Book Review: Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet by Claire L. Evans

My brother, a software?* engineer, and sister-in-law bought me this book for my birthday, correctly guessing it would interest me. I was excited to receive it and then (all together now!) it sat on the shelf for several years. I decided to read it for Women's History Month. Summary below: 

The history of the internet is more than just alpha nerds, brogrammers, and male garage-to-riches billionaires. Female visionaries have always been at the vanguard of technology and innovation.

In fact, women turn up at the very beginning of every important wave in technology. They may have been hidden in plain sight, their inventions and contributions touching our lives in ways we don't even realize, but they have always been part of the story.

In a world where tech companies are still male-dominated and women are often dissuaded from STEM careers, Broad Band shines a much-needed light on the bright minds history forgot, from pioneering database poets, data wranglers, and hypertext dreamers to glass ceiling-shattering dot com-era entrepreneurs.

Get to know Ada Lovelace, who wove the first computer program in 1842, and Grace Hopper, the tenacious mathematician who democratized computing after World War II. Meet Elizabeth "Jake" Feinler, the one-woman Google who kept the earliest version of the Internet online, and Stacy Horn, the New York cyberpunk who ran one of the world's earliest social networks out of her New York City apartment in the 1980s.

Join the ranks of the pioneers who defied social convention to become leaders of the tech revolution. This electrifying corrective to tech history introduces us all to our long-overlooked tech mothers and grandmothers—showing us that if there's a "boy's club" that dominates Silicon Valley today, it's an anachronism.

The title is a pun - broadband and broad (early/mid-twentieth century slang for woman) band. A band of women gave us broadband. Sort of. They made the internet possible anyway. Claire L. Evans takes us through a brisk tour of of women's contributions to computer science and the World Wide Web/Internet (yes, those are two different things. No, I can't really explain it to you). She starts with Ada Lovelace and female computers (if you've seen Hidden Figures then you get it), going on to Grace Hopper and other awesome ladies programming and debugging computers etc. Then she goes on through the decades to talk about other awesome tech women, none of whom I had heard about. An English woman came up with working hypertext like a decade before Tim Berners-Lee did, but used a different format of internet. It's all such fascinating stuff. The internet makes perfect sense to me: stuff links to other stuff. But early tech and internet connections? Holy shit. How did they do that?!?!?

Evans covers all of this in an engaging way, neither too scientific or casual/chatty. As a journalist, Evans (who interviewed just about all of these women personally) is great at telling the stories, yet she doesn't tell us enough. I am dying to know more about these women, but there are hardly any pictures or a suggested reading list (I guess that's not necessary but always appreciated). Stuff I didn't need to know about (Grace Hopper's drinking problem) was shared while other stuff I did want to know (some of these women must have been queer, right?) was not. There are endnotes, but no little numbers in the body of the text to indicate which citation or quotation goes to which endnote (I guess we're supposed to count quoted sentences in each chapter?), which I personally think is irresponsible in a nonfiction book. 

Anyway, I really enjoyed this book and want to learn more about the awesome women who gave us the internet/WWW, allowing me share my stupid little book reviews that no one reads anyway. Thanks for everything, ladies. 

Score: 4 out of 5 stars
Read in: March 8-15
From: gift
Status: keep

Cover notes: I love the use of the motherboard (so punny) to make a lady figure, but I think the b00b parts are unnecessarily crass.

Trigger warnings for this book: sexism, institutional sexism, transphobia in the chapter about the 1980s social network, drug and alcohol use mentions, claustrophobic depictions of spelunking in caves

*my engineer brother does something on computers with coding that affects internet/app-seeming things. That is the best I can tell you. Software engineering sums it up as best as I understand it. It's all very tech-y.

Rest of February books

I read the book The Internet Is a Playground by David Thorne throughout the month of February. It is the perfect bathroom book because it's a bunch of essays and email conversations, so you can pick up and put down the book at any point. You can read the synopsis here. I had heard of the blog/website, and I'm pretty sure my brother sent me some of the greatest hits from it (as well as seeing some on tumblr), so I was somewhat familiar with a few of the chapters. One of David Thorne's viral email conversations is credited with "inventing" NFTs (the spider). It is a very funny book, but the humor is mean and problematic. The tagline includes the blog's name, Evil Online Genius, so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. I couldn't help laughing anyway, although I did find it less funny than I would have/did ten+ years ago. I consider this a good time capsule of mid-2000s to mid-2010s online humor. 3.5 stars, giving to my brother since I know he'll find it funny. Source: BookOutlet. Trigger warnings for this book: fatphobia, sizeism, ableism, the r*tard slur is used multiple times, sexism, homophobia, homophobic slurs (directed by others towards author), child endangerment jokes, animal death & cruelty jokes, probably other stuff I can't think of

Continuing my TCON reread, I read Prince Caspian on the 27th. I had fewer problems reading this book vis-a-vis thinking of reading it out loud (I'd stick with the original vaguely Spanish accents for the Telmarines. It fits with the names). It's such a good book, and a good continuation of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Having the kids go back when they do adds such a fascinating, mysterious element. Memorable characters, wilderness survival, and battle scenes, not to mention magical creatures and happenings. What more do you want? I'd also try to eat the chocolate-looking soil. The copy I read was from my trusty set with the Leo & Diane Dillon cover art, since I don't yet have a full-color illustrations edition of Prince Caspian. 5 stars, permanent collection. Source: gift. Trigger warnings for this book: war, death, murder, threats of the above (including to children), blood, children fighting duels and battles against adults, child soldiers, bear attack, children using weapons, animal death, children shot at with arrows, scary fantastical characters, evil magic, fatphobia, people turned into animals, magic referred to as dark or light when we now know that's racist, suspense (mostly kid-friendly)

Elders of the Internet

Love it! Nick Offerman is the best.

Book review: Darcy Swipes Left by Courtney Carbone & Jane Austen

Darcy Swipes Left is part of the OMG Classics series by Courtney Carbone, who restructures classic works of literature into online/texting conversations and social media status updates with plenty of emojis. I found it at the dollar store, and since I collect Jane Austen adaptations, I decided to buy it.

I did not really care for this book. The use of emojis to replace words, often to confusing effect, was rather corny. There is a glossary in the back to explain the text speech/acronyms, for anyone older than 45, and what the emojis meant. Per usual, I did not realize this until I finished the book, so I had to guess what each emoji stood for, which was not always immediately obvious (flirting is the winky face + blowing a kiss w/ a heart emoji). The emotions of the book don't really come through when they're transmitted via text. I was kind of secondhand embarrassed throughout, tbh. I don't think this will be the kind of book that ages gracefully. Gen Z doesn't use Facebook, for instance, and I think people have stopped checking into places online.

Ok, here are some positive things about this book: most of the humor shines through, and you still get to see Lizzy dunk on Darcy. My favorite part is when Lydia goes to stay with her married friend, and she uploads a 150-picture album entitled "Selfies with Soldiers" to Facebook.

I haven't given it away (yet), but idk if I will end up keeping it after all. Probably not, as I'm already running out of space on my Jane Austen Shelf.

Score: 2.5 out of 5 stars
Read in: January 16
From: dollar store
Format: hardcover
Status: tentatively keeping

Happy 4th of July

My mom came in my room after working this morning, took one look at me and said, "You look like you've accomplished a lot today." I was like YEAH I DID. Here is a list of today's accomplishments:

1. I slept in until after 10 am. I have to get up at 7:30 for work so this is a BOON.
2. I finished the book I was reading (this will probly be written about in a separate post as there are actually several [well, 3] books I was reading at one time).  
3. I wrote about it in my reading journal.
4. I got dressed. (A sundress and a sports bra totally count as getting dressed.)
5. I bought The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet with Barnes & Noble's 20% off coupon for this holiday weekend. So psyched to read it.
6. I downloaded today's Nook Free Fridays selection.
7. I checked my email.
8. I Facebooked and read some articles on the Internet.
9. I entered for some Disney giveaway.
10. I bought this purple P&P shirt I've been eyeing forever from Out of Print since they're having a sitewide 30% off sale right now!
11. I haven't yet but I'm going to download the free ebook of Sherman Alexie's The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven, which I got from Open Road at ALA Annual last weekend.

Let me tell you about my day

My morning:
-filled out and turned in cap & gown pics order form, paid for them
-printed out and had site supervisor sign agreement to intern form
-interned

My class, Information Literacy Instruction, is in Powell Library, which is probably one of the most gorgeous libraries I've ever been in. It's fantastic. I wish all my classes were held there. However, its layout is stupidly designed and so there is no straightforward way to get to the third floor. I have to go up the stairs to the second floor, turn down a few corridors and then take the elevator to the third floor, then go down a couple more corridors before reaching the classroom (one of those technology ones; everyone has a laptop). Anyway, this class seems pretty interesting. However, I (along with the rest of the class) had to create a Second Life account. Your 3D avatar interacts in a computer-generated 3D world... IDK, it's just so 2000s. So high school. I didn't do anything like that in high school, but it feels apt to say it's so high school. The teacher's going to host class on SL at some point, which is why. She loves it. :| :| :| I have no idea what I'm doing on there (how does one chat? I can barely move around) and don't really feel like downloading the SL Viewer software. Sigh. Really the only thing I like about it is that my avatar's a lavender and blue VW Bug.
I also had to get a Twitter account, which I am feeling much less blergh-y about. If I ever get around to using it in an normal manner I may link to it. I've toyed with the idea before but I probably wouldn't have gotten one without an outside reason. We're supposed to tweet questions or something.

The intermediate salsa class begins at 8 pm Tuesdays, so I catch the evening van after "only" 10 minutes of waiting and after finally getting dropped off hightail it to the Wooden Center in order to only be a few minutes late... and another class is using the ballroom. Run into classmates from last quarter's class (they are in this quarter's class too) and they look up the recreational schedule. Yes, the class starts next week! Lovely. I walk back home and finish my ramen.

Stopping by Blogs on a Lonely Evening

Whose blogs these are I think I know.
We've never met in real life, though;
No one will know I'm stopping here
To watch my dash fill up with posts.

You probably would think me weird
To stop doing my homework here
Between my midterms and finals
The darkest evening of the year.

My conscience gives my mind a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the hum
Of laptop fan and me, awake.

The Web is lovely, dark and deep.
But I have my grades to upkeep,
And months to go before I sleep,
And months to go before I sleep.

Apologies to Robert Frost.