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A review by bluestjuice
Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World by Clive Thompson
3.0
Reading this provided a lot of food for thought. Being code-tangential as I would consider myself, it was bizarrely interesting to follow along as Thompson traced through subsequent waves of coders, beginning with the very early punch-card programmers in the 50s and moving through the current day. My mother was one of the computer science graduates of the late 70s (an oddly more-egalitarian time in software), and of course I came of age in the era of personal computers and front-end-design-by-fandom that translated, for some at least, into sufficient technical skills to parlay into an actual career. Thompson is sensible of the sexism and racism that built itself into the nascent field over time, and he traces how each subsequent wave of legitimacy reinforced coding's emphasis on 'culture fit' and a resume heavily augmented by dedicated leisure projects, prioritizing those with available time and funds and actively leaving those without behind. Unexpectedly, I found many parallels between these dynamics and similar dynamics I have found within the SCA fencing community, particularly in the ways which the leading group's expectations coalesced into a self-reinforcing dynamic which questions the very participation of people who don't obviously fit, and who don't have the resources to exhaustively demonstrate their worthiness by going above and beyond. Both groups conceptualize themselves as a strict meritocracy, while remaining largely unaware of the ways in which the structure of teaching, learning, and applying their knowledge are deeply shaped by self-reinforcing culture. And these disparities relating to gender and race only grow more entrenched the more 'established' and prestigious the respective groups become within their mainstream culture. A weird tangent, I know, but I found it really compelling (if lacking in straightforward answers - Thompson does not have a real solution to the problems where they arise in coding that I can apply).
Anyway, the book succeeded better as a history lesson and musing over some of the philosophical questions surrounding the ubiquitousness of software in our culture - for example, do we really want a fairly homogeneous group of mostly-white, mostly-cis, mostly-men deciding what sorts of software systems are built, or how social media operates, or what the rulesets for online engagement are? Worth thinking about. Certainly we have many technological examples to draw upon illustrating why such a limited worldview so deeply affecting the world we inhabit can be a bad thing. The question remains whether, and to what degree, we can or will do anything differently.
Anyway, the book succeeded better as a history lesson and musing over some of the philosophical questions surrounding the ubiquitousness of software in our culture - for example, do we really want a fairly homogeneous group of mostly-white, mostly-cis, mostly-men deciding what sorts of software systems are built, or how social media operates, or what the rulesets for online engagement are? Worth thinking about. Certainly we have many technological examples to draw upon illustrating why such a limited worldview so deeply affecting the world we inhabit can be a bad thing. The question remains whether, and to what degree, we can or will do anything differently.