Today is Ada Lovelace day. I'm quite please that I know who Ada Lovelace was. I'm quite sad that I've only known who she was for a couple of years. Ada was a contemporary of Charles Babbage, and she wrote the first computer program, which would have been used on Babbage's Analytical Engine. But since then it's all been a bit boys, boys, boys, even today. There are quite a few reasons (you boys being far more prone to obsessive autistic tendencies and more able to become engulfed in a technology, unlike we girls who are busy painting our toenails, having babies and cooking the dinner), but it does seem strange that even today we girls are still not SEEN much in the technical world of technology, even though, hey, actually, come on, there are SHED loads. Today is the day to celebrate women in technology, the unsung ones, the ones who plug away in their field without being recognised. Plugging - or tapping - away in one's field, unsung is A. good because equality means not being highlighted for being different, and B. bad, because girls need role models, like boys get in spades... and when I say girls, I mean women. I'd like to tell you about a woman I know who is the CEO of a HUGE tech corporation. But I can't, because I don't know any. I DO know a few women who have embraced technology and not just in the "I'm going to play scrabble on my PC and send bloody irritating chain emails to everyone" way (although, hey, their lives are richer for it, so who am I to bitch?). So MY post to celebrate Ada Lovelace celebrates women I know who have taken technology into their work and lives. Let's get me out of the way first (supreme narcissist that I am): I do all this stuff, give me a piece of software and I'll be able to tell you how to use it by lunchtime, I make websites, paint electronically, animate gibberish and communicate with the world. I'm the techno-go-to girl amongst my friends and I'm fanatical about the internet's capabilities to help people change their situation and I used to teach people how to use software. I can tap dance too. No, actually I can't. But it sounded quite good. Then there's my mate Bev, who is another internet fanatical. She teaches people from all over the world how to use information technology to help dispersed communities communicate and get the job done. Nancy does a very similar job, and thankfully they are two ladies both very much in demand. My sister is helping to paying her way through university with her continuing tech-sysadmin-in-house-out-house-computer know-all hat on. Before that she was IT director in a London firm. However, she is not an astronaut. She wanted me to tell you that. And she thinks we were better off before marketing was invented, as she says "there were no marketing people when we were in the trees". There's a whole other blog in my sister but I only have time for one blog in my life. I know a whole gaggle of writers who use the internet to help keep themselves from going collectively mad and keep in touch with each other and the world. To surmise: WE ARE ALL BRILLIANT BUT I wish this post was longer and I wish I knew more women who were geekier than me.
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