There Are No Girls on the Internet - How Women Built the Internet

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00:01:19.460 I survived nine months in captivity, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive

00:01:26.780 what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files.

00:01:32.380 Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled,

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00:01:55.560 There Are No Girls on the Internet is a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative.

00:02:03.760 I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.

00:02:08.960 Okay, so here's the story we get told about technology. 1.00

00:02:12.060 Men built computers, and then they built the internet. 1.00

00:02:14.500 And women? 1.00

00:02:15.440 We've been trying to break into this tech voice club ever since. 1.00

00:02:18.980 We pretty much always assume the default experience online is male and white. 1.00

00:02:23.340 But women are using technology to build movements, create art, and connect with each other. 1.00

00:02:27.200 Despite dealing with some pretty vile shit just for daring to be women online. 1.00

00:02:31.480 And even before that, women and other marginalized voices have always been at the ground floor of technology and the way it impacts culture. 0.96

00:02:37.820 So that story we get told? 1.00

00:02:39.240 It's bullshit. 0.98

00:02:40.340 Tech has always been our domain. 0.99

00:02:42.580 So why isn't it always easy to see it that way?

00:02:44.840 Okay, let's take it back, way back.

00:02:47.620 In the beginning, computers were human. 0.99

00:02:50.180 They were also women.

00:02:54.580 In the early days of computing, 0.99

00:02:56.560 computer science was solidly women's work. 1.00

00:02:59.000 Computing was seen as administrative 1.00

00:03:00.260 or secretarial type position. 1.00

00:03:02.660 It was such a women's job 1.00

00:03:04.080 that after World War II, 1.00

00:03:05.340 computing power was even measured in, quote, 0.78

00:03:07.380 Killa Girls, which was understood to be roughly the calculating ability of a thousand women. 0.52

00:03:12.600 If you've seen the film Hidden Figures that chronicles mathematicians Katherine Johnson,

00:03:16.200 Dorothy Vaughan, and engineer Mary Jackson, then you probably know what I'm talking about.

00:03:20.480 That's John Glenn. 1.00

00:03:21.640 What do you ladies do for NASA? 1.00

00:03:22.780 Calculate your launch and landing, sir. 1.00

00:03:25.020 And even before that, born in the 1800s, Ada Lovelace is widely considered to be one of

00:03:29.320 the world's first computer programmers.

00:03:31.240 But we're more than just literal computers. 1.00

00:03:33.260 Women were involved in every single step on our journey toward computers' integration 1.00

00:03:37.100 into our everyday lives. 1.00

00:03:38.480 And while the names like tech icons

00:03:39.760 like Katherine Johnson and Ada Lovelace

00:03:41.460 might be familiar to you,

00:03:43.160 we still need monuments to the marginalized artists,

00:03:46.120 organizers, community builders, writers, and thinkers

00:03:48.300 who shaped what it means to be online.

00:03:50.820 So let's build them. 1.00

00:03:58.320 If you're looking for women in the history of technology, 1.00

00:04:01.360 it really helps to look first where people are cared for.

00:04:04.440 Claire Evans is an artist, tech historian, and writer.

00:04:07.100 Along with her partner, Jonah Bechtold, she's half of the impeccable, cool, Grammy-nominated electro band Yacht. 0.90

00:04:22.200 Claire wrote the book on how women were erased from technology, computers, and the internet. Literally. 0.99

00:04:27.620 Her book, Broadband, get it?

00:04:29.740 Shines a spotlight on the history of tech, spotlighting the women who often go overlooked.

00:04:33.460 Think of it as a radical act of archival so that no one will ever be able to say that women weren't always on the ground floor of technology.

00:04:40.440 While the women-led efforts of World War II meant the computing workforce was mostly female, eventually things changed.

00:04:46.580 The shift that you're describing between tech as feminized labor and tech as, you know, a site of masculine entrepreneurship and innovation, you know, happened in like the late 60s, early 70s through the 80s.

00:04:59.400 the sort of generational changing of the guard that happened, where the first wave of early

00:05:04.540 women programmers who came out of, you know, the programming efforts around World War II

00:05:08.600 and entered the early computing industry and essentially defined it, because that's when 0.99

00:05:12.540 the computing industry began, and they were the only people who knew how to do programming. So,

00:05:16.720 of course, they ran it. At air bases here and overseas, women soldiers perform over 25 technical 0.99

00:05:22.720 jobs war jobs now but civilian careers later on as they kind of aged out and were replaced by the

00:05:31.100 next generation and the industry itself exploded and became you know massively financially

00:05:36.100 valuable um there was this sort of the baton didn't quite get past there wasn't uh there 0.99

00:05:42.880 weren't opportunities for young women to come up and replace and fill the shoes of the women that

00:05:47.740 came before them for all the sort of systemic reasons that you would imagine you know um and

00:05:52.180 I think part of that comes down to just the fact that computing went from being something that was wild and new and, you know, more associated with the war effort to something which was relatively beginning to be established and which was a significant commercial enterprise.

00:06:08.640 Money, of course, is what changes things.

00:06:10.700 And I think, you know, oftentimes people read my book and then they come and talk to me and, you know, they say, wow, men really ruined everything.

00:06:17.820 But it's money.

00:06:18.640 I mean, it's money that ruined everything.

00:06:19.780 It's all of a sudden the stakes were different and the players were different and, you know, it was more cutthroat and there were less opportunities for people and, you know, mistakes were made cumulatively and systemically that made it so that there began to be this unreasonable assumption that tech was for men, which was then, you know, re-emphasized and reiterated through marketing and popular culture.

00:06:44.640 And I think the work that like advertisements for computers in the 70s and film and TV in the 80s did for making tech seem like a boys club was, you know, that was, it was really significant.

00:06:56.920 I mean, I grew up in a time when, you know, movies like Weird Science were really popular, which is a movie about, you know, two nerds making a babe using a computer.

00:07:06.200 Or, you know, that's the sort of sets of, you know, it sets a pretty clear standard for what the culture assumes is the point of interest for this technology.

00:07:14.860 And if you look at basically any computer ad from the 70s and 80s, you know, print paper ads for anything from hardware to software services, it's either, you know, a model, you know, a woman, you know, a sexy woman sitting on top of a mainframe.

00:07:29.100 Or it's something explicitly condescending about how this machine is going to replace all the nagging, you know, lady data programmers in the office.

00:07:38.020 You know, there's a lot of like really kind of dark, dark marketing that is part of this. 0.88

00:07:42.660 And that's sort of created a generation that feels, you know, as though it's always been for them.

00:07:47.620 And that sense of entitlement is really difficult to undo.

00:07:50.200 But I think part of the work of kind of digging up this history is showing that, you know, if there is a boys club that exists in tech, it's an anachronism.

00:07:58.200 You know, it's a historical anachronism, a wrong that needs to and can be righted, hopefully in less than a generation.

00:08:05.640 Speaking of generations, Claire is a second generation computer nerd.

00:08:09.180 Her dad was a coder at IBM.

00:08:11.020 She grew up online, and that means she grew up feeling like the Internet was her hometown.

00:08:16.260 I came of age during an era where there was kind of an efflorescence of girl centric early web content and girl centric computer games.

00:08:25.040 But I never really was interested in that.

00:08:26.420 I never thought of the computer as being explicitly for boys or for girls, you know, any more than like the TV or the microwave was for boys or for girls.

00:08:35.380 This is a thing, you know, and what you did with it was more about expressing your individual interests and your individual personality down to really esoteric subjects than it was about expressing your gender in any way.

00:08:48.740 But I do know that, I mean, I certainly remember the computer lab at school when I was a kid being pretty dominated by boys and, you know, having to kind of elbow my way in to play my games during lunch break or whatever. There certainly was this idea when I was a kid that boys liked computer games and girls didn't. But I think I was always more interested in, you know, finding ways to empower myself and learn new things using this amazing tool that happened to be in my bedroom.

00:09:15.300 So what kind of games with little baby Claire playing?

00:09:17.140 my favorite kinds of games were trivia games like i love to play there was this game that came with

00:09:24.280 microsoft incarta which is a um you know encyclopedia cd-rom that was like a trivia

00:09:31.420 through the ages game loved it couldn't get enough of that kind of thing or there was a

00:09:36.360 game a little bit later called you don't know jack that was a again like a trivia more of a

00:09:40.200 game show style trivia game but i loved yeah i mean i honestly i really loved learning and i know

00:09:45.060 that sounds kind of, you know, it sounds like what it sounds like, but I love trivia games.

00:09:49.280 I loved like semi-educational CD-ROMs, like, you know, learning about anatomy. There was a

00:09:53.820 Grey's Anatomy CD-ROM I was really obsessed with when I was a kid. By the way, we bonded a little

00:09:58.120 bit here because nerdy educational games is something that young Claire and young me had

00:10:02.260 in common. Growing up, if I did an hour of Mavis Beacon typing Tudor, my parents rewarded me with

00:10:07.680 30 minutes of Math Blaster. Remember Math Blaster? Math Blaster was legitimately really fun. And

00:10:13.340 It's funny that you bring up Mavis Beacon because I started a chapter on Mavis Beacon that I ended up scrapping because it was kind of like too tangential to the history of the Internet.

00:10:21.460 But the story of Mavis Beacon is really interesting.

00:10:23.220 I mean, she was the woman on the box.

00:10:26.120 You know, like a lot of people believe that she was like a real typing expert, that Mavis Beacon was a real person and that she was a champion typer.

00:10:32.860 And there's all this kind of interesting lore around her.

00:10:35.400 Like there was a survey that was done in the 90s where people were asked whether or not Mavis Beacon was a real person.

00:10:41.540 and people like remembered seeing her on tv like everyone thought she was real but she was just

00:10:45.180 this model that had been cast like i want to say like she was working at the perfume counter at

00:10:50.080 sacks or something and the guy who made the game was like this woman is amazing i need her she has

00:10:55.200 beautiful hands and so she was on the box cover um she was just this trinidadian model and she kind 0.97

00:11:00.900 of she her name was renee l'esperance wow i can't believe i pulled that out of my memory um but she

00:11:07.240 didn't get a dime of course I mean because the world is garbage but she ended up she left the

00:11:11.860 states and there's like no no one's really been able to find her and she didn't get any royalties

00:11:15.360 even though her face her likeness was really like a huge part of what sold that game or whatever that

00:11:20.600 that piece of software it was like really I don't know there's something really relatable about her

00:11:25.580 this idea that this woman was this typing genius that could teach you how to type. So Claire was 0.97

00:11:31.000 pretty much always fascinated by computers and being online but after a while she started to

00:11:36.080 feel like the internet was no longer her hometown. And where being online had once felt like freedom

00:11:41.320 and escape, it started to feel different. It's this realization after many years of spending,

00:11:47.640 you know, the lion's share of my waking life on the computer that I didn't feel good anymore on

00:11:53.580 the computer. And when I was a kid, I remember nothing but joy and discovery and excitement and,

00:11:57.460 you know, self-identification and all kinds of positive things. And all of that had kind of

00:12:02.180 fallen by the wayside. Some of that is just growing up, you know, and becoming aware that

00:12:06.560 the world doesn't revolve around you and, um, you know, taking things for granted and getting

00:12:11.000 blase about things and maybe even getting out of step with what's going on in technology.

00:12:15.280 Because of course, you know, tech culture evolves so quickly that I'm sure teenagers on TikTok are

00:12:20.740 having the same feelings of self-actualization that maybe I did playing CD-ROM games in the

00:12:24.580 nineties. I hope so. Um, but yeah, I don't know. I think as an adult, all that, all that joy kind

00:12:30.420 of went away and the life online began to feel more like a burden or you know something that

00:12:37.060 had to be accomplished in order to become to remain part of culture and remain engaged in

00:12:43.020 the larger conversation around me and not something I did for fun or for joy there's a lot of yeah I

00:12:47.500 mean there's a lot of reasons for that too I think you know the overlap between digital life and real

00:12:52.920 life however you want to define that has certainly changed a great deal in the last 15 years when

00:12:56.980 I was a kid, the internet was something other. It was something separate from the world as I

00:13:02.280 understood it. It was an escape. It's not an escape anymore. You know, I think if anything,

00:13:06.120 real life is an escape from the internet. Okay. So if you're under 25, this probably

00:13:10.780 means nothing to you because you've always grown up carrying the internet in a little square in

00:13:14.360 your pocket, but humor me. I still remember my early experiences online. I was still a few years

00:13:20.680 away from being lucky enough to have a computer in my bedroom. So going online meant logging on

00:13:26.040 from the clunky family computer

00:13:27.420 in what we called the computer room.

00:13:29.500 And if my dad caught you with a soda down there, watch out.

00:13:32.280 Once everyone was asleep,

00:13:33.620 you could sneak downstairs and get online

00:13:35.100 and do whatever you wanted.

00:13:36.820 I mean, forget just having a Coke in the computer room.

00:13:39.220 You could be anyone.

00:13:41.140 Those days of being anonymous online

00:13:42.760 were a kind of intoxicating freedom,

00:13:45.220 for me and Claire both.

00:13:46.480 But while being anonymous online back then meant freedom,

00:13:49.200 today it's totally flipped.

00:13:50.820 The real world is where you go to feel anonymous,

00:13:52.800 not the internet.

00:13:53.880 It's something I think about a lot.

00:13:54.940 like the position of anonymity because I know that when I was a kid and I was you know hanging

00:14:00.640 out in chat rooms and posting on message boards and surfing around the early worldwide web

00:14:04.400 I was free because nobody knew who I was and I could be anybody I wanted to be I could you know

00:14:09.940 create an avatar for myself or create a new identity for myself I could pretend I was older

00:14:14.880 than I was I could pretend I was a different gender than I was I could pretend all kinds of

00:14:19.840 things and everyone else was probably also pretending a little bit too and the excitement

00:14:24.060 of being able to kind of redefine who I was and try on new things was a really big part of the

00:14:29.780 attraction of the early internet, I think, for a lot of people. Now, of course, it's the opposite.

00:14:34.860 I mean, we have to be who we are. You know, we have to have our legal names on our Facebook

00:14:39.800 profiles. And this kind of the joy of the creative joy of anonymity has been replaced by a form of

00:14:47.100 anonymity that is kind of different, that is really different. Anonymity is now something

00:14:51.380 that's weaponized to you know persecute vulnerable people on the internet it's it's not something

00:14:56.440 that comes from a place of of delight I mean there's very few instances I think of people who

00:15:01.040 have anonymous profiles who are you know because they just for the fun of it um it's a different

00:15:07.540 it's a different thing you either are forced to hide who you are because you're because you want

00:15:11.740 to bother other people or because you are being bothered by other people um so yeah so we're only

00:15:16.560 anonymous now in the real world we're only anonymous when we're you know walking down the

00:15:20.040 street or at home doing the things that, you know, we do during our time off from the internet.

00:15:25.740 She's right. The internet can be a not-fun place, especially if you're marginalized.

00:15:30.200 And because we've allowed those once foundational marginalized voices to be pushed so far outside

00:15:34.600 of the tent of tech, it only reinforces that it's not our domain, that it's not where we'll go to

00:15:39.580 have experiences that involve protection, care, or freedom. It's a problem that has far-reaching

00:15:45.160 consequences, not just for women, but for everybody. I think as we sort of as a culture

00:15:50.320 begin to digest the consequences of creating this kind of boys club culture around technology,

00:15:56.580 we will hopefully see that the clearest antidote is to diversify these companies and platforms as

00:16:05.140 quickly as possible. Again, I don't know. I mean, I'm kind of a, I don't know. Capitalism is a

00:16:11.820 is a mighty beast. And it'll take a lot of work to kind of get at the heart of this problem in

00:16:18.320 some of these massive, massive tech companies, especially as they, you know, resist union

00:16:23.320 efforts and resist deregulation and resist all kinds of positive benefits. Yeah, it's a long

00:16:30.360 fight. Yeah, it is a long fight. We'll be right back after this quick break.

00:16:34.420 Transcription by CastingWords

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00:17:39.640 When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months.

00:17:45.040 I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.

00:17:51.500 I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files.

00:17:54.960 I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, 0.99

00:18:00.620 Shut up. Don't say anything. 0.99

00:18:03.380 Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable.

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00:18:39.300 If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.

00:18:45.240 This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.

00:18:57.720 I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.

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00:19:31.440 Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:19:37.500 See you between the pages.

00:19:38.560 I was watching this video of you speaking

00:19:45.480 to prepare for this interview

00:19:46.460 and something that you said was

00:19:48.140 if you're looking for the history of women in tech

00:19:49.980 it helps to look for places where people are cared for

00:19:52.580 and I guess to that end

00:19:54.020 what would it look like if care was built into

00:19:56.260 some of these tech platforms from the very beginning

00:19:58.100 well we certainly wouldn't have

00:20:00.020 social media as it exists today

00:20:02.400 right I mean

00:20:03.600 I don't know it's funny

00:20:05.800 I think that there's this kind of

00:20:08.440 actual, what's the word? Maybe it's not possible to build things at the scale that the tech

00:20:16.660 industry seems to demand while still emphasizing and prioritizing care. I think you look at the

00:20:23.020 history of social media and I profiled this community in my book called Echo, which was

00:20:28.520 run by a single person in an apartment in New York, which a person who really deeply cared

00:20:34.740 about her community and who was really invested in the well-being of her community and who kind

00:20:38.980 of had the authority to kick people out who were being hurtful and who could mediate conversations

00:20:43.760 and, you know, who was really part of the community. And I think that that kind of care

00:20:48.760 is beautiful. And it's possible when your community is 2,000 people to 10,000 people,

00:20:55.080 maybe at most. It's not really as possible when your community is in the billions, when your

00:21:00.240 community is essentially the, you know, the size of planet earth. It's just so difficult to have

00:21:05.980 enough and the right kind of emotional investment to take care of all those people.

00:21:12.380 It's impossible to enforce, you know, standards or rules across cultures and across subcultures,

00:21:17.600 across languages. It becomes kind of this, yeah, it becomes a folly, which is why we've kind of,

00:21:24.040 which is why social media platforms have outsourced the job of caring to these kind of

00:21:28.620 traumatized content moderators who are not part of the community who are not you know deputized

00:21:34.040 members of of this of a dynamic community who are helping take care of their own but who are

00:21:38.440 instead being shown the worst of humanity and who are suffering greatly as a consequence of seeing

00:21:43.860 and working through all that material um you know they're being paid to care but we don't care about

00:21:48.700 them you know it's i think scale i think scale and care might be mutually exclusive which means

00:21:54.380 that the future of care in tech platforms might look really different than what we're accustomed

00:22:00.480 to. I think we need to move beyond this idea of constantly growth hacking and trying to build

00:22:05.660 the biggest, biggest, biggest communities, platforms, cultures, programs, systems in the

00:22:11.720 world, and instead focus on empowering people to create platforms and communities and services

00:22:17.760 which affect them and their peers in maybe like an interconnected network of smaller communities,

00:22:24.360 which, you know, maybe a world of neighborhoods rather than one giant mega city, I think would

00:22:29.940 be a lot more sane. There are different forms of connecting with others. I mean, there's a time and

00:22:34.580 place for, you know, kind of the speaker's corner where you can go out in the street and like yell

00:22:39.040 your piece and everyone can hear you maybe, or, you know, you have the capacity to go viral or

00:22:43.600 whatever it is that you want. I mean, the one to many audience thing is valuable in certain

00:22:48.200 instances, but most of the time when we're looking for meaningful engagement, community interaction

00:22:53.180 in real life and online, it does happen in smaller groups. It happens, you know, with people that

00:22:59.980 you either know, or you share an interest with, or you share a geographical location with,

00:23:04.540 or you share something with, something real. And I think, you know, part of the joy of the

00:23:08.260 early internet was that because users were kind of spread all over the world, people came together

00:23:13.400 on not based on geographic location necessarily but based on interest and you know most of those

00:23:18.720 early internet communities were interest-based communities you know people who were really into

00:23:22.100 star trek people who were really into gardening um and that's something really beautiful about

00:23:25.960 that because it reminds us what we have in common even when we're really different

00:23:28.720 whereas now we're supposed to kind of relate to the billions with absolutely nothing to hold on

00:23:33.980 to as as a shared experience other than like basic civility and being human which as we can

00:23:38.620 has eroded completely in the wild wilderness of the feed.

00:23:44.000 Basic civility.

00:23:45.480 So far, we've sort of danced around the elephant in the room

00:23:47.820 that Claire is hinting at here, 0.93

00:23:49.040 which is that being a woman online 0.94

00:23:50.500 sometimes means dealing with harassment.

00:23:52.740 So if we're trying to write the history of women's experiences

00:23:54.860 and contributions to the internet,

00:23:56.280 do we include the reality that a lot of that history

00:23:58.420 is involved having to deal with harassment?

00:24:00.360 And if I'm being honest,

00:24:01.640 I struggled with that when trying to put together this very podcast.

00:24:05.080 Yeah, I can totally relate to that.

00:24:06.240 I mean, I kind of made a choice

00:24:07.540 that I didn't want my book to be about, about fighting back against the trolls. I wanted my

00:24:12.180 book to be, you know, a showcase for all the amazing things that people accomplished in despite

00:24:16.780 the fact, uh, you know, that they had to fight against the trolls or whatever their, their

00:24:20.600 circumstances were. Um, you know, I'm, I think I'm kind of was able to cop out from that a little

00:24:25.800 bit because my book ends basically the collapse of the dot-com bubble. And I'm not saying that

00:24:29.480 harassment didn't exist before then. It certainly did, but you know, things like Gamergate, the

00:24:34.000 movement, the sort of larger conversations that are happening as like a consequence of systemic

00:24:38.740 sexism in the tech industry and in the world, you know, sort of became much, much uglier more

00:24:45.140 recently. And yeah, but I, I don't know, I have this mantra that is like, don't, don't fight the

00:24:50.480 darkness, bring the light and the darkness will disappear. And I think that, I don't know, I think

00:24:55.640 people need to see how much light there really has been and how much, how many fascinating,

00:25:01.120 beautiful interesting you know dynamic contributions had been made um in by women and you know

00:25:07.900 throughout history and that it's it's not always about having to it's not always about being a 0.53

00:25:11.720 victim I don't want to always have that I don't want that to be like a core part of the identity

00:25:15.840 of the characters that I profile in the book because they're all they're not you know like

00:25:19.460 they all they're all tough as nails and super interesting and hard-working and have done great

00:25:23.960 things in this world and maybe people didn't believe in them at the right time and maybe

00:25:27.820 people have forgotten some of their contributions, but that doesn't make them any less incredible.

00:25:32.380 Definitely. You know, that's one of the things I love about your book.

00:25:35.260 You know, as we speak, I have an Ada Lovelace sticker on my computer at this very moment.

00:25:39.600 But I feel like your book really allows for these figures to be

00:25:42.360 full, complex, 360 degrees of who they were, not just boiled down to some sticker or poster or

00:25:48.340 platitude. Yes, I love that you clocked that because that's a really big thing for me. I think,

00:25:53.780 you know, and I've been interacting with this a lot since the book came out, this kind of,

00:25:57.280 you know, inspirational poster version of, you know, the history of women in tech or like the

00:26:02.120 sticker on the laptop version of women in tech. And I totally get it. I mean, we have such a

00:26:06.440 hunger for representation in this history that we want to trot out these women as perfect, 1.00

00:26:10.640 you know, idolizable heroes. And they are heroes, but they're heroes because of the complexity of 1.00

00:26:15.880 their lives, not just because, you know, Ada Lovelace wrote the quote unquote first computer

00:26:19.740 program. I think she's interesting for so many more reasons than that. And I don't think that,

00:26:23.840 you know, the opposite of a great man history is necessarily a great woman history, because that's

00:26:29.800 just reiterating the same thing. That's just, you know, laying all of the power and clout and 0.99

00:26:35.240 influence at the feet of exceptional individuals, rather than acknowledging a, the collective nature

00:26:40.700 of innovation and the kind of complicated collective nature of history in general,

00:26:45.220 and without acknowledging the complexity of individual people and all the things that they

00:26:50.400 do i mean i don't want to develop a superficial relationship with a character from history i want

00:26:56.060 to know them i want to really know them and i and i i'm not necessarily um super inspired and

00:27:02.060 empowered by knowing that someone who came before me was really really good at what they did and

00:27:06.720 they were perfect that doesn't help me that doesn't make me feel like i can do things i mean i come

00:27:11.780 from a world of of music and punk rock and there's nothing more empowering than seeing someone just

00:27:17.360 like you do something kind of badly and you think to yourself hey I could do that too you know like

00:27:22.600 that's punk so I kind of wanted to do that I wanted to show that yeah Ada Lovelace was a genius 0.98

00:27:27.920 no doubt about it but she was also a drug addict and she was also you know like prone to illness 0.80

00:27:34.220 and really conflicted about being a mother and you know had a really weird relationship with her own

00:27:39.360 mother and never knew her father and all this stuff that really humanizes her and makes her

00:27:44.300 accomplishments you know more relatable in a weird way because greatness emerges out of you know out

00:27:51.180 of conflict and out of out of people's individual you know the complex combination of strife and

00:27:57.820 inspiration that makes people who they are um yeah their sorrows and their bad habits are just as

00:28:03.820 important as their aptitude and you know their inspirational brilliance it is punk rock

00:28:09.220 like yeah and like it's also really interesting i mean for me doing this this survey of women

00:28:16.500 throughout history because my book spans about 200 ish years and you know what it means to be

00:28:21.020 a feminist or to be a sort of a feminist icon is changes a lot from generation to generation and 1.00

00:28:26.640 you know look at grace hopper for example i mean she's sort of this classic feminist icon but she

00:28:32.260 didn't think of herself as a feminist she was actually kind of contemptuous of the idea of

00:28:36.940 of women's lid, like didn't, you know, thought it was kind of, you know, I don't know, she thought

00:28:41.640 it was like whiny and, and she really like actively resisted the characterization that

00:28:45.280 she might've faced any challenges whatsoever in an all-male environment. Like she just wouldn't

00:28:49.260 acknowledge that that was a possibility. Um, and I think, you know, does that make her less of a

00:28:53.660 feminist icon? I don't think so. I mean, I think we have to, we have to reach people within their 0.98

00:28:57.940 time and understand, you know, why they might be seeing the world that they, in the way that they

00:29:02.340 see the world and understand them within their own context. And that's hard sometimes, you know,

00:29:09.500 history is messy. And sometimes doing it means holding multiple contradictory positions in your

00:29:16.360 mind at the same time. That's the joy of it anyway. More There Are No Girls on the Internet

00:29:20.860 after this quick break. 1.00

00:29:21.940 Transcription by CastingWords

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00:30:27.880 If your bookshelf and your for you page

00:30:29.860 are equally important to your personality,

00:30:32.280 welcome home.

00:30:33.820 This is Prose Society,

00:30:36.040 the weekly podcast that's part book club,

00:30:38.460 part group chat for thought daughters,

00:30:40.220 pop culture obsessives,

00:30:41.420 and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice

00:30:43.240 and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.

00:30:45.460 I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.

00:30:53.380 I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed.

00:30:56.960 From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.

00:31:03.300 It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.

00:31:10.380 Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place.

00:31:19.980 Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:31:25.920 See you between the pages.

00:31:28.020 When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months.

00:31:33.800 I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them.

00:31:40.340 I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are The Survivor Files.

00:31:43.960 I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, 0.96

00:31:49.380 shut up, don't say anything.

00:31:52.140 Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable. 0.98

00:31:56.260 I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.

00:32:01.040 I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.

00:32:08.100 They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.

00:32:12.560 But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.

00:32:16.020 They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.

00:32:19.620 Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:32:30.740 History is important. It's also tenuous.

00:32:34.440 The fact that there could be entire movements spearheaded by women online that go forgotten today

00:32:38.540 is just an example of why we need to fight to make sure that we're including nuanced depictions of women

00:32:43.320 and their contributions to history in our archives. 0.98

00:32:46.160 Because they could disappear a lot quicker than you might think.

00:32:49.640 Even Claire's favorite woman-fueled online movement, the cyber-feminist arts movement of the 90s,

00:32:54.360 was almost a thing that went totally forgotten.

00:32:58.580 I'm really into the sort of mid-90s cyber-feminist art movement because

00:33:03.180 It sort of feels, you know, just to give a broad strokes for your listenership, I mean, it was this, it was this sort of arts, culture, literary movement in, you know, pretty much coinciding with the development of the World Wide Web.

00:33:14.140 And, you know, the world with the arrival of the World Wide Web is what brought women online really in a major way for the first time.

00:33:19.740 the internet as a, as a military and scientific piece of structure was, was pretty male dominated, 0.64

00:33:25.040 but as soon as the web and the personal computer combined, um, women took over men in terms of the

00:33:30.700 population of, of, of online, of, of the internet. And, um, so there was this beautiful efflorescence

00:33:37.380 of, of feminist, radical feminist thinking in art that coincided with that, because I think a lot

00:33:42.480 of these, especially second wave feminists who were coming out of the late 1970s world of, you know,

00:33:47.200 consciousness raising and quote unquote bra burning were really excited by the possibility

00:33:51.340 of this new medium that would allow them to kind of do consciousness raising on a global scale and

00:33:56.500 reach women and feminists all around the world and kind of create new spaces define their own 0.86

00:34:02.200 spaces and and do all kinds of you know fluid and exciting experimentation about identity and gender

00:34:07.840 and all the things that are really fun and interesting so they made a lot of radical art

00:34:13.140 There's some wild CD-ROM games and wild early websites, great manifestos.

00:34:19.500 The Cyber Feminist Manifesto was one of my favorite texts of all time.

00:34:23.100 It is truly wonderful.

00:34:24.960 And it definitely comes from a time before comment sections because the language is just

00:34:29.100 so bold and raw and radical and kind of gross and just wild.

00:34:36.640 And that kind of free, exciting experimentation in a new medium is just really beautiful to

00:34:42.940 look at in the rear view. It had its own problems, of course, like everything. And it kind of

00:34:46.560 disappeared pretty quickly after the World Wide Web became kind of normalized in culture. And

00:34:52.360 the artists who contributed to that movement all went off and did their own things. But

00:34:55.660 it's an interesting moment, I think, when feminists sort of saw the World Wide Web as 1.00

00:35:00.300 an opportunity and not necessarily as, you know, I don't know, a place that sort of a social system 1.00

00:35:06.260 which would replicate the social dynamics of the culture that they existed in already. 0.99

00:35:10.880 Okay, so I learned about the cyber feminist movement from reading your book. 0.98

00:35:14.200 I had never heard of it before. 0.71

00:35:15.740 And I'm someone who's looking for these kinds of things. 1.00

00:35:17.940 You know, I'm actively on the lookout for women doing cool shit online. 0.91

00:35:21.080 And yet it went totally overlooked by me. 0.96

00:35:23.280 So it's wild to me that this huge movement began and ended and had all of these cool

00:35:26.720 women making this radical art in the 90s online.

00:35:29.300 And I had never even heard of it.

00:35:31.220 It's oddly what motivated me to write the book because I had the same exact experience.

00:35:34.380 I was looking for something.

00:35:35.920 This is a classic like Wikipedia moment that I had.

00:35:38.440 I was looking for something else.

00:35:39.620 I found myself, I don't know how, on the Wikipedia page for this art collective, the VNS Matrix, who wrote the Cyber Feminist Manifesto that I mentioned earlier.

00:35:47.540 And I was like, what? How do I not know about this?

00:35:50.200 You know, it's one of those like late night Wikipedia deep dives where I was like, I'd followed some long chain and I was there and I was like, what is this?

00:35:56.180 How is there this crazy like cyberpunk feminist art movement that I didn't know about?

00:36:01.580 Because I felt the same way. I'd always felt really invested in these histories.

00:36:04.720 I've been writing about these histories for a long time.

00:36:06.540 I thought I knew kind of everything about this about the early internet or not everything but

00:36:11.060 I thought I knew like the you know broad strokes the most interesting stuff that had happened

00:36:14.120 and I completely missed it and I think it's a combination of the fact that as a movement it was

00:36:18.900 you know relatively short-lived it happened at the very beginning of the world wide web

00:36:22.740 the world wide web has a remarkable tendency to erase and rewrite itself um by definition that's

00:36:28.340 that's what it does and it just like blipped you know right under my radar and I was like how many

00:36:34.020 more of these stories are there? How many more of these moments in history have I completely missed

00:36:38.980 by virtue of just being in the wrong, looking at the wrong part of the internet or looking at the

00:36:42.740 wrong time period? And I think there's something really kind of fascinating and maddening about

00:36:48.840 writing histories of technology and specifically histories that involve cultural movements and

00:36:55.520 human beings doing stuff on the web because the web is so fluid and so amorphous and so impermanent.

00:37:02.560 And like there's, you know, like outside of the Wayback Machine, there aren't that many

00:37:07.020 tools for seeking out what was on the web 10 years ago.

00:37:10.600 And it's not that long ago, you know, it's really not that long ago, but yet it's slipping

00:37:16.340 out from between our fingers.

00:37:17.520 And it's wild to me that we have, you know, Babylonian cuneiform clay tablets that we

00:37:23.440 can still read, but I can't tell you what was on, you know, women.com in 1991.

00:37:28.480 That seems wild to me.

00:37:30.520 So I think this idea that I wanted to capture as much of this history as I could before it all disappeared and try to identify as many of these moments, movements, people, contributions before they lived out from under all our radars, it gave this entire project a sense of urgency for me. It made me feel like I had to move quickly before the internet exploded, basically.

00:37:54.660 Yeah, and I think a big part of why your work is so important is that aspect of archival,

00:37:58.580 so that no one will ever be able to say that women weren't there because they weren't included in the archive.

00:38:02.820 You know, we can say, oh, no, no, no, women were always here since the very beginning.

00:38:06.400 Here's the record of it.

00:38:07.820 You know, I'm almost hesitant to draw this line between men and hardware and women and software,

00:38:11.980 but I do think that hardware is much easier to historicize.

00:38:16.980 You know, it's way easier to put an old computer in a glass case in a museum and say, like, you know,

00:38:21.000 this computer is really important and these guys made it and here it is.

00:38:24.720 It has a material presence, you know, that is permanent,

00:38:27.420 that is going to continue to pollute the world until the end of time.

00:38:31.420 But software and culture work and games and communities and all these things,

00:38:36.180 which are so much more difficult to hold on to,

00:38:39.820 oftentimes they're associated with women's work and oftentimes they're forgotten

00:38:43.540 because they're just, they're just, they're not, you know,

00:38:46.900 they're hard to hold on to. They're not things.

00:38:48.440 and we fetishize things and tech culture really revolves around this kind of object fetishism.

00:38:53.840 You know, we get the new device every six months or, you know, and we imagine that by getting the

00:38:58.900 new device, everything that ever came before, it disappears, but it doesn't, you know, it keeps

00:39:02.900 existing. And it's really important to remember that tech is not just about objects and it's not

00:39:09.060 just about platforms. It's about what we do with those objects and platforms. It's about the ways

00:39:12.740 that we bring those things to life. It's about the ways that we make meaning out of those things

00:39:16.940 and build community using those things.

00:39:19.360 That's what actually matters.

00:39:20.760 You know, that's what actually has an impact on human culture,

00:39:23.160 not just human, you know, market economics.

00:39:26.600 So, and I think that, you know, oftentimes that's forgotten.

00:39:29.040 And at the same time, you know, that's also the site 0.66

00:39:31.700 where a lot of women's contributions are made. 0.91

00:39:33.540 And so that those things kind of get brushed aside, 1.00

00:39:35.440 but they're just as important, if not more important than making iPhones.

00:39:40.880 Okay. So I have this theory that by gatekeeping who is and isn't,

00:39:44.380 quote, someone in tech,

00:39:45.720 That's really just this way of keeping out all of these marginalized figures who maybe weren't coders, right?

00:39:50.500 People who were artists or thinkers or organizers or activists who were using the Internet in really cool ways.

00:39:55.880 It's a way to keep those folks out of the tent of tech.

00:39:59.520 And I think it's important that we understand that just because you maybe aren't a coder doesn't mean you haven't had an influential or important impact on how we understand tech and culture.

00:40:07.760 You know, the tent is huge.

00:40:09.580 Yeah, of course.

00:40:10.580 And like, what good is code if no one's using it?

00:40:12.400 You know, what good is the technology if no one uses it?

00:40:15.080 I think, you know, yeah, I think you're totally right.

00:40:17.660 I think people sort of try to define what tech means in a way that allows them to remain

00:40:22.540 at the top of, you know, the totem pole.

00:40:25.000 But really, I don't know.

00:40:26.300 I mean, making things is just the beginning.

00:40:28.440 And I think, I mean, I think people in tech know that because users are the most powerful

00:40:33.960 force for innovation that there is.

00:40:36.700 I mean, the Twitter at reply and the hashtag, those came from, you know, user suggestions.

00:40:41.180 the world wide web itself, you know, it was never meant to be a communications platform or a

00:40:45.760 cultural platform. It's users made that what it is. So, you know, I think we often, often

00:40:51.400 underestimate the role that users and that users have in, in, in the system. And, you know, you

00:40:57.540 put something out into the world, people decide what they're going to do with it. They give it

00:41:01.860 context, they give it meaning. And then, then, then that sort of cycles back and the people

00:41:07.140 who are designing those tools then have to take that and move forward with it. It's part of the

00:41:10.920 process of developing a technology and it's not often considered to be you know part of part of

00:41:15.520 it but it really is that that labor is is invisible but very real. Being a woman online can be tough

00:41:20.540 but it's not without hope. Claire's work as a musician grounds her in a very specific kind of

00:41:25.780 hope around technology. Where tech sometimes presents an adversarial foil to humans time and

00:41:31.800 time again we humans find a way to turn that conflict into something beautiful that reaffirms

00:41:36.340 our existence. There have been many instances in the history of music when a new technology

00:41:40.540 has come along that ostensibly is there to displace the musician. For example, the drum

00:41:45.340 machine or the synthesizer, you know, these are tools that were designed to replace session

00:41:50.220 musicians with an easier, cheaper version kind of automation of their labor. In fact, even in the

00:41:55.680 80s, like the British Musicians Union tried to ban synthesizers. But what artists and musicians

00:42:00.600 did was instead of allowing those tools to replace them, they took control of them. And, you know,

00:42:06.400 they took drum machines and they took synthesizers and they invented Detroit techno and they

00:42:10.280 invented new wave and they invented hip hop and they invented you know electronic music as it

00:42:16.200 exists today and as many manifestations they kind of took the thing that was threatening them with

00:42:20.480 displacement and incorporated it into what they were doing and made it essential to who they were

00:42:25.140 and used it to invent something new that they were integrally as human beings involved with

00:42:30.020 and i think that that act of kind of like i don't know like like jumping on the grenade or something

00:42:35.220 is like a really beautiful thing

00:42:37.480 that artists always do willingly or unwillingly

00:42:40.360 when they are faced with new technology.

00:42:42.900 And I think when new technology comes along,

00:42:45.060 you always have that choice.

00:42:46.400 Are you going to let it displace you?

00:42:48.220 Are you going to let it intimidate you?

00:42:49.540 Or are you going to take it, you know, jump on it,

00:42:52.920 find some new use for it and make it part of who you are

00:42:55.360 and give it back to the world in a new form?

00:42:57.740 That choice is always present.

00:42:59.840 And I think that's what I try to do in my work across the board.

00:43:02.280 And I think it's the only way that we're going to kind of keep on top of all of this technology.

00:43:08.440 And I think it's also very human.

00:43:10.460 I think it's what people always do.

00:43:14.120 We are always trying to create systems of meaning and beauty out of what is coming up ahead.

00:43:21.040 And I think that will never change.

00:43:23.720 When you think about it, isn't that what it means to be a woman online?

00:43:27.400 We're given the worst.

00:43:28.300 But somehow, we keep making art, keep connecting, keep building those little monuments to who we were and who we are.

00:43:35.800 We keep saying hello.

00:43:37.540 I was here.

00:43:38.880 You won't erase me.

00:43:42.180 There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by me, Bridget Todd.

00:43:45.420 It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative.

00:43:48.200 Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer.

00:43:50.260 Tari Harrison is our producer and sound engineer.

00:43:52.780 Michael Amato is our contributing producer.

00:43:54.740 I'm your host, Bridget Todd.

00:43:55.860 For more podcasts from iHeart, check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:44:25.860 Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.

00:44:34.460 These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.

00:44:38.280 Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:44:46.200 If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.

00:44:51.640 Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.

00:45:00.280 Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions.

00:45:08.540 Yeah, I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed.

00:45:10.300 Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:45:18.140 Hey, this is Hayes Davenport.

00:45:19.880 And Sean Clemens.

00:45:21.240 We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook.

00:45:23.400 Every episode, we're trying to help our guests improve their careers by mainly focusing on how they can help us improve our careers.

00:45:29.280 The show is famously super accessible, so you can easily jump into any of our 650 episodes and understand what's going on.

00:45:35.420 We recommend some of our recent episodes with Ben Stiller, Danny McBride, Riz Ahmed, and Mary Steenburgen.

00:45:40.380 Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

00:45:46.220 I'm Nick Turturro.

00:45:47.340 You probably know me from NYPD Blue, The Longest Yard, or Spike Lee's Black Klansman.

00:45:52.440 And on my new podcast, Delivering Happiness with Nick Turturro, I deliver pizza to a new guest.

00:45:57.500 I've shared a slice with everyone, from Seth Rollins.

00:46:00.140 What are you doing with my belt?

00:46:01.400 To Bill Burr.

00:46:02.300 I don't think I've ever met somebody so exactly out of their mind as I am.

00:46:07.380 And now, we even have more great guests coming up, including the great John Turturro.

00:46:12.060 It's called happiness.

00:46:13.100 Delivering happiness.

00:46:14.160 And many, many more.

00:46:15.420 Open your free iHeartRadio app, search Delivering Happiness with Nick Turturro, and listen now.

00:46:21.120 This is an iHeart Podcast.

00:46:23.540 Guaranteed human.

There Are No Girls on the Internet - July 07, 2020

How Women Built the Internet

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