Technology

August 25, 2003

TV Blogging the News On BoingBoing, Cory talks about Bob Hunter discussing the newspapers from his breakfast table. This reminded me of the BBC (in fact, all the British news shows), who regularly review the newspapers each day. The Beeb would regularly get guest pundits in to hold forth on the day's news. Radio does the same thing over there, I think. When I first saw this, I couldn't believe it. One media organization is giving air time to another? And it suggests that TV news recognizes their inherent inferiority to the print media. It was all very strange, and I never really got used to it. Besides, at its heart it's media reporting on media, and that's always a bit distasteful to me. 9:50:40 AM      Trackback []    Canada Technology

Girls Going Tech In the past couple of years, there's been a lot of press about the lack of women in science and technology. Furthermore, a lot of grant money has been thrown at the issue. Frankly, I think people are going about this the wrong way. I fully believe that women should receive equal pay for equal work, and should have the opportunity to work in any position they desire. Obviously, these are critical issues which society continues to (slowly) address. However, I don't believe that men and women are, on average, equally good at or inclined towards every job. That doesn't mean that woman can't be brilliant code monkeys or men can't be fantastic care-givers, but on average we are not equal. That's simple, scientific fact. While we must ensure both genders can work in any job, we shouldn't be overly concerned with achieving demographic parity in a given field. If we're serious about such parity, why don't we have 'get boys into nursing' or 'make more girls soldiers' programs? Is it urgent that we have a 50-50 split in science and technology? What's acceptable? 35% women? 45% women? Clearly girls are aware of opportunities in science and technology--they do better than boys in those subjects throughout school and university. So why expend resources 'programming' them to like science and technology? Parents, if your girl's a geek, just send her to computer camp. The real barriers to entry are the parents, professors and employers who are discouraging or preventing women from entering and excelling in science and technology. That's where this money should be spent--lobbying, convincing, legislating and otherwise demonstrating that women deserve the same opportunities and compensation as men do. 9:16:42 AM      Trackback []    Technology