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Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet
Goodreads Choice Award
Nominee for Readers' Favorite Science & Technology (2018)Women are not ancillary to the history of technology; they turn up at the very beginning of every important wave. But they've often been hidden in plain sight, their inventions and contributions touching our lives in ways we don't even realize.
Author Claire L. Evans finally gives these unsung female heroes their due with her social history of the Broad Band, the women who made the internet what it is today. Learn from Ada Lovelace, the daughter of Lord Byron, who wove numbers into the first program for a mechanical computer in 1842. Seek inspiration from Grace Hopper, the tenacious mathematician who democratized computing by leading the charge for machine-independent programming languages after World War II. Meet Elizabeth "Jake" Feinler, the one-woman Google who kept the earliest version of the Internet online, and Stacy Horn, who ran one of the first-ever social networks on a shoestring out of her New York City apartment in the 1980s. Evans shows us how these women built and colored the technologies we can't imagine life without.
Join the ranks of the pioneers who defied social convention and the longest odds to become database poets, information-wranglers, hypertext dreamers, and glass ceiling-shattering dot com-era entrepreneurs.
Author Claire L. Evans finally gives these unsung female heroes their due with her social history of the Broad Band, the women who made the internet what it is today. Learn from Ada Lovelace, the daughter of Lord Byron, who wove numbers into the first program for a mechanical computer in 1842. Seek inspiration from Grace Hopper, the tenacious mathematician who democratized computing by leading the charge for machine-independent programming languages after World War II. Meet Elizabeth "Jake" Feinler, the one-woman Google who kept the earliest version of the Internet online, and Stacy Horn, who ran one of the first-ever social networks on a shoestring out of her New York City apartment in the 1980s. Evans shows us how these women built and colored the technologies we can't imagine life without.
Join the ranks of the pioneers who defied social convention and the longest odds to become database poets, information-wranglers, hypertext dreamers, and glass ceiling-shattering dot com-era entrepreneurs.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published March 6, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 369 reviews
April 8, 2018
Women invented computer programming and were instrumental at every turn where the hardware the boys created, but failed to think of its applications, needed to be put to use. After the girls have proven that this was serious science - the boys pushed them out if it.... again and again. Women would take over “fringe” areas (such as hypertext and social networks) but not taken seriously, until the men took over.
This book explores the role of women in computing and the Internet. The first half is strong, covering the early programming pioneers like Grace Hopper, the Eniac Six, Radia Pearlman. However, when she switches to online communities, the book becomes bogged down in boring details, repetitive office and dot-com stories. Perhaps the topic itself is boring - social networks are much better experienced than written about - but I suspect the writing style. I was skimming starting halfway through.
I was also not happy that she cut off at the dot-com bust. Much development of women online has taken place since. If you are going to have a chapter on girl gamers, do some research now - gamergate, for example, the harrassment of women game programmers, but also the emergence of games that appeal to all sexes should have been covered. Instead Evans chooses to cover Purple Moon, a company who designed games that reinforced gender stereotypes, rather than fighting them. Boring, and a company that went bust for a good reason.
Cyberfeminism is another chapter that singles out a short-lived and rather intellectually snobbish phenomenon - whereas the web now is abuzz with feminism of a very different, more real, more inclusive sort. It felt tacked on and weak.
I am a programmer, early (1996) adopter of the Internet. I was a game developer in the late 90ies (yes, we also went down with the dot-com bust). I also have experienced the sexism, and the crazy phenomenon that while there were few women when I started, there are even less now. The boys have just gotten nastier - and no matter how good you are at your job, or how much you love it, there is only so much you can take before leaving. “I don’t know what you did but I don’t like it” was something a male collegue told me when he got angry at me for fixing some bugs - for which he should have been appreciative. Or whenever I said something, they would argue with me, then tell me that I had a personality problem of being argumentative. Or if I made an error, it was carelessness, if a man did, it was part of the job. So that sort of shit.
Anyway, I am digressing. This book intensely interested me, and it sort of delivered in the first part, but the second part is a failure. I don’t even know what Evans was going for. You could come up with a much more interesting story of women on the internet - but you would have to include now. Also, use some more inventive style. I suggest taking pointers from women on the internet. Include photos, little extras, jokes... fun stuff. This book is just way too dry.
This book explores the role of women in computing and the Internet. The first half is strong, covering the early programming pioneers like Grace Hopper, the Eniac Six, Radia Pearlman. However, when she switches to online communities, the book becomes bogged down in boring details, repetitive office and dot-com stories. Perhaps the topic itself is boring - social networks are much better experienced than written about - but I suspect the writing style. I was skimming starting halfway through.
I was also not happy that she cut off at the dot-com bust. Much development of women online has taken place since. If you are going to have a chapter on girl gamers, do some research now - gamergate, for example, the harrassment of women game programmers, but also the emergence of games that appeal to all sexes should have been covered. Instead Evans chooses to cover Purple Moon, a company who designed games that reinforced gender stereotypes, rather than fighting them. Boring, and a company that went bust for a good reason.
Cyberfeminism is another chapter that singles out a short-lived and rather intellectually snobbish phenomenon - whereas the web now is abuzz with feminism of a very different, more real, more inclusive sort. It felt tacked on and weak.
I am a programmer, early (1996) adopter of the Internet. I was a game developer in the late 90ies (yes, we also went down with the dot-com bust). I also have experienced the sexism, and the crazy phenomenon that while there were few women when I started, there are even less now. The boys have just gotten nastier - and no matter how good you are at your job, or how much you love it, there is only so much you can take before leaving. “I don’t know what you did but I don’t like it” was something a male collegue told me when he got angry at me for fixing some bugs - for which he should have been appreciative. Or whenever I said something, they would argue with me, then tell me that I had a personality problem of being argumentative. Or if I made an error, it was carelessness, if a man did, it was part of the job. So that sort of shit.
Anyway, I am digressing. This book intensely interested me, and it sort of delivered in the first part, but the second part is a failure. I don’t even know what Evans was going for. You could come up with a much more interesting story of women on the internet - but you would have to include now. Also, use some more inventive style. I suggest taking pointers from women on the internet. Include photos, little extras, jokes... fun stuff. This book is just way too dry.
March 29, 2018
This is an interesting book about the history of women coders, engineers, mathematicians, entrepreneurs as well as visionaries who helped create and shape the internet. Evans even discusses Ada Lovelace, the mathematician daughter of Lord Byron.
The book is well written and researched. Evans is a journalist so the writing style is that of a journalist. Evans reviews the stories of women scientists such as the famous Grace Hopper, who worked on Harvard Mark One, to more recent women such as Stanford University scientist Elizabeth Feinler. She also includes programmer Brenda Laurel, a gamer entrepreneur. I found the story about Radia Perlman most interesting. Perlman invented a protocol for moving information to the way computers are networked. I had no idea so many women have achieved so much with so little recognition. I highly recommend this book.
I read this as an audiobook downloaded from Audible. The book is nine hours. The author narrated the book.
The book is well written and researched. Evans is a journalist so the writing style is that of a journalist. Evans reviews the stories of women scientists such as the famous Grace Hopper, who worked on Harvard Mark One, to more recent women such as Stanford University scientist Elizabeth Feinler. She also includes programmer Brenda Laurel, a gamer entrepreneur. I found the story about Radia Perlman most interesting. Perlman invented a protocol for moving information to the way computers are networked. I had no idea so many women have achieved so much with so little recognition. I highly recommend this book.
I read this as an audiobook downloaded from Audible. The book is nine hours. The author narrated the book.
October 11, 2018
Every so often, you read a non-fiction book that just speaks to you, that sticks with you because it’s not just informative but because it fits your level of background knowledge and expands your understanding of a topic perfectly. Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet is such a book for me. Claire L. Evans traces the development of the modern Internet from its precursors, the earliest mechanical and electronic computers, all the way to the present day—all through the lens of the women who computed, built, designed, programmed, and shepherded us into the Information Age. Evans not only smashes the myth that women don’t like computers or programming; she demolishes the idea that women are a recent addition to the tech world. As Evans demonstrates, women were here first.
Broad Band begins at the beginning. Evans goes all the way back to Ada Lovelace (I’m actually writing this review on Ada Lovelace Day—I should have timed this better so I could publish it today). I took the time to annotate and underline my copy of this book, because Evans just keeps saying it so well:
Evans goes on to demonstrate exactly how women were essential with each evolution and revolution of the tech industry. I loved reading about Grace Hopper and other early computer programmers. In particular, Evans notes about Hopper:
As a teacher, I love this. I love that mindset. But I digress—Hopper and the other early programmers did not have it easy like we do today. They were brilliant mathematicians who were then asked to translate their mathematical understanding into algorithms a computer, mechanical or electronic, might understand. Later, they were working with machine code. When I first started programming, I started with HTML and then interpreted languages like PHP and Python—I had it easy. Plus, because I’m a man, no one gave me a hard time. Tall, white, and nerdy, everyone just assumed I was good with computers. But Evans belies that stereotype: not only have women always been “good with computers” (hell, the first computers were literally women), but they come from all walks of life and have a vast diversity of cultural, political, and social backgrounds. Women are not a monolith.
So Evans goes on to name-drop other significant individual women in STEM, even as we see the computer industry emerge from the post-war United States economic boom. She points out how “the professionalization of 'software engineering' marked a sea change in the gender demographics of computing”—i.e., once programming turned into a profession rather than simply a menial job, suddenly it became men’s domain instead of women’s, despite the nature of the task remaining the same.
Evans does not limit herself to the discussion of the “hard” aspects of computer science either. She showcases the pioneering efforts of women in building communities online. I was so entranced by the section on Jake Feinler, who ran the NIC in its early days and was essentially the equivalent of WHOIS and Google all rolled into one. This was a part of the history of the Internet I had literally never heard of before, and here it is, laid bare and told clearly and humorously by Evans and the people she interviewed. Similarly, I had never heard of ECHO or women.com or any of these other early ventures. I had never heard of Microcosm or early adventures into hypertext that pre-date the World Wide Web. Seriously, this book is so dense and rich with information yet so easy to read. And it highlights that how a story and history are told really affects the way people conceptualize our understanding of technology. The idea that “Tim Berners-Lee” “invented” the “World Wide Web” is such a gross oversimplification—and you don’t have to read this book to know that, but Evans provides such a rich context into these events, which were all happening when I was a young’un.
Also, I really appreciate that Evans highlights how the Internet and the World Wide Web did not become the utopian cyberspace dream that many people (of various genders) hoped it would be. She catalogues the seemingly inevitable decline of the frontier of the Web, pointing out that the Web didn’t fix our problems with community—we just brought those problems online with us. This might seem painfully obvious to those of us who spend too much time on places like Twitter these days, but it was not a foregone conclusion in the early days of the Web—and there are still too many people now who think that just one more brilliant technological solution, one more killer app, might somehow fix what is ultimately a social problem—we just love being jerks towards each other.
Similarly, Evans takes some time to acknowledge and include trans women in this discussion. She highlights the difficulties that some trans women encountered: even as the Internet made it possible for them to express their gender identity safely when it might not be possible to do so in their offline lives, if they were out as trans online, they could face exclusion from “women-only” spaces. Evans recounts one particularly difficult moment in the history of ECHO in this record. I wish she had done a little more—she could have mentioned people like Lynn Conway or Danielle Bunten Berry. I realize that perhaps she was limited for space, or perhaps she would prefer to leave that for an #ownvoices author—but trans women are women, and their stories and experiences in the “untold story of the women who made the Internet” are valuable and deserve inclusion. So, kudos to Evans for mentioning this topic, could do better next time.
Overall: for young millennials like myself, that generation born in the late 1980s/early 1990s who were old enough to embrace the Web pre–social media but are too young to appreciate its origins, Broad Band is essential reading. I can’t really comment on what people much older than me (people for whom this is contemporaneous history) or younger than me (the so-called “digital native” generation for whom smartphones have always existed) might make of this. For someone my age, someone with a more-than-passing-interest in the history of technology and computers and how this has shaped our society, Broad Band is just phenomenal. I learned so much from this book; it is so well-written; and it is such a great tribute to the plethora of women who have been erased, overlooked, or under-appreciated for far too long.
Broad Band begins at the beginning. Evans goes all the way back to Ada Lovelace (I’m actually writing this review on Ada Lovelace Day—I should have timed this better so I could publish it today). I took the time to annotate and underline my copy of this book, because Evans just keeps saying it so well:
Women turn up at the beginning of every important wave in technology. We’re not ancillary; we’re central, often hiding in plain sight.
Evans goes on to demonstrate exactly how women were essential with each evolution and revolution of the tech industry. I loved reading about Grace Hopper and other early computer programmers. In particular, Evans notes about Hopper:
Years later, when Grace was an established figure in the new field of computer programming, she’d always assign the hardest jobs to the youngest and least experienced members of her team. She figured they didn’t have the sense to know what was impossible.
As a teacher, I love this. I love that mindset. But I digress—Hopper and the other early programmers did not have it easy like we do today. They were brilliant mathematicians who were then asked to translate their mathematical understanding into algorithms a computer, mechanical or electronic, might understand. Later, they were working with machine code. When I first started programming, I started with HTML and then interpreted languages like PHP and Python—I had it easy. Plus, because I’m a man, no one gave me a hard time. Tall, white, and nerdy, everyone just assumed I was good with computers. But Evans belies that stereotype: not only have women always been “good with computers” (hell, the first computers were literally women), but they come from all walks of life and have a vast diversity of cultural, political, and social backgrounds. Women are not a monolith.
So Evans goes on to name-drop other significant individual women in STEM, even as we see the computer industry emerge from the post-war United States economic boom. She points out how “the professionalization of 'software engineering' marked a sea change in the gender demographics of computing”—i.e., once programming turned into a profession rather than simply a menial job, suddenly it became men’s domain instead of women’s, despite the nature of the task remaining the same.
Evans does not limit herself to the discussion of the “hard” aspects of computer science either. She showcases the pioneering efforts of women in building communities online. I was so entranced by the section on Jake Feinler, who ran the NIC in its early days and was essentially the equivalent of WHOIS and Google all rolled into one. This was a part of the history of the Internet I had literally never heard of before, and here it is, laid bare and told clearly and humorously by Evans and the people she interviewed. Similarly, I had never heard of ECHO or women.com or any of these other early ventures. I had never heard of Microcosm or early adventures into hypertext that pre-date the World Wide Web. Seriously, this book is so dense and rich with information yet so easy to read. And it highlights that how a story and history are told really affects the way people conceptualize our understanding of technology. The idea that “Tim Berners-Lee” “invented” the “World Wide Web” is such a gross oversimplification—and you don’t have to read this book to know that, but Evans provides such a rich context into these events, which were all happening when I was a young’un.
Also, I really appreciate that Evans highlights how the Internet and the World Wide Web did not become the utopian cyberspace dream that many people (of various genders) hoped it would be. She catalogues the seemingly inevitable decline of the frontier of the Web, pointing out that the Web didn’t fix our problems with community—we just brought those problems online with us. This might seem painfully obvious to those of us who spend too much time on places like Twitter these days, but it was not a foregone conclusion in the early days of the Web—and there are still too many people now who think that just one more brilliant technological solution, one more killer app, might somehow fix what is ultimately a social problem—we just love being jerks towards each other.
Similarly, Evans takes some time to acknowledge and include trans women in this discussion. She highlights the difficulties that some trans women encountered: even as the Internet made it possible for them to express their gender identity safely when it might not be possible to do so in their offline lives, if they were out as trans online, they could face exclusion from “women-only” spaces. Evans recounts one particularly difficult moment in the history of ECHO in this record. I wish she had done a little more—she could have mentioned people like Lynn Conway or Danielle Bunten Berry. I realize that perhaps she was limited for space, or perhaps she would prefer to leave that for an #ownvoices author—but trans women are women, and their stories and experiences in the “untold story of the women who made the Internet” are valuable and deserve inclusion. So, kudos to Evans for mentioning this topic, could do better next time.
Overall: for young millennials like myself, that generation born in the late 1980s/early 1990s who were old enough to embrace the Web pre–social media but are too young to appreciate its origins, Broad Band is essential reading. I can’t really comment on what people much older than me (people for whom this is contemporaneous history) or younger than me (the so-called “digital native” generation for whom smartphones have always existed) might make of this. For someone my age, someone with a more-than-passing-interest in the history of technology and computers and how this has shaped our society, Broad Band is just phenomenal. I learned so much from this book; it is so well-written; and it is such a great tribute to the plethora of women who have been erased, overlooked, or under-appreciated for far too long.
March 31, 2020
I enjoyed this historical review of computer technology and the origins of the Internet. You've likely heard of Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper, but past that was mostly new territory for me. I liked the author's style and depth of research. The author takes things as they come, but women in computer tech have had a tough time from the start: in the pre-electronics days, a "computer" was a person with a mechanical calculator, and the bosses generally hired women because they would work for half the pay of men, and were more conscientious and reliable too.
The pay is better now, but women still aren't welcomed into most computer-tech jobs. The book avoids histrionics, but my impression is that the men enjoy playing alpha-male games, and the industry is poorer for discouraging almost half of the potential talent pool. And a lot of the problems in (for example) the social-media companies would likely be better handled by smart, savvy, consensus-building technical women. That's what they did, when given the chance. But most of the qualified technical women have decided to do something else because, well, read the book.
My favorite story is about Dr. Brenda Laurel, Combat Epistemologist -- a pioneer game designer for teen and preteen girls. Games that were popular, genuinely educational and commercially successful. Sadly, her company didn't survive the dot.com collapse. And no one else seems to be selling such games for girls.
Recommended for people in the industry, especially women. The future could be better!
The pay is better now, but women still aren't welcomed into most computer-tech jobs. The book avoids histrionics, but my impression is that the men enjoy playing alpha-male games, and the industry is poorer for discouraging almost half of the potential talent pool. And a lot of the problems in (for example) the social-media companies would likely be better handled by smart, savvy, consensus-building technical women. That's what they did, when given the chance. But most of the qualified technical women have decided to do something else because, well, read the book.
My favorite story is about Dr. Brenda Laurel, Combat Epistemologist -- a pioneer game designer for teen and preteen girls. Games that were popular, genuinely educational and commercially successful. Sadly, her company didn't survive the dot.com collapse. And no one else seems to be selling such games for girls.
Recommended for people in the industry, especially women. The future could be better!
August 7, 2018
This was a detailed, in-depth look at the contributions of women pioneers in computer science, the internet, and the web. The book is an example of well-done historical storytelling -- lots of interviews, stories, and first-person accounts discussing topics familiar and unfamiliar. Many of the anecdotes were things I'd never known about before, but sounded like something I would have wanted to be a part of. The research was thorough and the featured women were carefully selected to cover an interesting mix of topics.
I thought the story got more interesting after the now-well-known tales of Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper. We ventured into all kinds of interesting territories in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, fascinating stories about early computers and programming, pre-web internet communities, and a much more vibrant Silicon Alley than I had ever known. It made me nostalgic for an internet I'd never known -- and reinforced my belief that those times would never come again. It was an interesting choice to end the narrative at the dot-com bust, but appropriate -- many of the stories of the early 21st century are still in progress, and another book or author will have to do them justice.
This was an engaging and quick read. I listened on audio. Broadly recommended for anyone interested in the history of computing, women's history, or great narrative history.
I thought the story got more interesting after the now-well-known tales of Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper. We ventured into all kinds of interesting territories in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, fascinating stories about early computers and programming, pre-web internet communities, and a much more vibrant Silicon Alley than I had ever known. It made me nostalgic for an internet I'd never known -- and reinforced my belief that those times would never come again. It was an interesting choice to end the narrative at the dot-com bust, but appropriate -- many of the stories of the early 21st century are still in progress, and another book or author will have to do them justice.
This was an engaging and quick read. I listened on audio. Broadly recommended for anyone interested in the history of computing, women's history, or great narrative history.
March 28, 2018
A book where I had trouble deciding which paragraphs *not* to highlight. Incredible combination of original research, narrative, and politics.
September 14, 2018
Very interesting, highly recommended.
February 24, 2021
Świetna książka! Kompletnie nic nie wiem o historii komputerów, internetu, o rozwoju myśli związanej z dziedziną IT, a tu wszystko to dostałam i to jeszcze śledząc losy kobiet, które brały bezpośredni udział w najważniejszych odkryciach na tym polu. Dla mnie to niezwykle wciągająca pozycja, raz, że opowiedziana z perspektywy, którą lubię, a dwa zapraszająca mnie do kompletnie nieznanego mi świata i przy tym dobrze napisana.
May 11, 2018
Who made the Internet? Popular culture might have you picture a young, white, nerdy man as the architect and designer, the artist and innovator, behind the Internet. Maybe he’s arrogant and standoffish. Maybe he’s shy and brilliant. He probably wears glasses. There are people like him in the story of the Internet, but his story isn't the only one. There are lots of other people who contributed to creating this valuable resource--hundreds of stories behind the making of the Internet. Women also made the Internet, and their stories can help us understand their contributions. It is only if we can find those stories to tell others.
The Internet is a complicated thing. It was built by people working over several generations, reacting to numerous forces, and working towards different goals. Women were there writing computer languages, programming computers, setting up social service directories, creating methods of navigating ARPANET, creating online communities, and building businesses. They were inventing and innovating, but they were often overlooked, or silenced. For example, when the women who programmed the ENIAC were photographed next to it, the photograph’s caption called them models.
These women deserve to have their stories told while they are around to talk about their experiences. Information on the Internet isn’t static and it isn’t permanent. Operating systems and media become obsolete. Old programming languages are superseded by new ones. Links die. A magazine published on a floppy disk in 1992 is virtually unplayable today.
Luckily, Claire L. Evans was able to find and interview many of the women in her book, Broad Band: The untold story of the women who made the Internet. With input from the women, from their friends and coworkers, Evans shares their stories. With compassion and a keen eye researching primary sources, she sheds light on how the Internet came to be what it is today.
Reviewed by Andrea Borchert, Librarian, Science, Technology & Patents Department
The Internet is a complicated thing. It was built by people working over several generations, reacting to numerous forces, and working towards different goals. Women were there writing computer languages, programming computers, setting up social service directories, creating methods of navigating ARPANET, creating online communities, and building businesses. They were inventing and innovating, but they were often overlooked, or silenced. For example, when the women who programmed the ENIAC were photographed next to it, the photograph’s caption called them models.
These women deserve to have their stories told while they are around to talk about their experiences. Information on the Internet isn’t static and it isn’t permanent. Operating systems and media become obsolete. Old programming languages are superseded by new ones. Links die. A magazine published on a floppy disk in 1992 is virtually unplayable today.
Luckily, Claire L. Evans was able to find and interview many of the women in her book, Broad Band: The untold story of the women who made the Internet. With input from the women, from their friends and coworkers, Evans shares their stories. With compassion and a keen eye researching primary sources, she sheds light on how the Internet came to be what it is today.
Reviewed by Andrea Borchert, Librarian, Science, Technology & Patents Department
August 11, 2023
The first two parts of this book, the first 175 pages, are excellent. Highly recommended.
The author covers important history and events with clear detail, good end notes and index. A big part of this is interviews with some of the people involved. I really appreciate the history and perspective given here. The audiobook is read clearly by the author, who comes across clear and concise.
The third part (62 pages) is not as good, and feels dated just five years after publication. Maybe because social media and gaming are changing too fast, or perhaps the writing is not as good in this section. If this book is revised in the future, I hope this section is improved and expanded properly.
I don't remember how I was referred to this book, but I'm glad it was available at the library this summer!
The author covers important history and events with clear detail, good end notes and index. A big part of this is interviews with some of the people involved. I really appreciate the history and perspective given here. The audiobook is read clearly by the author, who comes across clear and concise.
The third part (62 pages) is not as good, and feels dated just five years after publication. Maybe because social media and gaming are changing too fast, or perhaps the writing is not as good in this section. If this book is revised in the future, I hope this section is improved and expanded properly.
I don't remember how I was referred to this book, but I'm glad it was available at the library this summer!
August 9, 2018
When the ENIAC was first displayed for the public, its proponents bragged that it could do complex mathematical calculations in seconds which would have taken a skilled man hours upon hours. Well...baloney. The ENIAC was an admirably complex array of metal, but without the human beings who had pored over its every component, turning their brains into maps of circuit boards, creating the very language that was needed to put that array of metal to work -- it was useless. Hours and hours of human effort had gone into that little calculation, but they weren't man-hours. The programmers of the ENIAC were six women, descendants of the calculating computer pools of the late 19th century. Broad Band is their story, and the story of other lady pioneers of the computer age.
I'll admit that I had no idea any of these women existed. Histories of of early computing and the internet are a favorite of mine, but I usually begin further along in the story, with more user-friendly machines like the PDP-10 and the advent of networks. I was a little leery of the book given the asinine blurb on the back -- "alpha nerds and brogrammers"? Really? Thankfully, the funny title brought me, and glad I am because I never heard of these women...and some of them are really worth knowing. Grace Hopper, for instance, was deeply involved in the Harvard Mark-1 and the UNIVAC, and she pionered the use of subroutines to speed up coding, as well as created the first compilers. COBOL, which at one time was the language of 80% of existing code, was based on her work. A woman once refused admittance to the services during World War 2 because of her age would become a Rear Admiral before her life's computing work was done. Another remarkable subject here is Elizabeth "Jake" Feinler, whose Network Information Office created and maintained a directory of...the internet. Working for the still-nascent ARPANet, Feinler was the master of all information about it. Her team also created many basic protocols, both under-the-hood things most users wouldn't recognize as well as creating the original web extension: ".com". The women who follow were also trail-blazers, experimenting with social networks (New York's "ECHO" bbs, which could boast a 40% female population), as well as digital magazines distributed on floppy disks. Surprisingly, ECHO is still around, though other projects like Word magazine are long gone.
Broad Band effectively mixes biography and tech history, and the goal from the start doesn't overshadow the actual content. That is, most of the subjects should be included in histories of web regardless of their sex, given their importance. I say most because I'm not sure about the website creators of the nineties; I don't know enough about the web at that transitional moment to read Broad Band in context. There were some claims that seemed specious, like references to Al Gore being the key player in making the internet a thing known to the public, and there's a huge discrepancy in the estimate given for ECHO membership. Evans says it peaked at 40,000, while The Atlantic marks the peak as...2,000. There's no way of knowing which is more accurate, but given that it was only accessible via a paid membership, I'm tempted to think Evans' is closer -- she interviewed the ECHO host herself. The meat of the book seems to get leaner and leaner as it wears on, until at the end we're reading about how computers are couched in "masculine" language like..."crash" and "execute". Despite the late-game weaknesses, there's a lot of fun information here about how the web as we know it evolved.
I'll admit that I had no idea any of these women existed. Histories of of early computing and the internet are a favorite of mine, but I usually begin further along in the story, with more user-friendly machines like the PDP-10 and the advent of networks. I was a little leery of the book given the asinine blurb on the back -- "alpha nerds and brogrammers"? Really? Thankfully, the funny title brought me, and glad I am because I never heard of these women...and some of them are really worth knowing. Grace Hopper, for instance, was deeply involved in the Harvard Mark-1 and the UNIVAC, and she pionered the use of subroutines to speed up coding, as well as created the first compilers. COBOL, which at one time was the language of 80% of existing code, was based on her work. A woman once refused admittance to the services during World War 2 because of her age would become a Rear Admiral before her life's computing work was done. Another remarkable subject here is Elizabeth "Jake" Feinler, whose Network Information Office created and maintained a directory of...the internet. Working for the still-nascent ARPANet, Feinler was the master of all information about it. Her team also created many basic protocols, both under-the-hood things most users wouldn't recognize as well as creating the original web extension: ".com". The women who follow were also trail-blazers, experimenting with social networks (New York's "ECHO" bbs, which could boast a 40% female population), as well as digital magazines distributed on floppy disks. Surprisingly, ECHO is still around, though other projects like Word magazine are long gone.
Broad Band effectively mixes biography and tech history, and the goal from the start doesn't overshadow the actual content. That is, most of the subjects should be included in histories of web regardless of their sex, given their importance. I say most because I'm not sure about the website creators of the nineties; I don't know enough about the web at that transitional moment to read Broad Band in context. There were some claims that seemed specious, like references to Al Gore being the key player in making the internet a thing known to the public, and there's a huge discrepancy in the estimate given for ECHO membership. Evans says it peaked at 40,000, while The Atlantic marks the peak as...2,000. There's no way of knowing which is more accurate, but given that it was only accessible via a paid membership, I'm tempted to think Evans' is closer -- she interviewed the ECHO host herself. The meat of the book seems to get leaner and leaner as it wears on, until at the end we're reading about how computers are couched in "masculine" language like..."crash" and "execute". Despite the late-game weaknesses, there's a lot of fun information here about how the web as we know it evolved.
March 27, 2024
It's the year 2024, and the two books I've most seriously considered awarding five stars are both grounded in the science side of things. Perhaps this is an indicator of how far I've come on my sometimes tortured path, and that there's some hope for me yet to return to my youthful, formerly engineering bound days and integrate them with my present and onwards towards the future. In any case, regarding this book here, Evans paints an informative picture of women in the technology of 'computing', ranging from the borderline blue collar manual labor of rote calculation to the Silicon Alley/Valley land of million dollar IPOs and girl gamers. Not only that, but she does so in extremely good prose, demonstrated by how, when she seemed to suddenly pivot from her tale of tech into a seemingly irrelevant discussion into spelunking in the US South, not only was I invested, I fully trusted in her ability to lead me out to the other, far more knowledgeable side. Unfortunately, this talent of spinning a tale went a tad askew in the lands of not too impressive "celebrities" and no small amount of armchair sociology, and that five star slipped the book's grasp in the last 50 or so pages. Still, I have to applaud a book that doesn't shy away from talking revolution while in the midst of venture capitalist bros, and while this read isn't likely to break you out of the rat race mentality of neofeudal capitalism, it reminded me of what appeal science used to have for me, outside of the STEM indoctrination and bloated paychecks. I can't say how well this would work with someone who hasn't nearly outright avoided reading about this subject for the last ten to fifteen years, but it did just fine for me, and I'm glad to return it to the shelves of my workplace, where I plan on ensuring it stays for as long as it wishes to do so.
October 15, 2018
It was interesting to learn about women's role in the history of computing, hypertext, and the Internet. However, there were two ways this book fell short for me. First, Evans seemed to only focus on one type of woman: the counterculture, feminist, riot grrl. Surely not every woman who contributed to computers and the Web fits into this mold. Second, the author talks way to much about herself. For example, she constantly said things like Nancy told me x, y, and z. The book would have flowed better if she merely quoted Nancy without bringing herself into the scene. BTW. the author is a counterculture, feminist, riot grrl, something I wouldn't have known if she hadn't constantly told me.
January 20, 2021
WARNING: THIS REVIEW/RANT CONTAINS SOME DISCUSSION ABOUT GRAPHIC VIOLENCE IN ART, POLITICS AND STRONG LANGUAGE. IF YOU MIND THOSE LAST 2 THINGS DON’T READ THE BOOK EITHER!
RANT REVIEW:
This could have been good but goddamn it, the writing is flawed.
So the book’s subject matter and the things being talked about are very interesting and this is coming from someone who doesn’t have much interest in science and technology nonfiction at all so that shows some sign of something cool. Oh and I did learn quite a bit.
Unfortunately despite those being the 2 main things I look for in a nonfiction book, this still isn’t a good nonfiction book.
The writing is dry as fuck honestly and the author who narrates the audio edition of this book sounds as interested in her own writing as I was (which due to the dryness isn’t a good thing). Being an independent I did find the far-left spin rather annoying (this book seems pro-censorship (even calling trolling “violence” which I’m sorry, that is just so asinine that it made me laugh) and anti-capitalist with a bit of a “ugh men” thing to it). Hardly surprising from a VICE “journalist”.
The thing that makes this a 2-star instead of a 3 is how badly written a bit about gaming towards the end is. First of all it mentions games as being for “kids” while even specifically mentioning games like DOOM and Quake which... umm, maybe shit was different back in the day but here’s the 8-minute announcement trailer for the 2015 DOOM game I remember playing (warning: gore- https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CQpxDFE...). I didn’t think that chopping demons in half with a fucking chainsaw was considered wholesome family fun so maybe I’m a bit of a prude... or more likely this is the same kinda person that thought Deadpool was another fun superhero movie for the kiddos.
(“It’s a superhero movie, can’t be that crude”)
Second, it includes some gender stereotyping regarding what a “boy game” or a “girl game” is. Example: It talks about fighting, shooter, and roleplaying (as this book calls, “adventure”) games being for boys and games based on dialogue or things about less fantasy or actiony type themes being for girls... but I know some female gamers who would look at the “girl games” talked about in this book and laugh as they move on to those fighting, shooter and role playing games. Also, a young L. McCoy (which I am male) was fucking obsessed with Animal Crossing as a kid so... yeah, fuck your stereotypes (to be fair I did later move on to shooter games and such as a teen but still). Seriously though I’m writing this review in 2021, right now fans are awaiting an R-rated Mortal Kombat film produced by James Wan (creator of The Conjuring/co-creator of Saw and Insidious for those who aren’t as into the horror genre)... do you think that a big name like Wan would be throwing his money to a big budget, R-rated (so mostly adults but probably a few teens too) film that only appeals to a niche crowd within one gender... I’m no business expert but I somehow doubt it. As a final nail in the coffin, the author goes on to talk shit about “hypersexualized” characters such as Lara Croft (who many female gamers consider empowering and bad-ass) while hypocritically praising stuff like a Barbie game (a character who teaches generations of girls that they need to be hot and have a shit-ton of money to have fun) (I’m not trying to talk bad about Tomb Raider, Barbie or fans of either one, I’m rather neutral regarding both brands but that is some hypocritical horseshit). Ultimately even as a casual gamer, I think this book’s flawed view of gaming is what killed this book.
(Couldn’t resist, just a perfect opportunity)
So yeah this could have been good but with dry writing, laughably bad political bias and a terrible, gender-stereotype filled section on gaming I can’t recommend this. Maybe someday I’ll find a better book on this subject.
2/5
RANT REVIEW:
This could have been good but goddamn it, the writing is flawed.
So the book’s subject matter and the things being talked about are very interesting and this is coming from someone who doesn’t have much interest in science and technology nonfiction at all so that shows some sign of something cool. Oh and I did learn quite a bit.
Unfortunately despite those being the 2 main things I look for in a nonfiction book, this still isn’t a good nonfiction book.
The writing is dry as fuck honestly and the author who narrates the audio edition of this book sounds as interested in her own writing as I was (which due to the dryness isn’t a good thing). Being an independent I did find the far-left spin rather annoying (this book seems pro-censorship (even calling trolling “violence” which I’m sorry, that is just so asinine that it made me laugh) and anti-capitalist with a bit of a “ugh men” thing to it). Hardly surprising from a VICE “journalist”.
The thing that makes this a 2-star instead of a 3 is how badly written a bit about gaming towards the end is. First of all it mentions games as being for “kids” while even specifically mentioning games like DOOM and Quake which... umm, maybe shit was different back in the day but here’s the 8-minute announcement trailer for the 2015 DOOM game I remember playing (warning: gore- https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CQpxDFE...). I didn’t think that chopping demons in half with a fucking chainsaw was considered wholesome family fun so maybe I’m a bit of a prude... or more likely this is the same kinda person that thought Deadpool was another fun superhero movie for the kiddos.
(“It’s a superhero movie, can’t be that crude”)
Second, it includes some gender stereotyping regarding what a “boy game” or a “girl game” is. Example: It talks about fighting, shooter, and roleplaying (as this book calls, “adventure”) games being for boys and games based on dialogue or things about less fantasy or actiony type themes being for girls... but I know some female gamers who would look at the “girl games” talked about in this book and laugh as they move on to those fighting, shooter and role playing games. Also, a young L. McCoy (which I am male) was fucking obsessed with Animal Crossing as a kid so... yeah, fuck your stereotypes (to be fair I did later move on to shooter games and such as a teen but still). Seriously though I’m writing this review in 2021, right now fans are awaiting an R-rated Mortal Kombat film produced by James Wan (creator of The Conjuring/co-creator of Saw and Insidious for those who aren’t as into the horror genre)... do you think that a big name like Wan would be throwing his money to a big budget, R-rated (so mostly adults but probably a few teens too) film that only appeals to a niche crowd within one gender... I’m no business expert but I somehow doubt it. As a final nail in the coffin, the author goes on to talk shit about “hypersexualized” characters such as Lara Croft (who many female gamers consider empowering and bad-ass) while hypocritically praising stuff like a Barbie game (a character who teaches generations of girls that they need to be hot and have a shit-ton of money to have fun) (I’m not trying to talk bad about Tomb Raider, Barbie or fans of either one, I’m rather neutral regarding both brands but that is some hypocritical horseshit). Ultimately even as a casual gamer, I think this book’s flawed view of gaming is what killed this book.
(Couldn’t resist, just a perfect opportunity)
So yeah this could have been good but with dry writing, laughably bad political bias and a terrible, gender-stereotype filled section on gaming I can’t recommend this. Maybe someday I’ll find a better book on this subject.
2/5
April 30, 2019
This. This piece of work resonated with me more than most works have, probably because I lived the history Evans talks about in her closing chapters - the dawn of the hypertext, an entire girlhood searching for female role models in computer science, searching for community and kinship within a forest of hyperlinks - and now, the foray into a field in academia that has a glaring dearth of female representation. Evans gives voice to the unacknowledged, and resurrects on paper the long-diminished achievements of female computer scientists - women who were the actual gamechangers much before men claimed the titles. It is a book that's also immensely relatable for every girl (and boy) growing up in the 80s and 90s when the Internet was spreading its wings at a rate that was at once tentative and explosive. It is as much an ode to the forces behind this phenomenon as it is to the early set of users that contributed to the Internet's wild success.
And between the pages of such a book, I found a little bit of my own voice.
And between the pages of such a book, I found a little bit of my own voice.
December 30, 2018
I had to take a detour in my mind while reading this book to recall 1998-99—the time when I first connected to the Internet on the boxy Compaq machine that my family had at home, thanks to my older cousin who helped us set up a NetZero account. I remember the year before, when it was my turn to state to my classmates what I wanted to be in the future, I said "computer programmer" without fully knowing what it meant. I was in the middle of the chapter about the Echo community in New York when I got nostalgic about spending my teen years growing up on Delphi Forums, Xanga, and LiveJournal. I also miss the feeling of anonymity, clicking links without hesitation to explore websites I have not visited before, playing chess with strangers on Yahoo, publishing bad websites using Dreamweaver and GeoCities, the notification sounds of AOL Instant Messenger. . .
But I am here at the end of 2018, where I just finished reading "the untold story of the women who made the internet," which was all new information for me and as enjoyable as watching episodes of Xena: Warrior Princess or reading fan fiction that corrects the canonical narrative by adding more back- and side- stories of those who made significant contributions but who were egregiously written out or forgotten in the first place. I also really like Claire Evans's prose style and the seamless way she threads all these moments together. While this book is not going to comprehensively profile everyone ever involved, it was a good introduction for me to meet people like Ada Lovelace, Grace Hopper, the ENIAC 6, Jake Feinler, Jaime Levy and learn about projects like the Social Services Referral Directory, so that I have more tech role models beyond Jenny Calendar.
I feel more situated with historical context now to understand details like why computers were beige, how whois registration was developed, the origin of COBOL which I have seen appear in PeopleSoft at work, the appearance of "software engineer" as a title, and how much of ourselves we put into the programs we create for the machine (inspired to visit Mammoth Cave National Park now, too).
But I am here at the end of 2018, where I just finished reading "the untold story of the women who made the internet," which was all new information for me and as enjoyable as watching episodes of Xena: Warrior Princess or reading fan fiction that corrects the canonical narrative by adding more back- and side- stories of those who made significant contributions but who were egregiously written out or forgotten in the first place. I also really like Claire Evans's prose style and the seamless way she threads all these moments together. While this book is not going to comprehensively profile everyone ever involved, it was a good introduction for me to meet people like Ada Lovelace, Grace Hopper, the ENIAC 6, Jake Feinler, Jaime Levy and learn about projects like the Social Services Referral Directory, so that I have more tech role models beyond Jenny Calendar.
I feel more situated with historical context now to understand details like why computers were beige, how whois registration was developed, the origin of COBOL which I have seen appear in PeopleSoft at work, the appearance of "software engineer" as a title, and how much of ourselves we put into the programs we create for the machine (inspired to visit Mammoth Cave National Park now, too).
January 18, 2024
This book had languished on my shelves for years. . .and then in one of our grandma reads we revisited a book we'd read about Ada Lovelace. It triggered a domino-effect of list reviewing until I found this remembered book. . .and opened it. . . .
And there she was. . .Ada! A brilliant brave, you're-not-the-boss-of me girl, and Claire Evans brings her forth along with so many others:
Maria Mitchell - calculating her way to her own comet
Marie Jacquard - from loom to punch cards
Annabella and Ada - Mathy mother & daughter who charmed dangerous Byron into commitment (for a minute or two), Ada innovating on through her lifetime
Grace Hopper - coder extraordinaire
and rather than me compile the amazing people in this book. . .
I'll just leave you to it. . .an interesting, lively, well-researched book that could easily spin-off others with the many amazing brains, lives and experience covered in Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet!
The author is clear about the role women have played in this field in the past:
“Women turn up at the beginning of every important wave in technology. We're not ancillary; we're central, often hiding in plain sight. Some of the most wondrous contributions . . . .bloomed in the grubby medians of the information superhighway. Before a new field developed its authorities, and long before there was money to be made, women experimented with new technologies and pushed them beyond their design. Again and again, women did the jobs nobody thought were important, until they were. Even computer programming was initially passed off onto the girls hired to patch cables and nothing more - until the cables became patterns, and the patterns became language, and suddenly programming was something worth mastering.”
You are reading this on a screen. . .thanks to a billion thoughts acted upon by people, many of whom were women - who had a side-hustle that was about to change the world. . .
And there she was. . .Ada! A brilliant brave, you're-not-the-boss-of me girl, and Claire Evans brings her forth along with so many others:
Maria Mitchell - calculating her way to her own comet
Marie Jacquard - from loom to punch cards
Annabella and Ada - Mathy mother & daughter who charmed dangerous Byron into commitment (for a minute or two), Ada innovating on through her lifetime
Grace Hopper - coder extraordinaire
and rather than me compile the amazing people in this book. . .
I'll just leave you to it. . .an interesting, lively, well-researched book that could easily spin-off others with the many amazing brains, lives and experience covered in Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet!
The author is clear about the role women have played in this field in the past:
“Women turn up at the beginning of every important wave in technology. We're not ancillary; we're central, often hiding in plain sight. Some of the most wondrous contributions . . . .bloomed in the grubby medians of the information superhighway. Before a new field developed its authorities, and long before there was money to be made, women experimented with new technologies and pushed them beyond their design. Again and again, women did the jobs nobody thought were important, until they were. Even computer programming was initially passed off onto the girls hired to patch cables and nothing more - until the cables became patterns, and the patterns became language, and suddenly programming was something worth mastering.”
You are reading this on a screen. . .thanks to a billion thoughts acted upon by people, many of whom were women - who had a side-hustle that was about to change the world. . .
May 18, 2018
I got this out from the library as an ebook and it's fine. I can definitely see the audience for this, but I had a tough time. Every time I went to go read it on the train I wanted to look out the window instead. Each person felt like they were really discussed for so long with the same points over and over - I would have loved a "highlights" or New Yorker review style piece with this same topic. That's not to say it doesn't deserve book-length treatment, just that I personally wasn't that into it. It's due back and the library and I'm going to cut my losses.
December 19, 2021
This had been on my want to read shelf for ages, glad I finally got to it.
Very interesting and informative, I learned a lot. We really don't hear much about the women of the time, and this book remedies that. Women were at the forefront of the creation of the internet from day one.
Some parallels to *Hidden Figures* although, the race of the women was not a focal point in Broad Band.
“An irony: even as computer memory multiplies, our ability to hold on to personal memories remains a matter of will, bounded by the skull and expanded only by our capacity to tell stories.”
Very interesting and informative, I learned a lot. We really don't hear much about the women of the time, and this book remedies that. Women were at the forefront of the creation of the internet from day one.
Some parallels to *Hidden Figures* although, the race of the women was not a focal point in Broad Band.
“An irony: even as computer memory multiplies, our ability to hold on to personal memories remains a matter of will, bounded by the skull and expanded only by our capacity to tell stories.”
March 23, 2023
I had a sense of deja vu while reading this, and later realised that it was thanks to Maria Popova's Figuring. The books are very different in terms of scope, but are connected by the women-oriented narrative, the idea of intellectual successors, and the presence of what one could call a 'crossover character' - Maria Mitchell.
When we think about the internet's history, and its current pantheon, the names that pop up are all, or at least mostly, male. But Claire Evans points out that the origin stories are actually mostly female. Their contributions are practically invisible both in the public eye, and while we use the web.
Female mental labour was the original information technology, from the time of operational computing machines to programming and mainframes, protocols and even media empires in the early internet-era. Their empathy was reflected in everything they built, but unfortunately it was lost in the money and scale optimisation.
Before it became a thing, a 'computer' was a person who computed, collaboratively working on large-scale mathematical problems. By the mid-twentieth century, this was pretty much considered a woman's job. We begin, predictably, with Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, and her contribution to Charles Babbage's work, and then continue to Grace Hopper's work around World War 2 on what was called the Mark 1 (and 2) computers, closer to Babbage's mechanical engines than modern computers. Work that would play a part in the Manhattan project and the atom bomb, though Grace never knew it.
Another machine around the same time was the ENIAC, and the former human computers who did most of the wiring were called the ENIAC Six, all women. They wrote programs for the machine with trial and error, sometimes diagnosing it to the individual vacuum tubes that made up the machine. But their efforts were never celebrated or rewarded. Grace is remembered as the 'grandmother of COBOL' because she brought in the set of people required to build a common machine language.
By the 1960s, programming was seen as an alternative to answering phones, though women 'programmers' were paid far less than their male counterparts. This drove women away, and NATO called for an international conference to solve it. No women were invited. The significant change they made was semantic - programming became software engineering, and its journey towards masculinity began.
The rest of the book traces the pioneering work of many women who never received their due - Pam Hardt-English, Jake Feinler - who at one point (and it is hard to imagine) was air-traffic control, librarian and manager of the Internet (then, ARPANET), Radia Perlman, Stacy Horn, Wendy Hall and the early days of hypertext systems, Marisa Bowe, Jaime Levy and her electronic magazines and their original word.com (a Web magazine), Nancy Rhine, Ellen Pack, Marleen McDaniel (Women's Wire, and then women.com), Brenda Laurel and many others.
Reading about the early world of communities was very nostalgic. I am old enough to have been on IRC chat, in an era when you could just be. I also realised that the 90s web culture (or culture in general if I go by Klosterman) of choosing between being a guerrilla or getting paid is something I deeply relate to (on the side of the former). In the early 2000s, when I first started frequenting the web (we 'went' online), what attracted me were the connections, and the ability to express.
Claire Evans' description is accurate - 'the internet exists at the confluence of code, culture, and infrastructure'. Women have played a significant part in each, and it is easy to imagine a much better web if they had got their due and continued the work they started. Maybe we would have communities which are antitheses of the toxicity we find online now.
1. the com in .com is short for commercial. .bus lost out :)
2. One of the most interesting artifacts of the dot-com bubble is a web site FuckedCompany.com... posted new industry 'fucks,' rating each by severity: layoffs, distressing press releases, and empty offices.
When we think about the internet's history, and its current pantheon, the names that pop up are all, or at least mostly, male. But Claire Evans points out that the origin stories are actually mostly female. Their contributions are practically invisible both in the public eye, and while we use the web.
Female mental labour was the original information technology, from the time of operational computing machines to programming and mainframes, protocols and even media empires in the early internet-era. Their empathy was reflected in everything they built, but unfortunately it was lost in the money and scale optimisation.
Before it became a thing, a 'computer' was a person who computed, collaboratively working on large-scale mathematical problems. By the mid-twentieth century, this was pretty much considered a woman's job. We begin, predictably, with Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, and her contribution to Charles Babbage's work, and then continue to Grace Hopper's work around World War 2 on what was called the Mark 1 (and 2) computers, closer to Babbage's mechanical engines than modern computers. Work that would play a part in the Manhattan project and the atom bomb, though Grace never knew it.
Another machine around the same time was the ENIAC, and the former human computers who did most of the wiring were called the ENIAC Six, all women. They wrote programs for the machine with trial and error, sometimes diagnosing it to the individual vacuum tubes that made up the machine. But their efforts were never celebrated or rewarded. Grace is remembered as the 'grandmother of COBOL' because she brought in the set of people required to build a common machine language.
By the 1960s, programming was seen as an alternative to answering phones, though women 'programmers' were paid far less than their male counterparts. This drove women away, and NATO called for an international conference to solve it. No women were invited. The significant change they made was semantic - programming became software engineering, and its journey towards masculinity began.
The rest of the book traces the pioneering work of many women who never received their due - Pam Hardt-English, Jake Feinler - who at one point (and it is hard to imagine) was air-traffic control, librarian and manager of the Internet (then, ARPANET), Radia Perlman, Stacy Horn, Wendy Hall and the early days of hypertext systems, Marisa Bowe, Jaime Levy and her electronic magazines and their original word.com (a Web magazine), Nancy Rhine, Ellen Pack, Marleen McDaniel (Women's Wire, and then women.com), Brenda Laurel and many others.
Reading about the early world of communities was very nostalgic. I am old enough to have been on IRC chat, in an era when you could just be. I also realised that the 90s web culture (or culture in general if I go by Klosterman) of choosing between being a guerrilla or getting paid is something I deeply relate to (on the side of the former). In the early 2000s, when I first started frequenting the web (we 'went' online), what attracted me were the connections, and the ability to express.
Claire Evans' description is accurate - 'the internet exists at the confluence of code, culture, and infrastructure'. Women have played a significant part in each, and it is easy to imagine a much better web if they had got their due and continued the work they started. Maybe we would have communities which are antitheses of the toxicity we find online now.
1. the com in .com is short for commercial. .bus lost out :)
2. One of the most interesting artifacts of the dot-com bubble is a web site FuckedCompany.com... posted new industry 'fucks,' rating each by severity: layoffs, distressing press releases, and empty offices.
February 1, 2020
Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet by Claire L. Evans is fascinating. How is this not more common knowledge? I liked getting to know the historical aspects of Ada Lovelace and her work, but over the course of the book I was hoping for more of a focus on more modern history. Of course, that historical backing gives us a good foundation for what's coming. Overall, the information of the women who worked oftentimes behind the scenes, is presented in an understandable way, even if you're not much of a computer person. It's odd knowing that so much of the information presented is within my own lifetime and just thinking about how much has changed in the last 30 years. If you enjoyed Hidden Figures, this is a must read.
March 14, 2023
A marvelous corrective to the male-dominated histories of computer technology. But this book isn’t strident or scolding. It’s a wonderfully written account of some of the women without whom we honestly might not have the Internet or WWW that we have today. It was so much fun to read!
June 28, 2022
4.5 Stars. Loved reading this
May 12, 2018
Very interesting history of women and computers. The chapters on the Internet were especially interesting since I felt like I should know it because I lived through it, but I learned a lot.
November 14, 2018
This book is as much interesting as it is boring!!
June 12, 2020
Znakomita, żywo napisana książka, która może nie spodobać się wielu męskim frustratom uważającym informatykę, czy świat gier za męskie zajęcie. Co jakiś czas pojawia się w obrębie mojego zainteresowania jakiś shitstorm frustratów z małymi fujarkami, że kobiety pchają się do gier, że programują, wreszcie - że ilość kobiet na kierunkach technicznych uniwersytetów świadczy o tym, że nie są predysponowane do "męskich" dziedzin nauki, czy technologii.
Autorka opowiada historię kobiet, która może rozwścieczyć tychże frustratów. Pierwszymi komputerami (ludzkimi) były kobiety. Już w XIX wieku dokonywanie obliczeń astronomicznych było domeną kobiet. Zanim pojawiła się Ada Lovelace (córka George'a Byrona), która współpracowała z Charlesem Babbagem nad stworzeniem pierwszego pierwowzoru dzisiejszych komputerów. Potem aż do czasów po II wojnie światowej coś co dziś jest informatyką było domeną kobiet. Co więcej, one były pierwszymi autorkami programów. Tak zwana Szóstka od ENIAC-a, grupa błyskotliwych matematyczek, pisała pierwsze nowożytne programy.
I co znamienne, ich sukces od samego początku był deprecjonowany. O ich wkładzie milczano aż do lat 90-tych XX wieku. Pod koniec lat 60-tych XX wieku, kiedy informatyka i komputery zaczęły być uważane za rynek pełen nieograniczonego potencjału, kobiety były z niego wypychane i deprecjonowano ich wkład w jego rozwój. Co zresztą doprowadziło do kryzysu w rozwoju informatyki.
To co udowadnia ta książka to fakt, że kobiety od zawsze były obecne w tych dziedzinach. Jako ich architektki, współtworzyły je. Radia Perlman była autorką protokołu spanning-tree (STP), bez którego nie byłoby współczesnej Sieci. Inne tworzyły pierwsze sieci społecznościowe (Echo istnieje do dziś, poza protokołem www). O rynku gier nie wspominając.
Ta książka opowiada o nieznanej historii kobiet. To jest fascynujące i smutne jednocześnie. Dziś, kiedy programista to synonim faceta, a kobieta w tej roli wygląda jak dziwadło. Szczególnie w popkulturze. Dlatego warto tę książkę przeczytać. Leczy z ignorancji. Aczkolwiek ci wszyscy jęczący na kobiety faceci staną się przez to jeszcze bardziej żałośni. :)
Przypisy to 30 procent objętości ebooka. Warto zwrócić na nie uwagę, ponieważ odsyłają do ciekawych treści i źródeł, niestety w znacznej większości, po angielsku.
Autorka opowiada historię kobiet, która może rozwścieczyć tychże frustratów. Pierwszymi komputerami (ludzkimi) były kobiety. Już w XIX wieku dokonywanie obliczeń astronomicznych było domeną kobiet. Zanim pojawiła się Ada Lovelace (córka George'a Byrona), która współpracowała z Charlesem Babbagem nad stworzeniem pierwszego pierwowzoru dzisiejszych komputerów. Potem aż do czasów po II wojnie światowej coś co dziś jest informatyką było domeną kobiet. Co więcej, one były pierwszymi autorkami programów. Tak zwana Szóstka od ENIAC-a, grupa błyskotliwych matematyczek, pisała pierwsze nowożytne programy.
I co znamienne, ich sukces od samego początku był deprecjonowany. O ich wkładzie milczano aż do lat 90-tych XX wieku. Pod koniec lat 60-tych XX wieku, kiedy informatyka i komputery zaczęły być uważane za rynek pełen nieograniczonego potencjału, kobiety były z niego wypychane i deprecjonowano ich wkład w jego rozwój. Co zresztą doprowadziło do kryzysu w rozwoju informatyki.
To co udowadnia ta książka to fakt, że kobiety od zawsze były obecne w tych dziedzinach. Jako ich architektki, współtworzyły je. Radia Perlman była autorką protokołu spanning-tree (STP), bez którego nie byłoby współczesnej Sieci. Inne tworzyły pierwsze sieci społecznościowe (Echo istnieje do dziś, poza protokołem www). O rynku gier nie wspominając.
Ta książka opowiada o nieznanej historii kobiet. To jest fascynujące i smutne jednocześnie. Dziś, kiedy programista to synonim faceta, a kobieta w tej roli wygląda jak dziwadło. Szczególnie w popkulturze. Dlatego warto tę książkę przeczytać. Leczy z ignorancji. Aczkolwiek ci wszyscy jęczący na kobiety faceci staną się przez to jeszcze bardziej żałośni. :)
Przypisy to 30 procent objętości ebooka. Warto zwrócić na nie uwagę, ponieważ odsyłają do ciekawych treści i źródeł, niestety w znacznej większości, po angielsku.
September 15, 2019
Where some could read the title of the book, Broad Band, and fear that the book will be a dismantling of the efforts of men (and therefore may approach the book with hesitation) others will approach the book wanting such a dismantling. But the book never comes across as aggressive or anti-male. Rather, it simply corrects the common history. The presence of women in technology have largely been buried and in some cases literally cropped out. Broad Band introduces us to the women behind the various technologies that culminated to what we know as the Internet including their work on the earliest military computers through to the punk culture that seeded the personal-made-public ethos that is the Internet as we know it today.
Perhaps most unexpected to me is that Broad Band can be read as a general history of the Internet, and the aim to correct the male-focused history often feels secondary. This just goes to show how integral these women were to the creation of the Internet. Claire L. Evans isn’t stretching to force women into important roles to make a story. The important roles and the story are simply made up of women.
Highly recommended.
Perhaps most unexpected to me is that Broad Band can be read as a general history of the Internet, and the aim to correct the male-focused history often feels secondary. This just goes to show how integral these women were to the creation of the Internet. Claire L. Evans isn’t stretching to force women into important roles to make a story. The important roles and the story are simply made up of women.
Highly recommended.
December 23, 2018
I don't read a lot of nonfiction, but as someone who is peripherally involved with computer science I was intrigued by this topic. If you are interested in learning more about how the internet came to be and the overall importance of women in computing, this book is a satisfactory introduction.
Evans did a nice job throughout the book honing in on specific women and movements and how they helped build technology today. The writing wasn't phemonal, but there were a few lines I enjoyed.
The ending was not very well done, and I was disappointed that Evans didn't use the momentum she had built up to say something greater about women in computing.
Evans did a nice job throughout the book honing in on specific women and movements and how they helped build technology today. The writing wasn't phemonal, but there were a few lines I enjoyed.
The ending was not very well done, and I was disappointed that Evans didn't use the momentum she had built up to say something greater about women in computing.
March 27, 2019
This. Was. Fascinating. The classic case of society and culture rewriting history. Also, how much does it freaking suck that something is only “legitimate” once men do it? Women have been on the cutting edge of computing since they were the computers themselves. I had only heard of one of these women before, and that’s a damn shame. Definitely recommend!!
November 30, 2024
2024 52 Book Challenge - 6) Women In STEM
I quite enjoyed Part 1 of this book, looking back at certain women in the history of computing, code creation and the beginnings of computers.
I didn't really enjoy Part 2, and I struggled to understand what was actually being discussed.
I honestly didn't get Part 3 and how it was related to the premise of the book at all.
I quite enjoyed Part 1 of this book, looking back at certain women in the history of computing, code creation and the beginnings of computers.
I didn't really enjoy Part 2, and I struggled to understand what was actually being discussed.
I honestly didn't get Part 3 and how it was related to the premise of the book at all.
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