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book review: Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet [message #412008] Tue, 26 October 2021 22:02 Go to next message
usenet is currently offline  usenet
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Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet
Claire L. Evans
2018; Portfolio / Penguin

This book's title is a bit misleading. More accurately, it's a
collection of stories in modern computing history about women who made
contributions to various technologies that underlie and shape the
Internet as we know it today.

The book is divided into three parts, the first of which opens with a
chapter on Ada Lovelace. The remainder of the section is largely
devoted to the career of Grace Hopper and her contributions to computer
language development, but we are also introduced to the "ENIAC Six":
Kathleen McNulty, Betty Jean Jennings, Elizabeth Synder, Marlyn Wescoff,
Frances Bilas, and Ruth Lichterman. These women were responsible for
configuring and rewiring the ENIAC for each new problem, in essence
becoming some of the world's first programmers. They later became
valued employees of the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corporation, but sadly
after that company's acquisition by Remington Rand, they were
increasingly sidelined and disregarded.

The second section tells the stories of early computer-based online
communities such as Resource One in San Francisco and Echo in New York.
We also learn of the women involved in the early days of the ARPAnet,
like Elizabeth "Jake" Feinler, who created and ran the Network
Information Center (NIC), organizing and administrating the growing
network for over fifteen years, and Radia Perlman, who invented the
spanning tree algorithm that allowed the Internet to scale to its
present size. The section closes with a chapter on hypertext systems,
which were often more sophisticated precursors to today's web links.

The final third of the book tells the stories of early web sites aimed
at women, like iVillage and WOMEN.COM, and the women who created them.

The text is augmented by an index and attributional notes. My one
quibble is that I would have liked a separate bibliography listing the
resources found in the notes. This is a well-written and researched
book that presents many people and stories that have been overlooked.
Of particular interest is the first section with its coverage of the
very early days of electronic computing. That alone is enough to give
this book a strong positive recommendation, although there is also more
of value in the later chapters.
Re: book review: Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet [message #412013 is a reply to message #412008] Wed, 27 October 2021 12:54 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Harry Vaderchi is currently offline  Harry Vaderchi
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On Wed, 27 Oct 2021 02:02:42 GMT
usenet@only.tnx (Questor) wrote:

>
> Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet
> Claire L. Evans
> 2018; Portfolio / Penguin
>
> This book's title is a bit misleading. More accurately, it's a
> collection of stories in modern computing history about women who made
> contributions to various technologies that underlie and shape the
> Internet as we know it today.
>
> The book is divided into three parts, the first of which opens with a
> chapter on Ada Lovelace. The remainder of the section is largely
> devoted to the career of Grace Hopper and her contributions to
> computer language development, but we are also introduced to the
> "ENIAC Six": Kathleen McNulty, Betty Jean Jennings, Elizabeth Synder,
> Marlyn Wescoff, Frances Bilas, and Ruth Lichterman. These women were
> responsible for configuring and rewiring the ENIAC for each new
> problem, in essence becoming some of the world's first programmers.
> They later became valued employees of the Eckert-Mauchly Computer
> Corporation, but sadly after that company's acquisition by Remington
> Rand, they were increasingly sidelined and disregarded.
>
> The second section tells the stories of early computer-based online
> communities such as Resource One in San Francisco and Echo in New
> York. We also learn of the women involved in the early days of the
> ARPAnet, like Elizabeth "Jake" Feinler, who created and ran the
> Network Information Center (NIC), organizing and administrating the
> growing network for over fifteen years, and Radia Perlman, who
> invented the spanning tree algorithm that allowed the Internet to
> scale to its present size. The section closes with a chapter on
> hypertext systems, which were often more sophisticated precursors to
> today's web links.
>
> The final third of the book tells the stories of early web sites aimed
> at women, like iVillage and WOMEN.COM, and the women who created them.
>
> The text is augmented by an index and attributional notes. My one
> quibble is that I would have liked a separate bibliography listing the
> resources found in the notes. This is a well-written and researched
> book that presents many people and stories that have been overlooked.
> Of particular interest is the first section with its coverage of the
> very early days of electronic computing. That alone is enough to give
> this book a strong positive recommendation, although there is also
> more of value in the later chapters.
>
By no means do I wish to disparage this work, but, from your summary,
it misses out on (call me parochial) British women from Bletchley
Park onwards.
--
Bah, and indeed Humbug.
Re: book review: Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet [message #412020 is a reply to message #412013] Wed, 27 October 2021 15:29 Go to previous messageGo to next message
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On Wed, 27 Oct 2021 17:54:12 +0100, "Kerr-Mudd, John" <admin@127.0.0.1> wrote:
> By no means do I wish to disparage this work, but, from your summary,
> it misses out on (call me parochial) British women from Bletchley
> Park onwards.

And what contributions did they make to the Internet as we know it today?
Re: book review: Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet [message #412022 is a reply to message #412020] Wed, 27 October 2021 15:31 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Harry Vaderchi is currently offline  Harry Vaderchi
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On Wed, 27 Oct 2021 19:29:21 GMT
usenet@only.tnx (Questor) wrote:

> On Wed, 27 Oct 2021 17:54:12 +0100, "Kerr-Mudd, John"
> <admin@127.0.0.1> wrote:
>> By no means do I wish to disparage this work, but, from your summary,
>> it misses out on (call me parochial) British women from Bletchley
>> Park onwards.
>
> And what contributions did they make to the Internet as we know it
> today?
>
Dunno; the review you gave just seemed very US-centric.

--
Bah, and indeed Humbug.
Re: book review: Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet [message #412023 is a reply to message #412013] Wed, 27 October 2021 15:39 Go to previous messageGo to next message
John Levine is currently offline  John Levine
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It appears that Kerr-Mudd, John <admin@127.0.0.1> said:
> On Wed, 27 Oct 2021 02:02:42 GMT
> usenet@only.tnx (Questor) wrote:
>>
>> Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet
>> Claire L. Evans
>> 2018; Portfolio / Penguin
>>
>> This book's title is a bit misleading. More accurately, it's a
>> collection of stories in modern computing history about women who made
>> contributions to various technologies that underlie and shape the
>> Internet as we know it today. ...

> By no means do I wish to disparage this work, but, from your summary,
> it misses out on (call me parochial) British women from Bletchley
> Park onwards.

I would think that regardless of how important the work of the women
at Bletchley was, it had no effect on the development of the Internet
or the computer industry since they couldn't talk about it until the
1970s by which time most of what they did had been reinvented.

I wonder whether the misleading title was the author's idea or
the publisher's.

--
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly
Re: book review: Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet [message #412024 is a reply to message #412023] Wed, 27 October 2021 16:32 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Charlie Gibbs is currently offline  Charlie Gibbs
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On 2021-10-27, John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> wrote:

> It appears that Kerr-Mudd, John <admin@127.0.0.1> said:
>
>> On Wed, 27 Oct 2021 02:02:42 GMT usenet@only.tnx (Questor) wrote:
>>
>>> Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet
>>> Claire L. Evans
>>> 2018; Portfolio / Penguin
>>>
>>> This book's title is a bit misleading. More accurately, it's a
>>> collection of stories in modern computing history about women who made
>>> contributions to various technologies that underlie and shape the
>>> Internet as we know it today. ...
>
> I wonder whether the misleading title was the author's idea or
> the publisher's.

Misleading? Perhaps. I think of it more as a clever but
misogynistic pun.

--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Life is perverse.
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | It can be beautiful -
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | but it won't.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | -- Lily Tomlin
Re: book review: Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet [message #412025 is a reply to message #412013] Wed, 27 October 2021 17:41 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Anne &amp; Lynn Wheel is currently offline  Anne &amp; Lynn Wheel
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"Kerr-Mudd, John" <admin@127.0.0.1> writes:
> By no means do I wish to disparage this work, but, from your summary,
> it misses out on (call me parochial) British women from Bletchley
> Park onwards.

I periodically reference

If Discrimination, Then Branch: Ann Hardy's Contributions to Computing
https://computerhistory.org/blog/if-discrimination-then-bran ch-ann-hardy-s-contributions-to-computing/

TYMSHARE & TYMNET
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tymshare
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tymnet

TYMSHARE
https://medium.com/chmcore/someone-elses-computer-the-prehis tory-of-cloud-computing-bca25645f89
Ann Hardy is a crucial figure in the story of Tymshare and
time-sharing. She began programming in the 1950s, developing software
for the IBM Stretch supercomputer. Frustrated at the lack of opportunity
and pay inequality for women at IBM -- at one point she discovered she
was paid less than half of what the lowest-paid man reporting to her was
paid -- Hardy left to study at the University of California, Berkeley,
and then joined the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 1962. At
the lab, one of her projects involved an early and surprisingly
successful time-sharing operating system.

In 1966, Hardy landed a job at Tymshare, which had been founded by two
former General Electric employees looking to provide time-sharing
services to aerospace companies. Tymshare had planned to use an
operating system that had originated at UC Berkeley, but it wasn't
designed for commercial use, and so Hardy rewrote it.

Even after she was finished and Tymnet was up and running, people at the
company continued to believe that her husband, Norman Hardy [PDF], had
actually written the program.

.... snip ...


Much more Ann Hardy at Computer History Museum
https://www.computerhistory.org/collections/catalog/10271716 7
Ann rose up to become Vice President of the Integrated Systems Division
at Tymshare, from 1976 to 1984, which did online airline reservations,
home banking, and other applications. When Tymshare was acquired by
McDonnell-Douglas in 1984, Ann's position as a female VP became
untenable, and was eased out of the company by being encouraged to spin
out Gnosis, a secure, capabilities-based operating system developed at
Tymshare. Ann founded Key Logic, with funding from Gene Amdahl, which
produced KeyKOS, based on Gnosis, for IBM and Amdahl mainframes. After
closing Key Logic, Ann became a consultant, leading to her cofounding
Agorics with members of Ted Nelson's Xanadu project.

.... snip ...

trivia; TYMSHARE started offering its CMS-based online computer
conferencing, free to (ibm user group) SHARE in Aug1976, archive here
http://vm.marist.edu/~vmshare

I had cut a deal with TYMSHARE to get a monthly tape dump of all VMSHARE
(and later PCSHARE) files for putting up on internal systems and network
(the biggest problem ware the lawyers concerned exposing internal
employess to customer information would contaminate them).

other trivia: when MD bought TYMSHARE, I was brought in to evaluate
GNOSIS (370 operating system) for spinoff KEYKOS/Key Logic (my review
was cleared with my IBM research management as well as local branch)
.... and had contact with several of the KEYKOS players for many years.

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970
Re: book review: Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet [message #412038 is a reply to message #412022] Fri, 29 October 2021 15:46 Go to previous messageGo to next message
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On Wed, 27 Oct 2021 20:31:47 +0100, "Kerr-Mudd, John" <admin@127.0.0.1> wrote:
> On Wed, 27 Oct 2021 19:29:21 GMT
> usenet@only.tnx (Questor) wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 27 Oct 2021 17:54:12 +0100, "Kerr-Mudd, John"
>> <admin@127.0.0.1> wrote:
>>> By no means do I wish to disparage this work, but, from your summary,
>>> it misses out on (call me parochial) British women from Bletchley
>>> Park onwards.
>>
>> And what contributions did they make to the Internet as we know it
>> today?
>>
> Dunno; the review you gave just seemed very US-centric.

I have no doubt that there were many women who made their contribution as part
of the rank and file. But the women profiled in "Broad Band" all created
something notable -- the ARPAnet NIC, the Echo online community, the women.com
web site. In some cases they were first -- pioneers.

I admit the book is US-centric. I'm an English-speaking American, so naturally
my focus is on book in English, largely published in the U.S. I'm not up to the
challenge of creating a world-wide bibliography.

This title (which I have not read) may be of some relevance:

Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its
Edge in Computing
Mar Hicks
2018; The MIT Press
Re: book review: Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet [message #412055 is a reply to message #412020] Sun, 31 October 2021 14:05 Go to previous message
Anonymous
Karma:
Originally posted by: Maus

On 2021-10-27, Questor <usenet@only.tnx> wrote:
> On Wed, 27 Oct 2021 17:54:12 +0100, "Kerr-Mudd, John" <admin@127.0.0.1> wrote:
>> By no means do I wish to disparage this work, but, from your summary,
>> it misses out on (call me parochial) British women from Bletchley
>> Park onwards.
>
> And what contributions did they make to the Internet as we know it today?
>

We could go back further, to the Difference Machine, to Pascal (the
man). One point that I hardly notice in writing, to the Polish maths
people who had broken the early Enigma machines, and thus showed they
could be broken. Lots of people who are seldom mentioned


Apropos truth, I see something recently that some of the last secret
papers about the Kennedy assassination may be released soon.


--
greymausg@mail.com
That's not a mousehole!
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