Women Who Shaped Technology
Begin with Ada Lovelace's 1843 notes on the Analytical Engine. Continue through a communications patent, programming languages and research on the limits of automated classification. Each stop names a distinct contribution and points to its own sources.
A thematic reading path. These records do not establish direct influence between every woman. Specialist passage review pending.
1. Ada Lovelace
Read her notes on operations and the Bernoulli-number procedure. The proposed engine was not completed in her lifetime.
What did Lovelace distinguish between an operation and the object it acts on?
- Lovelace, Ada. 'Notes' to Sketch of the Analytical Engine, Scientific Memoirs, Vol. 3. Richard Taylor, 1843.Bibliographic reference. Consult the named edition through a library or publisher.
- Notes on Menabrea's Sketch of the Analytical Engine (1843), Note GBibliographic reference. Consult the named edition through a library or publisher.
2. Hedy Lamarr
Read the frequency-hopping patent she held with George Antheil. Keep the patent distinct from later wireless systems.
What exactly did the patent propose?
- Rhodes, Richard. Hedy’s Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr. Doubleday, 2011.Bibliographic reference. Consult the named edition through a library or publisher.
- US Patent and Trademark Office, Patent 2,292,387.Bibliographic reference. Consult the named edition through a library or publisher.
3. Grace Hopper
Follow her compiler work and FLOW-MATIC in the history of programming languages.
Who could use a programming language as it became easier to read?
- Beyer, Kurt W. Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age. MIT Press, 2009.Bibliographic reference. Consult the named edition through a library or publisher.
- Computer History Museum, Mountain View.Bibliographic reference. Consult the named edition through a library or publisher.
Read Gender Shades as research coauthored with Timnit Gebru, with measured disparities in commercial gender classification.
What did the study measure, and what did it leave open?
- Joy Buolamwini and Timnit Gebru. Gender Shades. PMLR 81:77-91, 2018.
Abstract and pp. 77-91
- Buolamwini, Joy. Unmasking AI: My Mission to Protect What Is Human in a World of Machines. Random House, 2023.Bibliographic reference. Consult the named edition through a library or publisher.
- Buolamwini, Joy and Gebru, Timnit. Gender Shades. Proceedings of Machine Learning Research, 2018.Bibliographic reference. Consult the named edition through a library or publisher.
Read Gebru's contribution to Gender Shades and her wider work on the social effects of AI systems.
How does an evaluation change when the population is not treated as uniform?
- Joy Buolamwini and Timnit Gebru. Gender Shades. PMLR 81:77-91, 2018.
Abstract and pp. 77-91
- Buolamwini, Joy and Gebru, Timnit. Gender Shades: Intersectional Accuracy Disparities in Commercial Gender Classification. Proceedings of Machine Learning Research, 2018.Bibliographic reference. Consult the named edition through a library or publisher.
- Bender, Emily M., Gebru, Timnit, et al. On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots. ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT), 2021.Bibliographic reference. Consult the named edition through a library or publisher.
Find Matria on the App Store