LISTEN to today's inspiring conversation with Author/Musician/Technology Reporter Claire Evans!
The history of technology you probably know is one of men and machines, garages and riches, alpha nerds and “brogrammers.” But female visionaries have always been at the vanguard of technology and innovation—they’ve just been erased from the story. Until now.
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. VICE reporter and YACHT lead singer Claire L. Evans finally gives these unsung female heroes their due with her insightful social history of the “Broad Band”, the women who made the internet what it is today.
In BROAD BAND, you’ll meet:
• Ada Lovelace, the tortured, imaginative daughter of Lord Byron, who wove numbers into the first program for a mechanical computer in 1842.
• Grace Hopper, the tenacious mathematician who democratized computing by leading the charge for machine-independent programming languages after World War II.
• Elizabeth “Jake” Feinler, the librarian from West Virginia who became the earliest internet’s administrator, a one-woman Google who kept the network online.
• Stacy Horn, who ran one of the first-ever social networks on a shoestring out her New York City apartment in the 1980s.
• Jaime Levy, the self-proclaimed “biggest b*tch in Silicon Alley”, creator of the popular electronic magazines Cyber Rag and Electronic Hollywood, loaded on floppy disks.
BROAD BAND shines a light on the bright minds history forgot, and shows us how they will continue to shape our world in ways we can no longer ignore.
www.clairelevans.com
Twitter: @TheUniverse
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Claire Evans is a writer and musician. She is the singer and coauthor of the pop group YACHT, and the founding editor of Terraform, VICE's science-fiction vertical. She is the former futures editor of Motherboard, and a contributor to VICE, theGuardian, WIRED, and Aeon; previously, she was a contributor to Grantland and wrote National Geographic's popular culture and science blog, Universe. She is an advisor to design students at Art Center College of Design and a member of the cyberfeminist collective Deep Lab. She lives in Los Angeles.
