Nick Bilton, enterprising cultural commentator and flaneur of the digital set, sits down with horsey old scribe Walter Isaacson for his Times column today to celebrate the release of the latter's new book, "The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution." Just thrilling.
Anyway, lil Bilt and ol' Isaac get to talkin'. Have you ever heard of this breed of people called "women"? Oddly enough, the group of "hackers, geniuses, and geeks" who created the "digital revolution" (porn/Reddit/Sims 4) included some of them.
There was one female in particular who Isaacson, chronicler of Steve Jobs and decorated intellectual (alas, they don't teach you about females at Harvard or Oxford), hadn't heard of: Ada Lovelace, who is actually quite well-known as the so-called "founder of scientific computing." Lovelace, who died in 1852, was brought to Isaacson's attention by his young daughter Betsy, who wrote her college admissions essay on the computing pioneer:
"Ada Lovelace defined the digital age," Mr. Isaacson said in one of several recent interviews about the book. He was sitting outside the Blue Bottle coffee shop in Mint Plaza in San Francisco, known as a hothouse for programmers and venture capitalists. "Yet she, along with all these other women, was ignored or forgotten."
Well, not exactly. Women in tech certainly remember her. They've even created a grassroots movement to honor her with a day of her own. But we wimmin sure are grateful for people like Walter Isaacson and Nick Bilton to shed light on her story like only men can: with staggering paternalism and condescension.
And that thread of thought continues through the end of yet another award-winning-in-its-awfulness Bilton masterpiece, in which he cites warmed-over gender statistics from Google and quotes Our Lady of the Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg. And then, there's the kicker:
After reading Mr. Isaacson's book, I reached out to his daughter to ask why she chose to write about Ms. Lovelace in her college essay years ago.
"I was in high school computer science classes and I never once heard about these women," she said. "Yet the first time I had ever read about a female programmer was in a Batman comic book."
She paused and added: "Ada Lovelace played probably the most important role in computing."
Now, thanks to that college essay, Ms. Lovelace is finally getting her due.
Good to know that Bilton is now mining his rich friends' kids' college essays for article ideas. When will Betsy get her own column in the Times?
[Image of woman gazing at portrait of Ada Lovelace via Getty]
