Paul Graham Is Not That Innocent

Let me state the obvious first. I am a huge admirer of what Paul Graham has built in Y Combinator. And I have drawn enormous inspiration from many of his essays on tech startups. And it was an honor to once get featured in the same BBC article as Paul Graham and Brad Feld. (Paul Graham, Brad Feld, Me, BBC)

And now let me get to the topic at hand. Yes, Paul Graham was misquoted. But that does not change the fact that Paul Graham is guilty of sexism just like I am. I would not accuse him of extreme sexism. I might save that for a ton of men in India. But guilty he is. Why do I say that?

You were there when girls around you were 13. If you did not see sexism then, then you were willfully blind. You very well participated in it. Sexism starts early. Young girls feeding on sexist media do weird things with what they eat. That is sexism.

I don't think there is something fundamental about men and women that makes men head for STEM. Once girls get hit by the pot of sexism early on, they kind of lose their balance, and they end up making weird choices like not going towards STEM with greater gusto than they do.

Paul Graham wondering as to why 13 year old girls don't code more is not exactly like Newton wondering why the apple fell on his head. But sexism IS social gravity. It is all pervasive and all powerful, and all men participate in it, it is only a matter of degree, some more, some less, but we all do.

Sexism is really cutting edge, as is racism. It is as if not more cutting edge than the Internet itself, only the Internet is technology and communications and commerce, sexism and racism are social. It is like I am at this Internet Society event, Vint Cerf and Tim Berners-Lee on stage. And I was and am a huge admirer of the guys. I literally think of the Internet as a new country, a feeling further enforced by a recent Indian Supreme Court decision that is blatantly homophobic. (Homophobia is sick, okay?) And I ask my question of Tim. If the Internet is a country which of you is George Washington, which is Thomas Jefferson? Tim gets offended and says "different race" in an unpleasant way. And I am like, I don't believe this motherfucker. And I made a "mad scientist" remark. (Tim Berners-Lee: The Internet Is Not A Country)

Paul Graham said recently something about "heavy accents," and there he was not misquoted, and I thought that was a racist thing to be saying.

Fred Wilson: Girls Who Code
Paul Graham: What I Did Not Say
Taylor Rose: Girls Haven’t Been Hacking for the Last 10 Years

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Paul Graham Is Not That Innocent http://t.co/fQ4lbDe3UM @paulg @fredwilson @rosetaylorm @bfeld @timberners_lee @vgcerf

— Paramendra Bhagat (@paramendra) December 31, 2013

Good Government, Bad Government

Cerf and Bob E. Kahn being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George W. Bush (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So, who really did invent the Internet?

the Internet had its roots in the ARPANet, a government project .... the government-funded ARPANet was very much the precursor of the Internet as we know it today. .... Bob Taylor was the single most important figure in the history of the Internet, and he holds that stature because of his government role. ..... TCP/IP, the fundamental communications protocol of the Internet, was invented by Vinton Cerf (though he fails to mention Cerf's partner, Robert Kahn). He points out that Tim Berners-Lee "gets credit for hyperlinks." ..... Cerf and Kahn did develop TCP/IP--on a government contract! And Berners-Lee doesn't get credit for hyperlinks--that belongs to Doug Engelbart of Stanford Research Institute, who showed them off in a legendary 1968 demo you can see here. Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web--and he did so at CERN, a European government consortium. ...... Private enterprise had no interest in something so visionary and complex, with questionable commercial opportunities. Indeed, the private corporation that then owned monopoly control over America's communications network, AT&T, fought tooth and nail against the ARPANet. Luckily for us, a far-sighted government agency prevailed. ...... It's true that the Internet took off after it was privatized in 1995. But to be privatized, first you have to be government-owned. It's another testament to people often demeaned as "government bureaucrats" that they saw that the moment had come to set their child free.

I have long believed in private and public sector collaborations.

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Tim Berners-Lee: The Internet Is Not A Country

Internet Society Event

Tim Berners-Lee was the first key speaker. I raised my hand to ask a question. I had asked the exact same question to Vint Serf who I had spotted half an hour before the event began. Vint said he was George Washington, Tim might be the Thomas Jefferson, and then went on to offer small tidbits about some of the other Founding Fathers. Vint was in a jolly mood.

I asked my question and Tim's mood went foul. What was the question?

"I think of the Internet as literally the new country. This is the Internet Century. America is Europe. The Internet is America. My question is which of you - Tim, Vint - is Thomas Jefferson?"

The Internet is not a country, Tim said. If you do something fraudulent, you end up in a jail, a real jail, he said.

That cracked me up. I laughed. He knows not who he talks to, I thought.

Internet Society Event

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Learning The Wrong Lessons From Wikileaks

Image via WikipediaVint Cerf: Chief Internet Evangelist: Google: Governments shouldn’t have a monopoly on Internet governance: Gooble Public Policy Blog

The beauty of the Internet is that it’s not controlled by any one group. Its governance is bottoms-up .... the UN Committee on Science and Technology announced that only governments would be able to sit on a working group set up to examine improvements to the IGF—one of the Internet’s most important discussion forums .... we don’t believe governments should be allowed to grant themselves a monopoly on Internet governance. The current bottoms-up, open approach works—protecting users from vested interests and enabling rapid innovation. Let’s fight to keep it that way.

This issue is kind of like net neutrality, it is kind of like free speech. Like some Iranian authorities like to say, we are for people speaking freely, but the free speech should be in moderation. Either there is free speech, or there is no free speech. You take away net neutrality and the web has become cable television.

Vint Cerf, Craig Mundie, Steve Wozniak

Vint Cerf, Abdul Kalam, Larry Ellison