itself by definition, that's what's what it does.
(28:36):
And it just like blipped, you know, right under my radar,
And I was like, how many more of these stories
are there? How many more of these moments in history
have I completely missed by virtue of just being in
the wrong looking at the wrong part of the Internet,
or looking at the wrong time period. And I think
there's something really kind of fascinating and maddening about writing
histories of technology, and specifically histories that involved cultural movements
(29:01):
and human beings doing stuff on the web. Because the
web is so fluid and so amorphous and so impermanent.
Uh like there's you know, like outside of the way
Back machine, there aren't that many tools for seeking out
what was on the web ten years ago. And it's
not that long ago, you know, It's it's really not
that long ago, but yet it's it's slipping out from
(29:23):
between our fingers, and it's it's wild to me that
we have you know, Babylonian cuneiform clay tablets that we
can still read, but I can't tell you what was
on you know, women dot com in That seems wild
to me. So I think this idea that I wanted
to capture as much of this history as I could
before it all disappeared, and try to identify as many
(29:45):
of these moments, movements, you know, people contributions before they
lived out from under all our radars. It gave this
entire project a sense of urgency for me. It made
me feel like I had to move quickly before the
Internet exploded. Basically, Yeah, And I think a big part
of why your work is so important is that aspect
of archival, so that no one will ever be able
(30:06):
to say that women weren't there because they weren't included
in the archive. You know, we can say, oh, no, no, no,
women were always here since the very beginning. Here's the
record of it. You know, I'm I'm almost hesitant to
draw this line between like men and hardware and women
and software. But I do think that hardware is much
easier to historicize. You know, it's way easier to put
an old computer in a glass case in a museum
(30:26):
and say, like, you know, this computer is really important
and these guys made it, and here it is. It
has a material presence you know, that is permanent, that
is going to you know, continue to pollute the world
until the end of time. Um. But software and culture,
work and games and communities and all these things which
are so much more difficult to hold onto. Oftentimes they're
(30:47):
associated with women's work, and oftentimes they're forgotten because they're
just they're just they're not you know, they're hard to
hold on through. They're not things. Um. And we fetishize things,
and tech culture really revolves around this kind of object
that shism. You know, we we get the new device
every six months or you know, we and we imagine
that by getting the new device, everything that ever came
before it disappears, but it doesn't, you know, it keeps existing.
(31:10):
And it's really important to remember that that tech is
not just about objects, and it's not just about platforms.
It's about what we do with those objects and platforms.
It's about the ways that we bring those things to life.
It's about the ways that we make meaning out of
those things and build community using those things. That's what
actually matters, you know, that's what actually has an impact
on human culture, not just human you know, market economics.
(31:33):
So and I think that you know, at oftentimes that's
forgotten and at the same time, you know that's also
the site where a lot of women's contributions are made,
and so that those things kind of get rushed aside,
but they're just as important, if not more important, than
making iPhones. Okay. So I have this theory that by
gate keeping who is and isn't quote somewhat in tech,
that's really just this way of keeping out all of
(31:54):
these marginalized figures who maybe you weren't coders, right, people
who were artists or thinkers or organizers or activists who
are using the internet in really cool ways. It's a
way to keep those folks out of the tent of tech.
And I think it's important that we understand that just
because you maybe aren't a coder doesn't mean you haven't
had an influential or important impact on how we understand
tech and culture. You know, the tent is huge. Yeah,
(32:16):
of course, I'm like, what good is code if no
one's using it? You know, what good does that? And
what good does the technology off no one uses it?
I think, you know, yeah, I think you're totally right.
I think people sort of to try to define what
tech means in a way that allows them to remain
at the top of you know, the totem pole. But really,
I don't know. I mean, making things is just the beginning.
And I think, I mean, I think people in tech
(32:36):
know that because users are the most powerful force for
innovation that that there is. I mean, the Twitter at
reply and the hashtag those came from, you know, users suggestions.
The Worldwide Web itself, you know, it was never meant
to be a communications platform or cultural platforms. Users made
that what it is. So, you know, I think we
often often underestimate the role users and that users have
(33:02):
in in the system, and you know, you put something
out into the world, people decide what they're going to
do with it, They give it context, they give it meaning,
and then then then then that sort of cycles back
and the people who are designing those tools then have
to take that and move forward with it. It's part
of the process of developing a technology, and it's not
often considered to be, you know, part of part of it,
(33:22):
but it really is that that labors is invisible but
very real. Being a woman online can be tough, but
it's not without hope. Clear's work as a musician grounds
are on a very specific kind of hope around technology,
where text sometimes presents an adversarial foil to humans, time
and time again, we humans find a way to turn
that conflict into something beautiful that reaffirms our existence. There
(33:44):
have been many instances in the history of music when
a new technology has come along that ostensibly is there
to displace the musician. For example, the drum machine or
the synthesizer. You know, these are tools that we're designed
to replace session musicians with an easier, cheaper version kind
of automation of their labor. In fact, even in the eighties,
like the British Musicians Union tried to dam synthesizers. But
(34:06):
what artists and musicians did was, instead of allowing those
tools to replace them, they took control of them. And
you know, they took drum machines, and they took synthesizers,
and they invented Detroit Techno, and they invented new waves,
and they invented hip hop, and they invented you know,
electronic music as it exists today, and it's many manifestations.
They kind of took the thing that was threatening them
(34:27):
with displacement and incorporated it into what they were doing
and made it essential to who they were and used
it to invent something new that they were integray as
human beings involved with. And I think that that act
of kind of like I don't know, I like like
jumping on the grenade or something is like a really
beautiful thing that artists always do, willingly or unwillingly um
(34:47):
when they are faced with new technology. And I think
when new technology comes along, you always have that choice.
Are you gonna let it displace you or you're gonna
let it intimidate you, or you're gonna take it, you know,
jump on it, find some new use for it, and
make it part of who you are and give it
back to the world in a new form. That is
all that choice is always present, and I think that's
what I try to do in my work across the board,
(35:09):
and I think it's the only way that we're going
to kind of keep on top of all of this technology.
And I think it's also very human. I think it's
what people always do. Um We are always trying to
create systems of meaning and beauty out of what is
coming up ahead. And I think that will never change
(35:30):
when you think about it. Isn't that what it means
to be a woman online or given the worst? But
somehow we keep making art, keep connecting, keep building those
little monuments to who we were and who we are.
We keep saying, Hello, I was here, you won't erase me.
There are no girls on the Internet. Was created by
(35:50):
me Bridget Tad. It's a production of I Heart Radio
and Unboss creative Jonathan Strickland as our executive producer, Tara
Harrison as our producer, and sound engineer. Michael ma That
was our contributing producer. I'm your host, bridget Pad. For
more podcasts for my Heart, check out the I Heart
Radio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts
There Are No Girls on the Internet. As a production
of I Heart Radio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd
and this is there are No Girls on the Internet. Okay,
So here's the story we get told about technology. Men
build computers and then they built the Internet, and women
we've been trying to break into this tech boys club
(00:26):
ever since. We pretty much always assume the default experience
online is male and white. But women are using technology
to build movements, create art, and connect with each other
despite dealing with some pretty vile ship just for daring
to be women online. And even before that, women and
other marginalized voices have always been at the ground floor
technology and the way it impacts culture. So that story
(00:46):
we get told it's bullshit. Tech has always been our domain.
So why is it always easy to see it that way? Okay,
let's take it back way back in the beginning, computers
were human. They were also women. In the early days
of computing, computer science was solidly women's work. Computing was
(01:07):
seen as administrative or secretarial type position. It was such
a women's job that after World War Two, computing power
was even measured in quote killer girls, which was understood
to be roughly the calculating ability of a thousand women.
If you've seen the film Hidden Figures that chronicles mathematicitions
Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and engineer Mary Jackson, then you
probably know what I'm talking about. Calculating and even before that.
(01:34):
Born in the eight hundreds, Ada Lovelace is widely considered
to be one of the world's first computer programmers. But
we're more than just literal computers. Women were involved in
every single step on our journey to our computers integration
into our everyday lives. And while the names like tech
icons like Katherine Johnson and Aida Lovelace might be familiar
to you, we still need monuments to the marginalized artists, organizers,
(01:55):
community builders, writers and thinkers who shaped what it means
to be online. So let's of them. So if you're
looking for women in the history of technology, it really
helps to look first where people are cared for. Claire
Evans is an artist, tech historian, and writer. Along with
(02:16):
her partner Jonah Bechtold, she's half of the Impeccable Cool
Grammy nominated electro band Yeats to Live in a Psychic City.
I never knew what would happen in a day. Claire
wrote the book on how women were raised from technology,
computers and the Internet. Literally, her book, Broadband Get It
(02:38):
shines a spotlight on the history of tech, spotlighting the
women who often go overlooked. Think of it as a
radical act of archival, so that no one will ever
be able to say that women weren't always on the
ground floor of technology. While the women led efforts of
World War two met the computing workforce was mostly female,
eventually things changed. The shift that you're describing between tech
as feminized labor and tech as you know, a site
(03:00):
of masculine entrepreneurship and innovation. You know, it happened in
like the slates sixties, early seventies through the eighties, the
sort of generational changing of the guard that happened where
the first wave of of early women programmers who came
out of you know, the programming efforts around World War
two and entered the early computing industry and essentially defined
it because that's where the computer industry began, and they
(03:22):
were the only people who knew how to do programming,
so of course they ran it at air bases here
and overseas. Women soldiers performed over twenty five technical jobs
war jobs now, but civilian Koreas later on as they
kind of aged out and were replaced by the next generation,
and the and the industry itself exploded and became you know,
(03:43):
massively financially valuable. Um, there was this sort of the
baton didn't quite get past. There wasn't uh, there weren't
opportunities for young women to come up and replace and
fill the shoes of the women that came before them,
for all the sort of systemic reasons that you would imagine,
you know, um, And I think part of that comes
down to just the fact that computing went from being
(04:03):
something that was wild and new and you know, more
associated with the war effort to something which was relatively
beginning to be established and which was a significant commercial enterprise. Money,
of course, is what changes things. And I think you know,
oftentimes people read my book and then they come and
talk to me, and you know, they say, wow, men
(04:23):
really ruined everything. But it's it's money. I mean, it's
money that ruined everything. It's it's all of a sudden,
the stakes were different and the players were different, and
you know, it was more cut throat and there were
less opportunities for people, and you know, mistakes were made
cumulatively and systemically that made it set up. There began
to be this un you know, unreasonable assumption that a
(04:46):
tech was for men, which was then you know, re
emphasized and reiterated through marketing and popular culture. And I
think the work that like advertisements for computers in the
seventies and film and TV in the eighties, it for
making text seemed like a boys club was you know,
that was it was really significant. I mean I grew
(05:06):
up in a time when you know, movies like Weird
Science were really popular, which is a movie about you know,
two nerds making a babe using a computer. Uh, you know,
that's the sort of sets of you know, it's it's
it's that's a pretty clear standard for what the culture
assumes is the point of interest for this technology. And
if you look at basically any computer ad from the
seventies and eighties, you know, print paper ads for anything
(05:29):
from hardware to suffware services, it's either you know a model,
you know, a woman's you know, sexy woman sitting on
top of the mainframe, or it's something explicitly condescending about
how this machine is going to replace all the nagging
you know, lady data programmers in the office. You know,
there's a lot of like really kind of dark, dark
marketing that is a part of this, and that's consider
(05:51):
created a generation that feels it, you know, as though
it's always been for them, um and that sense of
entitlement is really difficult to undo. But I think part
of the work of kind of digging up this history
is showing that, you know, if there is a boys
club that exists in tech, it's it's it's an anachronism,
you know, it's a historical anachronism wrong that needs to
and can be righted, hopefully in less than a generation.
(06:13):
Speaking of generations, Claire is a second generation computer nerd.
Her dad was a quota at IBM. She grew up online,
and that means she grew up feeling like the Internet
was her hometown. I came of age during an era
where there was kind of enough florescence of girls centric
early web content and girls centric computer games, but I
never really was interested in that. I I never thought
(06:36):
of the computer as being explicitly for boys or for girls,
you know, any more than like the TV or the
microwave was for boys or for girls. This is a thing,
you know, and what you did with it was more
about expressing your individual interests and your individual personality down
to really esoteric subjects. Um that it was about expressing
your gender in any way. But I do know that.
(06:58):
I mean, I certainly remember the computer or lab at
school when I was a kid being pretty dominated by
boys and you know, having to kind of elbow my
way into play my games during lunch break or whatever. Um.
There certainly was this idea when I was a kid
that that boys liked computer games and girls didn't. But
I think I was always more interested in, you know,
finding ways to empower myself and learn new things using
(07:20):
this amazing tool that happened to be in my bedroom.
So what kind of games with little baby Claire playing?
My favorite kinds of games were trivia games like I
love to play. There was this game that came with
Microsoft in Carter, which is a you know, Encyclopedia CD
ROM that was like a trivia through the Ages game.
(07:41):
I loved it. Couldn't get enough of that kind of thing.
Or there was a game a little bit later called
you Don't Know Jack that was again like a trivia
more of a game show style trivia game. But I
loved Yeah, I mean I honestly, I really loved learning.
And I know that sounds kind of you know, it
sounds like what it sounds like, but I love trivia games.
I loved like semi educational CD ROMs, like you know,
learning about Anatomy. There was a Gray's Anatomy c raum
(08:03):
I was really obsessed with when I was a kid.
By the way, we bonded a little bit here because
nerdy educational games is something that young Claire and young
me had in common growing up. If I had did
an hour of Mayvin's Beacon Typing Tutor, my parents rewarded
me with thirty minutes of math Blaster. Remember math Blaster.
Math Blaster was legitimately really fun. And it's funny that
you bring up Maybe Speaking because I started a chapter
(08:25):
of He Was Speaking that I ended up scrapping because
it wasn't it was kind of like too tangential to
the history of the Internet. But the story Maybe Speaking
is really interesting. I mean, she was the woman on
the box, you know, like a lot of people believed
that she was like a real typing expert, that Nave
Maybe Speaking was a real person and that she was
a champion typer, and there's all this kind of interesting
lore around her, Like there was a survey that was
(08:45):
done in the nineties where people were asked whether or
not maybe speaking was a real person, and people like
remembered seeing her on TV, Like everyone thought she was real,
but she was just this model that had been cast,
like I want to say, like she was at working
at the perfume counter at Sacks or something, and the
guy who made the game was like, this woman is amazing,
I need her. She has a beautiful lands. And so
(09:05):
she was on the box cover. Um, she was this
Trinidadian model and she kind of shed was Renee Less
barons Ow. I believe I pulled that out of my memory. Um.
But she didn't get a dime, of course, I mean,
because of the world is garbage. But she ended up
she left the States and there's like no one, no
one's really been able to find her, and she didn't
get any royalties, even though her face her likeness was
really like a huge part of what sold that game
(09:28):
or whatever that that piece of software. It was like, really,
I don't know, there's something really relatable about her. This
idea that this woman was this typing genius that could
teach you how to type. So Claire was pretty much
always fascinated by computers and being online. But after a
while she started to feel like the internet was no
longer her hometown, and where being online it once felt
(09:49):
like freedom and escape, it started to feel different. It's
this realization after many years of spending you know, the
lion's share of my waking life on the computer, that
I didn't feel good anymore on the computer. And when
I was a kid, I remember nothing but joy and
discovery and excitement and you know, self identification and all
kinds of positive things, and all of that had kind
(10:10):
of fallen by the wayside. Some of that is just
growing up, you know, and becoming aware that the world
doesn't revolve around you, and um, you know, taking things
for granted, and getting blase about things, and maybe even
getting out of step with what's going on in technology,
because of course, you know, tech culture evolves so quickly
that I'm sure teenagers on TikTok are having the same
feelings of self actualization that maybe I did playing City
(10:32):
Run games in the nineties. I hope so. Um, but yeah,
I don't know. I think as an adult all that
all of that joy kind of went away, and the
life online began to feel more like a burden or
you know, something that had to be accomplished in order
to become to remain part of culture and remain engaged
in the larger conversation around me, and not something I
(10:53):
did for fun or for joy. There's a lot of yeah,
I mean, there's a lot of reasons for that too.
I think, you know, the overlap between digital life and
real life, however you wanted to find that has certainly
changed a great deal in the last fifteen years. When
I was a kid, the Internet was something other. It
was something separate from the world as I understood it. It
It was an escape. It's not an escape anymore, you know.
(11:13):
I think, if anything, real life is an escape from
the Internet. Okay, so if you're under twenty five, this
probably means nothing to you because you've always grown up
carrying the Internet and a little square in your pocket.
But humor me, I still remember my early experiences online.
I was still a few years away from being lucky
enough to have a computer in my bedroom, so going
online meant logging on from the clunky family computer and
(11:36):
what we called the computer room, and if my dad
called you with a soda down there, watch out. Once
everyone was asleep, you could sneak downstairs and get online
and do whatever you wanted. I mean, forget just having
a coke in the computer room. You could be anyone.
Those days of being anonymous online we're kind of intoxicating
freedom for me and clear both. But while being anonymous
online back then meant freedom, today it's totally flipped. The
(11:59):
real world is where go to feel anonymous, not the Internet.
Something I think about a lot like the position of anonymity,
because I know that when I was a kid and
I was, you know, hanging out in chat rooms and
posting on message boards and surfing around the early Worldwide Web,
I was free because nobody knew who I was, and
I could be anybody I wanted to be. I could,
you know, create an avatar for myself, or create a
(12:20):
new identity for myself. I could pretend that was older
than I was. I could it was a different gender
than I was. I could pretend all kinds of things,
and everyone else was probably also pretending a little bit too.
And the excitement of being able to kind of redefine
who I was and and try on new things was
a really big part of the attraction of the early Internet.
I think for a lot of people. Uh, now, of
(12:41):
course it's the opposite. I mean, we have to be
who we are, you know, we have to have our
legal names on our Facebook profiles, and this kind of
the joy, of the creative joy of anonymity has been
replaced by a form of anonymity that is kind of differ,
that is really different in you and and on Amynty
is now something that's othanized to you know, persecute vulnerable
(13:03):
people on the Internet. It's it's not something that comes
from a place of delight. I mean there's very few
instances I think of people who have anonymous profiles who
are doing you know, because they just for the fun
of it. Um it's a different it's a different thing.
You either are forced to hide who you are because
you're because you want to bother other people, or because
you are being bothered by other people. Um so yeah,
(13:24):
So we're only anonymous now in the real world. We're
only anonymous when we're you know, walking down the street
or at home doing the things that you know, we
do during our time off from the internet. She's right.
The internet can be in that fun place, especially if
you're marginalized. And because we've allowed those once foundational marginalized
voices to be pushed so far outside of the tent
of tech, it only reinforces that it's not our domain,
(13:46):
that it's not where we'll go to have experiences that
involve protection, care, or freedom. It's a problem that as
far reaching consequences, not just for women but for everybody.
I think as we sort of as a culture begin
to digest the consequences of creating this kind of boys
club culture around technology, we will hopefully, um see that
(14:08):
the clearest antidote is too diversify these companies and platforms
as quickly as possible. Again, I don't know. I mean,
I am kind of a I don't Capitalism is a
is a mighty beast, and it's it'll take a lot
of work to kind of get at the heart of
this problem in some of these massive, massive tech companies,
especially as they you know, resist union efforts and resist
(14:33):
the regulation and resist all kinds of positive benefits. Um. Yeah,
it's a long fight. Yeah, it is a long fight.
We'll be right back after this quick rate. I was
watching this video of me speaking to prepare for this interview,
(14:54):
and something that you said was, if you're looking for
the history of women in tech, it helps to look
for places where people are cared for her. And I
guess to that end, what would it look like if
care was built into some of these tech platforms from
the very beginning, Well, we certainly wouldn't have social media
as it exists today, right, I mean, Um, I don't know,
it's funny. I I think that there's this kind of
(15:16):
actual um, what's the word. It's maybe it's not possible
to build things at the scale that the tech industry
seems to demand while still emphasizing and prioritizing care. I think,
you know, you look at the history of social media,
and you know, I profiled this community in my book
called Echo, which um, you know, was run by a
(15:37):
single person in an apartment in New York. Um, which
you know, a person who really deeply cared about her
community and who was really invested in the well being
of her community, and who kind of had the authority
to kick people out who were being hurtful, and who
could mediate conversations and you know, who was really part
of the community. And I think that that kind of
care is beautiful, and it's possible when your community is
(16:00):
two thousand people to ten tho people, maybe at most,
it's not really as possible when your community is in
the billions, when your community is essentially the you know,
the size of planet Earth. It's just so difficult to
have enough and the right kind of emotional investment to
take care of all those people. Um, it's impossible to
(16:21):
enforce you know, standards or rules across cultures, across subcultures,
across languages. It becomes kind of this, Yeah, it becomes
a folly, which is why we've kind which is why
social media platforms have outsourced the job of caring to
these kind of traumatized content moderators who are not part
of the community, who are not you know, deputized members
(16:42):
of of this of a dynamic community, who are helping
take care of their own but who are instead being
shown the worst of humanity, and who are who are
suffering greatly as a consequence of seeing and working through
all that material. Um, you know, they're being paid to care,
but we don't care about them. You know. It's I
think scale. I think scale and care might be mutually exclusive,
which means that the future of care in tech platforms
(17:05):
might look really different than what we're accustomed to. I
think we need to move beyond this idea of constantly growth,
hacking and trying to build you know, the biggest, biggest,
biggest communities, platforms, cultures, you know, programs, systems in the world,
and instead focus on empowering people to create platforms and
communities and uh and services which affect them and their
(17:27):
peers in maybe like an interconnected network of smaller communities,
which you know, maybe a world of neighborhoods rather than
one giant mega city I think would be a lot
more seen. There are different forms of connecting with others.
I mean, there's a time and place for you know,
kind of the speaker's corner where you can go out
in the street and like yell your peace and everyone
(17:47):
can hear you maybe or you know, you have the
capacity to go viral or whatever it is that you want.
I mean, the one too many audience thing is valuable
in certain instances, but most of the time, when we're
looking for meaningful engagement community interaction in real life and online,
it does happen in smaller groups. That happens, um. You know,
with people that you either know or you shared interest with,
(18:09):
or you share a geographical location with, or you share
something with something real, And I think, you know, part
of the joy of the early Internet was that because
users were kind of spread all over the world, people
came together on not based on geographic location necessarily, but
based on interest. And you know, most of those early
Internet communities were interest based communities. You know, people who
are really into star Trek, people who are really into gardening. Um.
(18:32):
And that's something really beautiful about that because it reminds
us what we have in common even when we're really different,
Whereas now we're supposed to kind of relate to the
billions with absolutely nothing to hold onto as as a
shared experience other than like basic civility and being human, which,
as we can see, has eroded completely um in the
in the wild wilderness of the feed basic civility. So far,
(18:53):
we've sort of danced around the elephant in the room
that Claire is hinting at here, which is that being
a woman online sometimes means dealing with harassment. So if
we're trying to write the history of women's experiences and
contributions to the Internet. Do we include the reality that
a lot of that history is involved having to deal
with harassment, And if I'm being honest, I struggled with
that when trying to put together this very podcast. Yeah,
I can totally relate to that. I mean, I kind
(19:14):
of made a choice that I didn't want my book
to be about about fighting back against the trolls. I
wanted my book to be, you know, a showcase for
all the amazing things that people accomplished despite the fact,
uh you know that they had to fight against the
trolls or whatever their their circumstances were. Um, you know,
I think I'm kind of was able to cop out
from that a little bit because my book ends basically
(19:34):
the collapse of the dot com bubble. And I'm not
saying that harassment didn't exist before then, certainly did. But
you know, things like game Regate and me to movement,
this sort of larger conversations that are happening as like
a consequence of systemic sexism in the text industry and
in the world, um, you know, sort of became much
much uglier more recently. And um, yeah, but I don't know,
(19:55):
I have this mantra that is like don't don't fight
the darkness, Bring the light, and the darkness will disappear.
And I think that I don't know. I think people
need to see how much light there really has been
and how much, how many fascinating, beautiful, interesting, you know,
dynamic contributions had been made um and by women, and
you know throughout history, and that it's it's not always
(20:17):
about having to it's not always about being a victim.
I don't want to always have that. I don't want
that to be like a core part of the identity
of the characters and that I profile in the book
because they're all they're not, you know, like they all
they're all tough as nails and super interesting and hard
working and have done great things in this world. And
maybe people didn't believe in them at the right time,
and maybe people have forgotten some of their contributions, but
(20:37):
that doesn't make them any less incredible. Definitely, you know,
that's one of the things I love about your book.
You know, as we speak, I have an Aida lovely
sticker on my computer at this very moment, But I
feel like your book really allows for these figures to
be full complex, three sixty degrees of who they were
not just boiled down to some sticker or poster or platitude. Yes,
I love that you clock that, because that's that's a
(20:59):
really big thing for me. I think, you know, and
I've been I've been interacting with us a lot since
the book came out, this kind of uh, you know,
inspirational poster version of you know, the history of women
in tech or like the sticker let's sticker on the
laptop version of women in tech. And I totally get it.
I mean, we have such a hunger representation in this
history that we want to trot out these women as perfect,
you know, idolizable heroes. And they are heroes, but their
(21:21):
heroes because of the complexity of their lives, not just
because you know, Ada Lovelace wrote the quote unquote first
computer program. I think she's interesting for so many more
reasons than that. And I don't think that, you know,
the opposite of a great man history is necessarily a
great woman history, because that's just reiterating the same thing.
That's just you know, laying all of the power and
(21:42):
clout and influence at the feet of exceptional individuals rather
than acknowledging a the collective nature of innovation and the
and the complicated collective nature of history in general, and
without acknowledging the complexity of individual people and and all
the things that they do. I mean, I don't want
to develop a super shold relationship with a character from history.
(22:03):
I want to know them. I want to really know them.
And I and I'm not necessarily um super inspired and
empowered by knowing that someone who came before me was
really really good at what they did and they are perfect.
That doesn't help me, That doesn't make me feel like
I can do things. I mean, I come from a
world of music and punk rock, and there's nothing more
empowering than seeing someone just like you do something kind
(22:26):
of badly and you think to yourself, hey, I could
do that too, you know, like that's punk. So I
kind of wanted to do that. I wanted to show that,
Yeah it a Lovelace was a genius, no doubt about it.
But she was also a drug addict, and she was
also you know, like prone to illness and really conflicted
about being a mother, and you know, had a really
weird relationship with her own mother and never knew her
(22:48):
father and all this stuff that really humanizes her and
makes her accomplishments, you know, more relatable in a weird
way because greatness emerge us out of out of conflict
and out of out of people's individual you know, the
complex combination of of strife and an inspiration that makes
people who they are. Um, yeah, they're sorrows and their
(23:10):
bad habits are just as important as their aptitude and
you know, their inspirational brilliance. It is punk rock like yeah,
I'm like, it's also really interesting, I mean for me
doing this, this survey of women throughout history, because my
books fans about two hundred ish years, and you know,
what it means to be a feminist or to be
a sort of a feminist icon changes a lot from
(23:33):
generation and generation. And you know, look at Grace Hopper
for example. I mean, she's sort of this classic feminist icon,
but she didn't think of resolved as a feminist. She
was actually kind of contemptuous of the idea of of
women's lid, Like, didn't you know I thought it was
kind of you know, I don't know what she thought.
It was like whiny, and she really like actively resisted
the characterization that she might have faced any challenges whatsoever
(23:54):
in an all male environment. Like she just wouldn't acknowledge
that that was a possibility. Um, and I think, you know,
the that make her less of a feminist icon. I
don't think so. I mean, I think we have to
we have to reach people within their time and understand,
you know, why they might be seeing the world that
they in the way that they see the world, and
m and why and and and understand like what I
understand that within their own context. And that's hard sometimes,
(24:16):
you know, history is messy, and sometimes doing it means
like holding multiple contradictory positions in your mind at the
same time. That's that's the joy of it. Anyway more,
there are no girls on the internet after this quick break.
(24:37):
History is important. It's also tenuous. The fact that there
could be entire movements spearheaded by women online that go
forgotten today. It's just an example of why we need
to fight to make sure that we're including nuanced depictions
of women and their contributions to history and our archives,
because they could disappear a lot quicker than you might think.
Even Claire's favorite woman field online movement that hyper feminist,
(25:00):
It's movement of the nineties. It was almost a thing
that went totally forgotten. I'm really into the sort of
mid nineties cyber feminist art movement because it sort of feels,
you know, I'm just to give a broad strokes for
your listenership. I mean, it was this. It was a
sort of arts culture literary movement in you know, pretty
much coinciding with the development of the World Wide Web,
(25:20):
and um, you know, the world with the arrival of
the World Wide Web is what brought women online really
in a major way. For the first time. The Internet
as a as a military and scientific strim structure was
was pretty male dominated. But as soon as the web
and the personal computer combined, um, women took over men
in terms of the population of of of online of
the Internet. And so there was this beautiful efflorescence of
(25:44):
of feminist, radical feminist thinking and art that coincided with that,
because I think a lot of these especially second wave feminists,
who were coming out of the late nineteen seventies world
of consciousness raising and quote unquote brow burning, were really
excited by the possibility of this new medium that would
allow them to kind of do consciousness raising on a
global scale and and reach women and feminists all around
(26:05):
the world and kind of create new spaces, define their
own spaces, and and do all kinds of you know,
fluid and exciting experimentation about identity and gender and and
all the things that are really fun and interesting. So
they made a lot of radical art. There's some wild
CD rom games and wild early websites, great manifestos. The
(26:26):
Cyber Feminist Manifesto was one of my favorite texts of
all time. It's truly wonderful, and it definitely comes from
a time before comments sections, because the language is just
so bold and and raw and and and like radical
and kind of gross and and just wild, and that
kind of free, free, exciting experimentation in a new medium
(26:48):
is just really beautiful to look at in the rear view.
It had its own problems, of course, like everything, and
it kind of disappeared pretty quickly after the World Wide
Web became kind of normalized in culture, and the artist
who contributed to that movement all went off and did
their own things. But it's an interesting moment I think,
when when feminists sort of saw the World Wide Web
as an opportunity and not necessarily as you know, I
(27:10):
don't know a place that I've sort of a social
system which would replicate um the social dynamics of the
culture that they existed and already. Okay, So I learned
about the cyber feminist movement from reading your book. I
had never heard of it before. And I'm someone who's
looking for these kinds of things, you know, I'm actively
on the lookout for women doing cool shit online, and
yet it went totally overlooked by me. So it's a
will to me that this huge movement began and ended
(27:32):
and had all of these cool women making this radical
art in the nineties online and I had never even
heard of it. It's awfuly what motivated me to write
the book, because I had the same exact experience. I
was looking for something. This is a classic like Wikipedia
moment that I had. I was looking for something else.
I found myself, I don't know how all on the
Wikipedia page for this art collective, the VN S Matrix,
who wrote the cyber Feminist Manifesto that I mentioned earlier,
(27:54):
And I was like, what, how do I not know
about this? You know, It's one of those like late
night Wikipedia deep dives where I looked like I'd followed
some long chain and I was there and I was like,
what is this How is there this crazy like cyberpunk
feminist art movement that I didn't know because I felt
the same way I had always felt really invested in
these histories. I've been writing about these histories for a
long time. I thought I knew kind of everything about
(28:15):
this about the early Internet, or not everything, but I
thought I knew like the broad strokes and lots of
the thing stuff that had happened, and I completely missed it.
And I think it's a combination of the fact that
as a movement it was, you know, relatively short lived.
It happened at the very beginning of the worldwide Web,
the world wide it up has a remarkable tendency to
erase and rewrite itself by definition, that's what's what it does.
(28:36):
And it just like blipped, you know, right under my radar,
And I was like, how many more of these stories
are there? How many more of these moments in history
have I completely missed by virtue of just being in
the wrong looking at the wrong part of the Internet,
or looking at the wrong time period. And I think
there's something really kind of fascinating and maddening about writing
histories of technology, and specifically histories that involved cultural movements
(29:01):
and human beings doing stuff on the web. Because the
web is so fluid and so amorphous and so impermanent.
Uh like there's you know, like outside of the way
Back machine, there aren't that many tools for seeking out
what was on the web ten years ago. And it's
not that long ago, you know, It's it's really not
that long ago, but yet it's it's slipping out from
(29:23):
between our fingers, and it's it's wild to me that
we have you know, Babylonian cuneiform clay tablets that we
can still read, but I can't tell you what was
on you know, women dot com in That seems wild
to me. So I think this idea that I wanted
to capture as much of this history as I could
before it all disappeared, and try to identify as many
(29:45):
of these moments, movements, you know, people contributions before they
lived out from under all our radars. It gave this
entire project a sense of urgency for me. It made
me feel like I had to move quickly before the
Internet exploded. Basically, Yeah, And I think a big part
of why your work is so important is that aspect
of archival, so that no one will ever be able
(30:06):
to say that women weren't there because they weren't included
in the archive. You know, we can say, oh, no, no, no,
women were always here since the very beginning. Here's the
record of it. You know, I'm I'm almost hesitant to
draw this line between like men and hardware and women
and software. But I do think that hardware is much
easier to historicize. You know, it's way easier to put
an old computer in a glass case in a museum
(30:26):
and say, like, you know, this computer is really important
and these guys made it, and here it is. It
has a material presence you know, that is permanent, that
is going to you know, continue to pollute the world
until the end of time. Um. But software and culture,
work and games and communities and all these things which
are so much more difficult to hold onto. Oftentimes they're
(30:47):
associated with women's work, and oftentimes they're forgotten because they're
just they're just they're not you know, they're hard to
hold on through. They're not things. Um. And we fetishize things,
and tech culture really revolves around this kind of object
that shism. You know, we we get the new device
every six months or you know, we and we imagine
that by getting the new device, everything that ever came
before it disappears, but it doesn't, you know, it keeps existing.
(31:10):
And it's really important to remember that that tech is
not just about objects, and it's not just about platforms.
It's about what we do with those objects and platforms.
It's about the ways that we bring those things to life.
It's about the ways that we make meaning out of
those things and build community using those things. That's what
actually matters, you know, that's what actually has an impact
on human culture, not just human you know, market economics.
(31:33):
So and I think that you know, at oftentimes that's
forgotten and at the same time, you know that's also
the site where a lot of women's contributions are made,
and so that those things kind of get rushed aside,
but they're just as important, if not more important, than
making iPhones. Okay. So I have this theory that by
gate keeping who is and isn't quote somewhat in tech,
that's really just this way of keeping out all of
(31:54):
these marginalized figures who maybe you weren't coders, right, people
who were artists or thinkers or organizers or activists who
are using the internet in really cool ways. It's a
way to keep those folks out of the tent of tech.
And I think it's important that we understand that just
because you maybe aren't a coder doesn't mean you haven't
had an influential or important impact on how we understand
tech and culture. You know, the tent is huge. Yeah,
(32:16):
of course, I'm like, what good is code if no
one's using it? You know, what good does that? And
what good does the technology off no one uses it?
I think, you know, yeah, I think you're totally right.
I think people sort of to try to define what
tech means in a way that allows them to remain
at the top of you know, the totem pole. But really,
I don't know. I mean, making things is just the beginning.
And I think, I mean, I think people in tech
(32:36):
know that because users are the most powerful force for
innovation that that there is. I mean, the Twitter at
reply and the hashtag those came from, you know, users suggestions.
The Worldwide Web itself, you know, it was never meant
to be a communications platform or cultural platforms. Users made
that what it is. So, you know, I think we
often often underestimate the role users and that users have
(33:02):
in in the system, and you know, you put something
out into the world, people decide what they're going to
do with it, They give it context, they give it meaning,
and then then then then that sort of cycles back
and the people who are designing those tools then have
to take that and move forward with it. It's part
of the process of developing a technology, and it's not
often considered to be, you know, part of part of it,
(33:22):
but it really is that that labors is invisible but
very real. Being a woman online can be tough, but
it's not without hope. Clear's work as a musician grounds
are on a very specific kind of hope around technology,
where text sometimes presents an adversarial foil to humans, time
and time again, we humans find a way to turn
that conflict into something beautiful that reaffirms our existence. There
(33:44):
have been many instances in the history of music when
a new technology has come along that ostensibly is there
to displace the musician. For example, the drum machine or
the synthesizer. You know, these are tools that we're designed
to replace session musicians with an easier, cheaper version kind
of automation of their labor. In fact, even in the eighties,
like the British Musicians Union tried to dam synthesizers. But
(34:06):
what artists and musicians did was, instead of allowing those
tools to replace them, they took control of them. And
you know, they took drum machines, and they took synthesizers,
and they invented Detroit Techno, and they invented new waves,
and they invented hip hop, and they invented you know,
electronic music as it exists today, and it's many manifestations.
They kind of took the thing that was threatening them
(34:27):
with displacement and incorporated it into what they were doing
and made it essential to who they were and used
it to invent something new that they were integray as
human beings involved with. And I think that that act
of kind of like I don't know, I like like
jumping on the grenade or something is like a really
beautiful thing that artists always do, willingly or unwillingly um
(34:47):
when they are faced with new technology. And I think
when new technology comes along, you always have that choice.
Are you gonna let it displace you or you're gonna
let it intimidate you, or you're gonna take it, you know,
jump on it, find some new use for it, and
make it part of who you are and give it
back to the world in a new form. That is
all that choice is always present, and I think that's
what I try to do in my work across the board,
(35:09):
and I think it's the only way that we're going
to kind of keep on top of all of this technology.
And I think it's also very human. I think it's
what people always do. Um We are always trying to
create systems of meaning and beauty out of what is
coming up ahead. And I think that will never change
(35:30):
when you think about it. Isn't that what it means
to be a woman online or given the worst? But
somehow we keep making art, keep connecting, keep building those
little monuments to who we were and who we are.
We keep saying, Hello, I was here, you won't erase me.
There are no girls on the Internet. Was created by
(35:50):
me Bridget Tad. It's a production of I Heart Radio
and Unboss creative Jonathan Strickland as our executive producer, Tara
Harrison as our producer, and sound engineer. Michael ma That
was our contributing producer. I'm your host, bridget Pad. For
more podcasts for my Heart, check out the I Heart
Radio app Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts
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