Well Barbie has a new career as a computer engineer. She looks pretty cool in her Binary patterned blouse, Bluetooth headset, net book and PDA. Well there is that unreal figure and hair as well. It is Barbie after all. Stacey Armstrong linked to an article titled Tech Industry Searching for Girls Gone Geek Is the industry looking for Computer Engineer Barbie or something else? Or more importantly does someone have to be some sort of geek to be a success in the computer industry? And what does it mean to be a geek?
I’ve got a coffee mug that I purchased at the Microsoft company store a couple of years ago. On one side it says “geek” and on the other it has a definition
These are probably pretty common “definitions” and I suspect the work obsessive in the first definition scares quite a few people away from the field. Who wants to be seen as let alone actually be obsessive? Who wants to be excessive either? I think many people think of successful computer people as obsessive or excessive or generally having no life or interests outside of computers. Scary!
But that is really not the way it is. Oh sure there are some people like that but there are people like that in any field. Most people with careers in computing have interests and lives outside of work and away from computers. Take Steven Holcomb for example.
Steven Holcomb is a computer professional who is an avid gamer, a computer science major, and a Microsoft Certified Professional. He also has an Olympic Gold medal! He is part of the US Olympic bobsled team who won the first Gold medal for the US in bobsled in 62 years. Not the sort of geek you see on TV generally is he?
Another non traditional computer person is Chris “Jesus” Ferguson professional poker player. He’s not typical for anything with his long hair, cowboy hat and dark clothing. But he has a PhD in computer science and founded one of the larger online poker web site businesses.
And then there is Marissa Mayer from Google. She is one of the top technical people at Google and responsible for many of their best products. And yet she looks like she belongs in Glamour magazine as one of their women of the year. And there are many more women in technical roles at companies like Google, Microsoft, Intel, IBM and others. In fact Fran Allen from IBM was awarded the Turing Award which is pretty much equivalent to a Nobel Prize in Computer Science. Barbara Liskov from MIT is the most recent Turning awardee BTW. So women are doing and being recognized for doing great things as well. It’s not a “boy club.” Well at least not completely and it is becoming less so all the time.
I like the second definition from above. Greater than normal computer skills. And I would add “and knowledge.” One doesn’t have to be obsessive. One doesn’t have to give up a life and stay indoors all the time. One can go run a bobsled for example. Or my winter sport of choice – snowboarding. Maria Klawe, computer scientist and president of Harvey Mudd College, is well known for painting water colors. I have friends who are greatly into things like windsurfing, wood working, and many many other activities.
One can be a little bit of a geek in terms of being successful in computer science – in industry or academia – and not fit the TV stereotype of either an over weight, social misfit or a “a man in a while lab coat with funky hair like Einstein.” Real people, normal people, social people, athletic people, even good looking people can be successful at computer science. The real message is that computer scientists do not fit stereotypes. And it’s s good thing that we aren’t all the same. The more different people in the field the better we will all be.
There was a time when only the obsessive were about the only computer users, and an awful lot of us had been called geeks and nerds and dorks and squares and all such things. At that time computers were an area that we could excel at where we could shine and be in control and all the people who called us geeks an nerds were unlikely to go and certainly unlikely to excel.
Those days are gone. Kids the age of mine and yours grew up with computers. It would take an obsessive compulsive personality for someone of their age to shut out computers from their lives. That doesn't mean that everyone understands them or is good at them, but it is nowhere near as unusual.
There's still a bit of the geek/nerd image associated with computers, but it really is lessened, and even more it is less appropriate, I think.
Just my 2 bits.