Constant Thoughts

(This post is for Ada Lovelace day, a new media event for raising awareness about women in technology. You can find a list of the many other posts here.)

Happy Ada Lovelace Day, everyone! Today, I’d like to talk about the woman who, more than anyone else inspired me to go into computer science, Joanna Rutkowska. Joanna Rutkowska is a computer security researcher. Simply put, she tries to find new ways to break into a computer, so that the bugs which allowed the break-in can be fixed. And she is very good at it. Her original claim to fame was the Blue Pill, a virtualization rootkit. Basically, it uses hardware present in newer processors to take over a computer. (If you want to know more, read her blog post, but be warned – it’s very complicated!) The Blue Pill sparked a bit of a media frenzy – not to mention controversy (over whether is was really undetectable). Now, she is the CEO of Invisible Things Lab, a computer security research company.

At the time the blue pill was released, I was fascinated by the whole situation, and by Joanna. If you think about is, most of the really well known people in technology are teachers, especially for women. And yet, here was a woman who essentially, A: wrote some brilliant code, and B: gave a little presentation about it. And it was a big deal. More than that, and despite all the media craziness, I got the distinct impression that Joanna didn’t really care about the whole circus, not really – she just wanted to hack computers!

Now, there’s certainly nothing wrong with teaching – but I personally don’t like it, and have no desire to teach. It felt strange to me that almost all of the women in technology I read about were teachers. And so, Joanna has become a tremendous role model for me. She’s a programmer, a researcher, she’s brilliant, and she’s just really, really… cool! (After all, that’s what technology is in the end – finding cool new things to do!)

So thank you, Joanna, and all of the other women we’re honoring for Ada Lovelace Day. Thanks for being an inspiration and for simply doing what you do best!

(Crossposted at Fourth Wave)

(This post is for Ada Lovelace day, a new media event about raising awareness about women in technology.)

One of the hazards of being an aspiring woman in technology (and I speak from personal experience here!) is that you spend a great deal of time on related websites, forums, chat rooms, and other ‘geek related’ sites. And women in most of these places are non-existent. Not vastly outnumbered, not ignored, but non-existent. Try posting something, anything on, say, Slashdot with a female user name. Here are the responses you’ll get (unless things have greatly changed in the last 2 years – which I doubt). If you’re lucky: “OMG! A girl” or “It’s the only girl on /.” If unlucky? “Pix pls!” or “Wanna Cyber?”.

Lovely, isn’t it? You quickly learn to use a male pseudonym.

Given that a million tech-interested teenagers are spending their formative years at these sorts of places, I wouldn’t be surprised if this “women don’t exist on the Internet” attitude wasn’t primarily responsible for the overall lack of women in technology. You see, everyone’s heard of Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper, and a dozen women Google and Microsoft employees, but they’re just not… cool. They don’t have much geek cred., if you will.

Enter Limor Fried, geek goddess extraordinarie!

Her biography page says, “Hello, my name is Limor & I’m an engineer,” She’s an EE (electrical engineer), she has a masters from MIT, and she has one of the most interesting tech websites anywhere.

Her site contains an immense number of original, useful, and fascinating projects, from SIM card readers to a universal TV power button. She has a company, adafruit industries, which sells kits for electronic projects, and she operates one of the most intelligent (high SNR!) electronics forums I’ve ever seen. Her pages on multimeter use and PIC vs. AVR microntrollers are currently the most popular on the Internet.

Her original claim to fame was the wave bubble, a portable cell phone jammer. She wrote an amazing thesis for MIT about the jammer (she calls it ‘electrical engineering art’) It basically posits that technology is taking over our lives, and we need to be able to control it. Thus, the jammer (and a pair of TV darkening glasses). I highly recommend reading the thesis – it’s excellent, and not boring at all.

In short, Limor Fried is one of the coolest people on the Internet. Oh – and she happens to be a woman!

(Crossposted at Fourth Wave Feminism)