updated: 2022-01-23_12:32:31-05:00

Losing Lena

  • Playboy centerfold model, never shot pornography before this

  • Symbol of what is wrong in the stem fields

  • 1973

  • Testing image processing algorithms (making JPEG)

  • Cropped image became image reference for CS

  • The most widely used test image in the world

  • Use of image makes women uncomfortable

  • Symbolizes role woman have played, (the woman in the photograph, not the coders)

  • "I didn't see it as a picture of a person"

  • The photo is "alienating" to women

  • history of passing the buck "it's not my problem"

  • Culture of the industry is built on the consequences of these actions, regardless of their intent

  • How will the decisions of today going to affect our industry tomorrow

  • USC Department of Computer Science

  • Woman were in the beginning of CS

  • They started doing "personality tests"

    • Good programmers don't like people
    • Men fit this more than women
    • Personal Computer: 'interesting thing for men to use'
    • birth of the white male nerd stereotype

  • "I was treated like my ideas didn't matter"

  • "tech-bro culture, felt like I needed to be cool to fit in"

  • "If you are in a culture that is giving you signs that you are an impostor, you absorb that impostor syndrome"

  • Wore my hair in a bun to be taken seriously

  • Everything to loose if we don't have diversity

  • Without it we are loosing half of the ideas

  • Blindspots baked into AI also scales up

  • Rejecting women resumes

  • voice training

  • The digital divide

  • How do we fix it?

    • Gender balance in university
      • By making them take a secondary degree too, increase women

  • Women run companies only get 2% of funding

    • access to opportunity
    • socialization

  • Gender is the cultural role we place

    • We confuse the two

  • It's a question of opportunity

  • Things like christmas gifts and etc

  • by 7-9 we tell kids that intelligence is innate

  • Nothing in the genes that say one person is smarter than the others

  • Women and POC

  • Way you are raised "women clean and do housework"

    • Science & Math

  • Making CS mandatory in High School

    • gets rid of the illusion of choice based on personal beliefs (when they don't understand why they think that the CS class is not for them)

  • If more women had been on the early twitter team, the amount harassment and stuff wouldn't be as prevalent

  • what if they had been involved in the making of our tech?

  • I was proud of the picture

  • At the time, "this is the way it is"

  • It was a man's world

  • There's a lot of work to do

  • "first lady of the internet"

  • I retired from modeling a long time ago, It's time I retired from tech too