
Tech’s Damaging Myth of the Loner Genius Nerd - gk1
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/12/upshot/techs-damaging-myth-of-the-loner-genius-nerd.html
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Boothroid
'In fact, interpersonal skills like collaboration, communication, empathy and
emotional intelligence are essential to the job. The myth that programming is
done by loner men who think only rationally and communicate only with their
computers harms the tech industry in ways that cut straight to the bottom
line.'

Linus Torvalds.

'Computer programming was originally considered a woman’s job. They were
programmers of the Eniac during World War II and at NASA, as shown in the film
“Hidden Figures.”'

So what? Programming now is not the same as programming then. Who designed the
machines? It wasn't these women.

'“For a lot of these young men, a certain computer culture becomes an
expression of masculinity,” he said. “These are people who aren’t doing
physical labor, aren’t playing professional sports. But they can express their
masculinity by intense competition, playing pranks on one another,
demonstrating their technical prowess, in ways that don’t translate well to
mixed-gender environments.”'

Or perhaps girls just need to be encouraged to enjoy computer games, for
example? Like they need to be encouraged to study technical degrees?

' “Anyone who deals with a human being is considered less intelligent,” said
Ellen Ullman, a software programmer and author of a new book, “Life in Code.”
“You would think it would be the other way around, but the more your work is
just talking to the machine, the more valuable it is.”'

If it should be the other way round, try sacking all your best autistic idiot
savants and replacing them with a bunch of people persons, and see how long it
is before your tech comes crashing down around your ears.

'Technical skills without empathy have resulted in products that have bombed
in the market, because a vital step to building a product is the ability to
imagine how someone else might think and feel. “The failure rate in software
development is enormous, but it almost never means the code doesn’t work,” Mr.
Ensmenger said. “It doesn’t solve the problem that actually exists, or it
imagines a user completely different from actual users.”'

So does every geek need to be an extrovert social butterfly? No. You just need
a small a few communicators in the mix.

'Some people in the industry say computer science students would benefit from
more liberal arts courses. “We need future adults to be able to discern what
it makes sense for machines to make decisions about, and is the code base fair
and equal, and do they have a basis to even judge that,” said Amy Webb,
founder of the Future Today Institute, a technology forecasting firm. “There’s
no cool technology toy that teaches that there are different religions around
the world and it’s O.K. to be tolerant.”'

I utterly resented being sent to a social science lecture purely because the
degree course had been criticised for being too one-dimensional. Guess what -
before long we were being told that men were bad. Thanks social science! Stop
trying to indoctrinate me. Social science presents itself as being open and
diverse, yet see how far that diversity goes when you hold beliefs that go
against their orthodoxy. Hint: James Damore.

'When engineers build products with empathy, it can seem like magic:
Technology seems to predict what people want before they know they want it.
That was part of Steve Jobs’s genius.'

They are citing Steve Job's?! From what I've read he wasn't really that much
of a people person.

'When people hear negative stereotypes about the skills of a group to which
they belong, they are less likely to pursue those skills, according to a
variety of research. In a study by Shelley Correll, a sociologist at Stanford,
when participants were told that men had a higher ability to complete a task,
women said they were less competent at the task and less likely to enter a
field that required it. When they were told that men and women were equally
good at it, those differences disappeared.'

Funny, I was taught by mostly female teachers and there was a strong belief
prevalent and often communicated that girls were good, did their homework,
behaved themselves etc. What message does that send? How often do you hear
this mentioned in the media?

'“That nerd identity is really damaging to women,” Mr. Ensmenger said, “but
it’s also damaging to minorities and to a lot of men who don’t want to subsume
their identity in that.”'

And who labelled us as nerds? The same class of non-technical people and the
same corrupt media that now attacks us once again.

