Gender and the technologies of the Information Age

1. Gender and the technologies of the Information Age Mohammad T. Mithani

2. Pioneers • “However, only two women are generally known as significant contributors to the invention and development of computers: Ada, Countess of Lovelace, and Captain, later Rear Admiral, Grace Hopper.”(pg 433)

3. Lady Lovelace – the Proto Computer 19th Century and early 20th Century Ada Byron -Analytical Engine Ada and Babbage working on an impossible project. • automatic tic tac toe machine - impossible • Necessary parts did not exist. How to Program the World’s First Computer? – 1843 paper Menabrea’s paper correcting some serious errors in Babbage’s work. Babbage's analytical engine, the machine that was described in the paper that Lovelace translated.

4. Ada Byron (continued) Ada considered first programmer. • Development of looping, indexing comments, program trace, coder, analysis of algorithms. - • Suggested to use binary storage instead of decimal system. • Conditional branching • Computer language in 1970s, sole used for Department of Defense was called Ada.

5. Calculator Inventions • Other famous inventions at the same time (Late 19th Century – Early 20) • Marie Pape-Carpainter - educational calculator using colored balls to make calculation • Mary E. Winter – patented adding machine

6. Calculator Inventions (continued) • Emily Duncan (1905) – two patents of Calculators – calculate interest and remaining terms of loans. • Edith Clarke • Illustrates that women worked in the area of technology before the computer

7. Grace Hopper – the Modern Computer • She had invented automatic programming, a system enabling the computer to “write” its own programs from key instructions. • Contributed to the evolvement of the Mark I,II,III at Harvard. • Herman Goldstine notes that Hopper invented “perhaps the first automatic coding systems in the United Sates…, called A-0 and A-1” • System to calculate differential calculus

8. Grace Hopper (continued) • Grandmother of COBOL • BINAC – coding for linking two computers together • First to realize that software is an essential part of computer systems and should be included in computer when sold. • Virtual storage is operating system allowing data and program segments to be swapped between peripheral and central storage.

9. Grace Hopper (continued) • Dr. Hopper recommended data processing be written in English. – took her 3 years to do. From FLOW MATIC emerged COBOL – Common Business Oriented Language • Make computers faster than anyone imagined… Led to Parallel processing brake apart computational puzzles and solve all at once. • Published more than 50 papers • “Grace Hopper is as much a party of the future as of the past.” (60 Minutes)

10. Hardware Machine Design • Eniac Girls – programming the world’s first general purpose electronic computer, ENIAC – to calculate shell and missile trajectories for the War Department. At one time there were 200 young women doing firing table son desk calculators. • Key contributors • Adele Goldstine (first programmer and wrote manual on its logical operator), Kay Mauchly, Frances Bilas, Ruth Lichterman, Elizabeth Jennings..

11. Other Hardware Pioneers • Time Period : Early 20th Century - Today • Margaret K. Butler • Help develop one of the first digital computers for science. • Themla Estrin • Hardware related areas as image processing, information systems, computer system performance, and scientific and engineering applications of computers.

12. Other Hardware Pioneers • Erna Schneider Hoover • She created a computerized telephone switching system. The switching system used a computer to monitor incoming calls and then automatically adjusted the call's acceptance rate. • This helped eliminate overloading problems. • The principles of Erna Schneider Hoover's design are still used today, she was awarded one of the first software patents ever issued • First Female Supervisor at Bell Labs

13. Other Hardware Pioneers • Themla Estrin – member of IEEE for thirty years. Participated emergence of biomedical engineering, neuroscience, computer engineering, the information society, and the women’s movement. • Themla applied to RCA but as she puts it “hiring a woman engineer just was not something they wanted to do at that time”

14. Other Hardware Pioneers Donna Hudson [Expert System-AI] - system called EMERGE written in Pascal – interactive computer based consultation program ..utilized for emergency room personnel treating patients with chest pain's” Dr Ruth Davis – pioneered first robotic programs in the Department of Defense Elise Harmon – Edith Olson helped make the “single silicon chip” Coral L. Romero – patented automatic symbol reproducing device. And more..Elizabeth Zimmerman, Helene E. Kulrud

15. Recent Achievements • Business and personal computers • Evelyn Berezin – innovated in hardware • Designed the first office computer • Designed United Airlines nationwide on line computer reservations system. • First high speed commercial digital communications system. • One of the pioneers of word processing.

16. Recent Achievements • Picture Storage • Amaline Julianna Frank New device for storing pictures and prints in a computer. Now used to print yellow pages • Display Technology • Anne Chiang (1942-20--) • Leading electrophoretic scientist • Four patents Laser Crystallization, semiconductor processing, photo detectors for document input scanners. • Proposed 30 inventions magnetic tapes, optic disk, flat panel displays, etc

17. Many other achievements… • Bubble Memory • Lynn Conway – Automated Design • Solutions to complex design problems • Lady Edison • Patricia Wiener – 30+ inventions, 3 patents. • Mostly interested in cancer, matter, and energy. • New techniques for generating vector-based graphics, a symbol generator.

18. Vectors

19. Software • Software Pioneers • Betty Synder Holberton –served as a discussant for the COBOL session. • Margaret Butler – computer programs to solve engineering problems and aid in design of nuclear reactors • Many more…

20. Programming Languages • Assembly Language – Elane Boehme construction of address table for an assembly program • Flow Matic – Grace Hopper, • FORTRAN – Lois M. Haibt, Grace Elizabeth Mitchell, etc. • COBOL – Grace Hopper and Betty Holberton helped in creation. • Other: Jovial, LISP, Joss, SIMULA, etc.

21. Applications • Mary Pickett - Robotic Manufacturing automated manufacturing invention is. • Amy Spear innovations in computer aided design…team award. • Other areas of women advancing in applications: Data Management, Modeling complex problems, medicine, aids to handicapped, robots for the handicapped, etc…

22. Contemporary • Annie Easely computer applications are used to identify energy conversion systems that provide improvements over commercially available technologies. • Sandra Kurtzig - tracking system for inventory, bills of materials, and purchase orders • Portia Issacson Bass - The ability of tvs and radios to be muted when the phone rang, security systems that warned trespassers off the premise, and a command center that was said to rival the Pentagon's system

23. Artificial Intelligence • Grace Hopper (Parallel Processing) • Expert Systems • Dr. Wendy Lehnert pioneering work in AI and possibly even designed a schema of incorporating emotional states in AI systems.

24. Natural Language Processing Wendy Lehnert • Developed a process model for narrative text summarization. • “teaching” her computer to summarize various types of stories, ranging from the very simple to the very complex.

25. Natural Language Processing (cont) • Karen Spark-Jones • innovative work in computing. • Linguistics information processing. • Help create computational systems capable of manipulating information expressed in natural language. • Words fall in classes

26. Smart Machines and Expert Systems • Lucy Suchman – Team in developing the computer to be a better listener. • H. Penny Nii – coined the term knowledge engineering – Her method of operation – “essence of cooperation”

27. AI continued • Margaret Wellbank of British Telecom “major contributions to knowledge acquisition technology”. • Jill Larkin – cognitive science to educational computing – FERMI an expert system for multi domain problem solving. • Pat Wiener – physical techniques to increase the number of sensing centers in a given robot.

28. AI Issues • Women academics working in technological departments face pressures either not to do AI work at all or only to address certain aspects.

29. AI and the Feminist Movement • The law. • Feminist assistance was needed when the aim of the project was to build a legal expert system to advice UK Sex Discriminations laws based upon feminist jurisprudence

30. AI and the Feminist Movement • Computational Linguistic • Awareness of Language issues embedded stereotypes • Cyber-culture • Caro Adam’s study shows that cyberspace can magnify and accelerate inequalities and harassment found elsewhere through most likely cyber-pornography • A-Robots and the transition of the mind to a robotic body

31. Worries about AI and Feminism • Computer can cause tremendous damage and increase gender bias. • The communication in VR technologies create way of knowing/talking/signing bodies, and thus they enable new forms of repression to the material bodies.

32. Worries about AI and Feminism • Balsamo - VR technologies are involved in reproducing dominant power relations in particular that repression the material body