Netizen

Friday, July 16, 2010

Tech, Women, Diversity

Stained glass at St John the Baptist's Anglica...

Often when Fred Wilson puts out a blog post where he links to about four different blog posts, I know it is one of those posts that is asking for a reply blog post, sometimes to echo the sentiment, sometimes to express a disagreement, often just to give further momentum to a great topic. Today is the turn of women in technology.

This whole debate reminds me of the creationism debate. My take has been religion and science deal with two different levels of reality. Religion is a belief system. Those beliefs do not have to follow the laws of physics, and many of them don't. Jesus walking on water makes sense in religion, does not make sense in science. I am not going to think you are a prude for believing that.

Religion has to be looked at in the religious realm. Science inhabits the scientific realm. And there are intersection points, like when Galileo was harassed. When Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, many people in Nepal did not believe. The moon is a god. The guy probably climbed some hill, and thinks he is on the moon, that was the sentiment.

Gender is as big a topic in sociology as gravity is in physics. It is big. It is all pervasive. Just because we don't think about it much does not mean gravity is not active every waking hour, and while we are down.

There are many - they tend to be white men for some reason - who argue technology is neutral to your background. You can be any gender, any cultural background, it does not matter. They are lying. Or they are ignorant. Some of them are evil. They are invested in persisting the status quo.

Even where meritocracy can be shown to exist, those with the merits and the skills and the intellect stand on centuries of favoring one kind of people over another kind of people. And that is when there are not outright sexist informal and formal structures in place.

Gender and technology: there are many intersection points.

Equality is something that has to be proactively sought. I don't think sexism is in the interests of men. A healthy male female ratio in the workplace and at the various leadership levels has to be attempted. This is not a male versus female issue. There are those - men and women - who are on the right side of history, and there are those who are on the wrong side. We should get more people to come over on to the right side. We have to constantly be evangelizing.

Fred Wilson: XX Combinator
Tereza Nemessanyi: XX Combinator
Brad Feld: The Discussion About The Lack Of Women In Tech
Eric Ries: Why Diversity Matters (The Meritocracy Business)

When you visit Fred's blog post, make sure you don't miss out on the action in the comments section.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Darren Rowse's Seven Links Challenge

Image via CrunchBase

Take the 7 Link Challenge Today #7links

My first post: When Web Hosting Is No Longer A Problem

This is me celebrating the new, free Blogger platform.
A post I enjoyed writing the most: Social Media Week: The Best NY Tech MeetUp Ever

I have received so much positive comments from people I know about this one.
A post which had a great discussion: Online Dating Newsflash: Race And Religion Matter

This is just Alex and me talking. But the talk went on and on.
A post on someone else’s blog that I wish you’d written:
How I Make Money Blogging: Income Split for June 2010

Darren Rowse makes it look so easy. Just jack up the traffic and run Google ads. His Feedburner count is at 140K, mine is at 2K.
My most helpful post: Could 2011 Be Venmo's Year?

The founders of Venmo really appreciated this. I touched lives with this post.
A post with a title that I am proud of: Me @ BBC

This is me hitting the big leagues.
A post that I wish more people had read: To Iran, With Love (3)

Darren, I think you should help me with this fundraising. It is a good cause. You should help me with this because you are the top pro blogger on the planet, and I am the top blogger in terms what big stuff I have been able to do politically through the blogging medium. What I did for Nepal, I want to do for Iran. I want you to take the lead on this fundraising.

Traffic: Canada Top Country, 2 AM Peak

Image of Dario Meli

Now I remember why I disabled Google Analytics for this blog months back: you keep wanting to go back to check the latest numbers.

Blogger Stats

For the past week Canada has been my top country, it has given me 50% more traffic than the US. Go figure.

There is a peak for 2 AM on July 13 for the week. I thought that might be India. Nope. It's Canada. Might those be college students pulling all nighters? Toronto? Hello there. Thanks for dropping by.

@quikness might appreciate my Canada popularity.

This has been my top post this past week: Brazil.

What Just Happened? 3,000 Page Hits

Given enough page hits, I could do this near full time while I wait to launch my company. That would be swell. Would be a great way to prepare for a company launch. Somebody once said blogging is like graduate school seminar. It can be. It can be many other things as well.

Blogging falls in the mind food domain.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Is The iPhone 4 In Trouble?

There has been a lot of talk today that the iPhone 4 is in serious trouble. I personally am not an iPhone user. But when was the last time Apple received this much negative buzz? It has been a long time.

Some people are hinting there is no PR remedy to this situation. The only remedy is total recall. Now if that were warranted, that would be a big one. Apple would be in the hole for at least a billion dollars if that were to be the decision.

I am not reporting on the engineering mishap, I am just reflecting on the buzz. You can go plenty of places to read on the engineering mishap, quite a few I have linked to from this blog.

What do you think? How bad is the news? Will this storm pass? Or will Apple have to decide on a recall on their new product?