On Mon, Feb 11, 2013 at 6:07 AM, James Harkins <jamshark70@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Feb 11, 2013 11:16 AM, "Louis" <louis.gorenfeld@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> It's entirely possible that we'll see attitudes change in upcoming >> generations as more people are addicted to computers and catch the bug to >> want to create software. > > Unfortunately, the trend in the industry is toward mobile devices without > built-in developer toolkits. Maybe that will change eventually, but for now, > you need a computer to write for iOS or Android, and computers will, sooner > or later, become specialist tools. This makes it less likely that people > will discover the fun of tinkering with software, rather than more. Apple > seems to be steering in this direction, by locking iOS and charging for the > developer tools. A concrete impact in SuperCollider-land is that now, only a > small handful of developers are building and testing in OSX I don't see how that could be the case. XCode is still a totally free IDE, and you get all the tools necessary to build all kinds of apps except for iOS stuff. It's not like Windows where Microsoft has threatened to pull everything but Metro from their free version of MSVC and otherwise crippled the free versions. >> Btw, there's a similar gender discrepancy in electronic music (as far as >> I've noticed), and that requires no math... There's more going on here than >> sexism, afaik. > > You might not need to work directly with complex math formulas, but audio > engineering is highly technical. If someone feels discouraged to pursue > technical skills (because of social bias, say), then audio engineering won't > be a friendly place as soon as we start talking about filters' frequency > responses etc. Right, I think getting into technology is maybe discouraged for women, which is a shame. Or, as a woman I met at a party put it, "I got into videogames because I was too young to know girls weren't supposed to be into it". Of course, when I was a kid, I was just flat out into computer music. I wanted to create, and with a computer, you could have an entire band at your fingertips. The technical skill followed. > We all win if > we find ways to eliminate social biases that can cause that to happen. Right, and that's my main point. Of course, by definition, I think a true "geek" will pursue something they like regardless of whether it has society's stamp of approval. What we need are more stubborn non-conformists. I'd also like to put another point out there: I was at a super bowl party at a bar a couple weeks ago, and the gender ratio was surprisingly even. I don't know how many people on the list watch stuff like this, but there was no woman on-screen who wasn't reduced to a sex object. The entire program was aimed squarely at dudes. However, this kind of sexism didn't discourage a relatively large number of women from being interested in these sports. IMO, if you look at mainstream society, it shoots down the idea that women aren't interested in technology because of sexism in the workplace or even necessarily school. There is something else going on, and it's happening much earlier in peoples' development. -Louis _______________________________________________ Linux-audio-user mailing list Linux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user
