25 March 10
Anita Borg for Ada Lovelace Day
I’m a day late, but I want to point you to a woman in technology who I found out about recently and who I find inspiring, even though she has passed away. And it helps me make a point that I’d like to point out.
Anita Borg passed away a few years ago, but in 1987 she created an electronic mailing list network for women in tech called Systers (get it? systems + sisters = Systers). It is still going strong, but I’d like to reiterate that in 1987 email existed. Women and men were using email to connect with each other. They were connecting with people they’d never met in person using technology. They were developing relationships that were helping them continue their professional relationships, navigate the female-unfriendly atmosphere of their profession, gain specific technical skills, share trouble-shooting information, and connect with each other as people. Ms. Borg significantly impacted the lives of women who have gone on to mentor tens of thousands of women who are in my generation and the generation under me, just because she figured out that getting women to talk to each other (even though they didn’t know each other) was beneficial.
I’ve read recently in a couple of places about how social networking is a very new field, that social networks have only existed for the last few years. And I disagree with that. Blogs, which started about 10 years ago, were a social network. And before that there were chat rooms, and before that you had electronic mailing lists and UseNet groups and so much more. It may have become mainstream in the last few years to use online tools to form social networks, but they’ve existed for decades and their power shouldn’t be discounted just because you couldn’t get updates via your mobile device. Those relationships were real. Those relationships were part of a social network. It’s just the term social network that is new.
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