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>> Tonight's lecture is part of a published lecture series on women in leadership.

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This is an ongoing program, as you know,

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and it was designed to showcase

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prominent and successful women in leadership.

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And in leadership positions, actually.

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In an effort to motivate
the next generation of women leaders.

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We launched this last year,

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and the series aims to bring

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distinguished women researchers,

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scholars and leaders

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in science, engineering, and business,

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to share their experiences

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to the Stevens community,

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and since we're videotaping this,

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beyond the Stevens community.

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The thought is to inspire community.

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To inspire not only our female faculty and students,

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but the entire community.

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It is important, because if you --

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see, these are the things
I'm going to be mentioning --

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we're not doing such a great job

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in having women in STEM positions.

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It is relevant today, this topic of STEM.

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Despite our awareness of how important STEM fields are for our future,

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and we can call upon numbers,

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such as 80% to 85%, depending on who you listen to,

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of our GDP depends directly -- 
directly -- is related to technology.

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And if you look at the number of people that produce the technology, it's less than 4%

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of the workforce in the United States.

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So the importance of technology and STEM education is extremely important.

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But if you've seen, a couple weeks ago,

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the New York Times Magazine published an article,

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where the title was:

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Why Are There Still So Few Women In Science?

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I don't know if you've seen it.

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>> Yes.

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>> There's a very dramatic picture in front.

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The picture -- which essentially -- a 1927 picture,

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that was taken on the occasion of a Solvay Conference on physics,

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which brought up 29 prominent scientists,

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physicists, 17 of whom either had 
or were about to get -- I think it was -- a Nobel Prize.

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and only one out of the 29 was a woman.

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And those of you that read the article, probably --

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who do you think it was?

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Anybody?

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>> Marie Curie.

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>> Right.

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So...

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Today, current data 
do not paint any better a picture.

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A recent study by the 
National Science And Math Initiative

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revealed that only 30% of Bachelor degrees 
in engineering are held by women.

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23% of workers in STEM-related jobs are women,

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despite the fact that they make up 
48% of the workforce.

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And the higher you go up the corporate ladder,

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the less and the lower those percentages become.

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According to another report by the National Center 
of Women In information Technology,

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women hold just 9% of the IT management positions,

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and account for only 14% of the senior management positions in Silicon Valley, the startup world.

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All told, it's more imperative than ever now

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that we provide a forum to showcase the accomplishments of women leaders in this field,

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and we hope that others will inspire us

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and will inspire the next generation.

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I'm confident that it is because of the efforts
of women like Valerie Aurora,

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that we have with us today,

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that this goal will be achieved.

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So as many of you know,

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Valerie is with us today as a keynote speaker

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for the daylong conference organized by 
the College of Arts and Letters,

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that was devoted to celebrating
the accomplishments of Ada Lovelace,

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a truly remarkable woman of her own right.

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Ada is considered to be the very first
computer programmer,

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and said to be the inspiration behind

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much of the computer technology that has
become a routine for us today.

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Ms. Aurora has drawn inspiration

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from the life and works of Ada Lovelace,

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in founding The Ada Initiative,

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a not-for-profit organization that seeks

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to increase the participation of women in open technology and to advance women's literacy

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in the technology sector.

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Today, The Ada Initiative reaches 2 million leaders

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and emerging professionals in the tech sector and related fields, through various outreach efforts,

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that have been supported in part by Google, Mozilla, Microsoft, Bloomberg,

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the Linux Foundation, and Twitter.

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In addition to serving as the Executive Director 
of the Ada initiative,

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Valerie has also invented 
several new file system concepts,

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including relative datetime and power saving features in file systems widely used in Linux, Mac OS X,

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Solaris, and OpenBSD.

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She served as senior software engineer at IBM, Intel...
IBM, Intel, and Sun Microsystems,

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that were in California for some time.

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And currently serves as a consultant and
senior software engineer at Red Hat,

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the leading global provider 
of Open Source solutions.

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In 2011, Feminomics listed Aurora as number three amongst the top 50 women to watch in technology,

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and in 2012, SC Magazine named her one of the most influential people in computer security.

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She holds a double degree in computer science and mathematics from the New Mexico Institute

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of Mining and Technology,

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and continues to inspire women across the globe

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to study these disciplines and apply them
in a creative and impactful way.

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So I'm really thankful for the organizers of the conference for having captured Valerie

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and brought her here today,

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and I'm thankful to her for being willing to spend some time with us this evening.

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To give us a flavor of what it is
to be a woman in leadership,

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and what it is to inspire others 
to go into STEM fields.

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So with that, Valerie, thank you.

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(applause)

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>> Thank you so much for the very 
flattering introduction.

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I forgot I used to do those things.

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I want to make one quick correction.

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This was amazingly correct for an introduction.

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I don't currently work at Red Hat anymore.

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Ada Initiative is my full-time job.

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But Red Hat -- great company.

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So yes, I am super excited to be here.

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It was not at all difficult to capture me.

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Ada Lovelace has been a long time interest of mine,

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and I was just so excited to even get to attend 
this conference, much less get to speak at it.

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So thank you, Robin Hammerman,
and everyone who made this possible.

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So I'm going to talk today

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about rebooting the Ada Lovelace mythos.

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I'll talk quickly about my non-profit first.

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We -- The Ada Initiative, named after Ada Lovelace,

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is a non-profit dedicated to supporting

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and increasing the participation 
of women in open technology and culture.

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So that includes Open Source software,

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which is what's behind most of the internet.

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Most of Google, most of Facebook.

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If you've ever used Firefox,
that's all Open Source software.

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So I co-founded The Ada Initiative in 2011,

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after a friend of mine was groped for the third time in one year at an Open Source software conference.

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I just had it, and that's what I needed to do

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to change things and make the industry 
better for women.

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The Ada Initiative has several lead projects.

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Probably the most famous is the conference antiharassment policy.

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This is my solution to this kind of
physical assault, but also, like, pornography

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and sexist jokes that were common in our field,

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which many people just react to and say --
that's unthinkable,

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but that was how things were in 2011,

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and still are in many other fields.

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We've also done the AdaCamp unconference,

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for women in open technology and culture.

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It's incredibly fun.

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We get women together from 
the Open Library Technology Movement,

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from Wikipedia, from open hardware,
building little blinking lights into your jackets,

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and things like that.

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It's really fun.

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And we do training as well.

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We're supported almost entirely 
by individual donations.

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The conference sponsorships
only go so far.

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And you can support us yourself,
if you'd like.

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All right. I've done that.

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Now I get to talk about Ada Lovelace.

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So the very short version --

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this is a little ironic,

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because half of you have spent the day
learning all about Ada Lovelace,

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and half of you may have never heard of her before.

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So there will be a lot of review,

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but I'll try to make it interesting.

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So she wrote the world's first 
computer program in 1843.

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Yes, that's 1843.

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That's 160 years ago?

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It was written for a computer that didn't exist
and was not built,

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but it was still a computer program.

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She was known during her lifetime,
and even today,

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mostly as the only legitimate daughter
of the poet Lord Byron,

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and she died at age 36,
after a very painful illness,

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cutting off a promising career.

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So there's a lot of people who like to imagine --

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if she had lived, perhaps the computer age
would have started in 1850,

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instead of 1950.

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So it's sort of -- you can see why a myth built up around this amazing person.

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So the questions I wanted to explore for this talk
were to first talk about what are the stories we tell,

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what is the mythos today, about Ada Lovelace,

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what are the effects of those stories
on our society today,

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and the people around us and our technology,

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and what new stories could we tell,
that had better effects?

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So here's what to expect in the talk.

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So you aren't wondering where things are going.

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I'm going to start out with a cast of characters.

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The people who are important 
in the Ada Lovelace myth.

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I'm going to give a --
hopefully a rather brief biography of Ada,

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but covering the important points that come out
in the various versions of the stories.

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And I'm going to talk about how Ada was viewed
through history.

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Not just the different ways she's viewed today,

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but how her reputation changed and evolved,

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as time went by.

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And then I'm going to talk about my ideas 
for new stories to tell.

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And hopefully you can bring your own.

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So, to start out with the obvious person,

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the most famous person in this story
is Ada's father,

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the poet, Lord Byron, George Gordon.

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He was wildly famous in his lifetime.

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Often considered to be the most famous person
in Europe, up to that point in time.

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Sort of like a rock star, basically.

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The flip side -- and I'm going to make
some Byron fans angry, possibly --

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is that, even by the standards of his time,
Lord Byron was a violent, abusive,

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serial sexual predator.

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And he came from a long line of people
similar to him.

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His father was called Mad Jack.

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His great uncle was called The Wicked Lord.

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Unfortunately, I couldn't find a picture of him.

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For doing things like shooting his coachman,

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and throwing the body on his wife in the carriage,
and driving home.

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And because, at the time, he was a nobleman,

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he wasn't actually punished for this.

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So Byron himself was famously described as 
"mad, bad, and dangerous to know".

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And I just want to note --

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you can appreciate his poetry,

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while also acknowledging
that he was kind of a terrible human.

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So he died at age 36,
of illness, far from home,

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and cut off an amazing career.

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He was only partway through
many fantastic works of poetry,

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and we are all the worse for this.

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Ada's mother is an interesting person as well.

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A little less famous,
but just as strong a personality, I believe.

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Her name is Anne Isabella Milbanke,

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often known as Annabella.

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She was minor nobility,
and the strong, independent daughter

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of a strong, independent mother.

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Byron used to call her
the Princess of Parallelograms, here.

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She was very interested in mathematics,
and had that sort of rational, logical mind,

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or at least expressed herself that way.

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I don't think this was a compliment, personally.

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You can read some of his poetry and find out.

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So Byron left after only a month
into their marriage,

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and Annabella got really tired
of all the abuse, and separated.

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So Byron didn't see Ada again
after she was about a month old,

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and Annabella put a lot of effort into raising Ada,

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in order to try to reduce these
poetical tendencies,

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which is what they called it.

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You look at the family history.

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It's -- yeah, you can see
why she was so nervous.

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So our final character is Charles Babbage,

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who was a really famous inventor,
mathematician, engineer.

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That just covers a few of his careers.

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Who was famous in his own time,
but also was famous for a number --

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he was a character.

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He was known for his hatred of street music.

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Which -- I don't know if you've ever heard the joke
about paying the violinist to go away from your table.

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That's what street music was in London.

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In Victorian London.

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He designed but never built
the world's first general purpose computer,

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that conforms to our modern definition
of a general purpose computer,

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that can do anything any other computer can do.

243
00:15:31,264 --> 00:15:37,134
These are models of parts of this computer,
called the Analytical Engine.

244
00:15:37,134 --> 00:15:40,668
He designed it in the 1830s.

245
00:15:40,668 --> 00:15:46,054
So Ada and Babbage met
when she was 17 and he was 41.

246
00:15:46,054 --> 00:15:49,652
And they continued as good, close personal friends

247
00:15:49,652 --> 00:15:54,426
and scientific collaborators
for nearly 20 years, until her death.

248
00:15:54,426 --> 00:15:57,121
I do not...

249
00:15:57,121 --> 00:15:58,431
Yes, that does make sense.

250
00:15:58,431 --> 00:15:59,431
So Ada.

251
00:15:59,431 --> 00:16:01,133
We get to talk about Ada.

252
00:16:01,133 --> 00:16:03,567
So her full name was Augusta Ada Byron,

253
00:16:03,567 --> 00:16:06,341
when she married William King,
she became Augusta Ada Byron King,

254
00:16:06,341 --> 00:16:09,484
and later became the Countess of Lovelace.

255
00:16:09,484 --> 00:16:13,167
But strangely, we have this modern construction
of her name as Ada Lovelace.

256
00:16:13,167 --> 00:16:16,682
I'm not quite sure how that came about,
but that's who people are talking about.

257
00:16:16,682 --> 00:16:20,234
During her lifetime,
she was known primarily

258
00:16:20,234 --> 00:16:22,902
as Lord Byron's daughter.

259
00:16:22,902 --> 00:16:27,425
This is how I like to give an idea
of what her life was like.

260
00:16:27,425 --> 00:16:31,729
So Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love,

261
00:16:31,729 --> 00:16:33,295
both famous, famous rock stars,

262
00:16:33,295 --> 00:16:35,399
have one daughter, Frances Bean Cobain.

263
00:16:35,399 --> 00:16:37,868
He kills himself very early on.

264
00:16:37,868 --> 00:16:40,670
So the interesting thing
about Frances Bean

265
00:16:40,670 --> 00:16:44,212
is that Frances Bean --
I was trying to find a picture of her,

266
00:16:44,212 --> 00:16:46,067
and she has succeeded --
good for her --

267
00:16:46,067 --> 00:16:50,297
in not having a single photograph of her
in the public domain.

268
00:16:50,297 --> 00:16:56,876
She's trying really hard to protect
her privacy.

269
00:16:56,876 --> 00:16:59,847
And you can see why.

270
00:16:59,847 --> 00:17:06,664
She's trying to define her own life,
and her own personality as an artist.

271
00:17:06,664 --> 00:17:13,099
So she recently did a display
of her visual art.

272
00:17:13,099 --> 00:17:14,217
She's a visual artist.

273
00:17:14,217 --> 00:17:16,635
Under a pseudonym,
and it was later on discovered.

274
00:17:16,635 --> 00:17:18,875
So this has an interesting parallel with Ada,

275
00:17:18,875 --> 00:17:22,717
in that she published --
she was very concerned about putting her name

276
00:17:22,717 --> 00:17:24,739
on any of her scientific work or publications,

277
00:17:24,739 --> 00:17:26,808
and you can see why.

278
00:17:26,808 --> 00:17:30,855
So here's a panel from Sydney Padua's
Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage.

279
00:17:30,855 --> 00:17:32,685
Sydney, raise your hand.

280
00:17:32,685 --> 00:17:34,753
It's a fantastic comic
about Ada Lovelace's --

281
00:17:34,753 --> 00:17:38,973
a fictionalized version
of Lovelace and Babbage's collaboration.

282
00:17:38,973 --> 00:17:44,306
But this is a really perfect summary
of Lady Byron's plan

283
00:17:44,306 --> 00:17:49,115
to keep Ada from going nuts
and shooting her way across Europe.

284
00:17:49,115 --> 00:17:53,779
So she decided she would teach her mathematics,

285
00:17:53,779 --> 00:17:55,141
to counteract the poetical influences,

286
00:17:55,141 --> 00:17:59,224
which is how Byron referred to his tendency
to be a terrible person.

287
00:17:59,224 --> 00:18:04,478
So the interesting thing about this is that,
at the same time she fulfilled

288
00:18:04,478 --> 00:18:08,606
all of the normal standards for women of her time
and her position,

289
00:18:08,606 --> 00:18:11,219
she had many, many, many other interests,

290
00:18:11,219 --> 00:18:13,568
including music, and specifically playing the harp.

291
00:18:13,568 --> 00:18:17,691
She wanted to build a flying machine,
using steam engines,

292
00:18:17,691 --> 00:18:19,840
and studying birds to do so.

293
00:18:19,840 --> 00:18:21,897
And an interesting thing I love --

294
00:18:21,897 --> 00:18:23,674
she loved horseback riding,

295
00:18:23,674 --> 00:18:25,501
and it was considered good for her health.

296
00:18:25,501 --> 00:18:28,433
This is a picture of her daughter,
Lady Anne Blunt,

297
00:18:28,433 --> 00:18:33,374
who dressed up as a Bedouin
and traveled across Northern Africa

298
00:18:33,374 --> 00:18:37,416
with her husband, and it was, you know,
the late 19th century,

299
00:18:37,416 --> 00:18:42,323
and ended up founding the most influential
Arabian horse stud,

300
00:18:42,323 --> 00:18:45,560
outside of Saudi Arabia.

301
00:18:45,560 --> 00:18:47,916
So she's a very, very interesting person.

302
00:18:47,916 --> 00:18:51,415
Along with Ada.

303
00:18:51,415 --> 00:18:56,464
So luckily for Ada,
having such a scientific and curious mind,

304
00:18:56,464 --> 00:19:01,004
amateur science was very in, at the time,
in her society.

305
00:19:01,004 --> 00:19:04,086
And so she went to a lot of salons and parties,

306
00:19:04,086 --> 00:19:06,482
where she met people like Charles Babbage,

307
00:19:06,482 --> 00:19:08,149
Mary Somerville,

308
00:19:08,149 --> 00:19:12,237
and many other of these amateur scientists,

309
00:19:12,237 --> 00:19:15,212
whose names are in the history books these days.

310
00:19:15,212 --> 00:19:17,903
So she followed the proper path,

311
00:19:17,903 --> 00:19:19,375
got married at age 19,

312
00:19:19,375 --> 00:19:20,641
had three children.

313
00:19:20,641 --> 00:19:23,751
Her husband became the Earl of Lovelace,

314
00:19:23,751 --> 00:19:25,752
which made her the Countess of Lovelace.

315
00:19:25,752 --> 00:19:31,462
So she -- during the time she was having
three children in about three years,

316
00:19:31,462 --> 00:19:34,020
she wasn't able to follow her studies much,

317
00:19:34,020 --> 00:19:35,571
but kept them up.

318
00:19:35,571 --> 00:19:37,027
Once she was an adult,

319
00:19:37,027 --> 00:19:39,494
and able to decide what she wanted to study,

320
00:19:39,494 --> 00:19:40,798
she continued with mathematics,

321
00:19:40,798 --> 00:19:42,810
and found some really good tutors.

322
00:19:42,810 --> 00:19:45,023
In particular, Augustus De Morgan,

323
00:19:45,023 --> 00:19:51,821
who you may be familiar, from your logic and algebra classes, as the namesake of De Morgan's law.

324
00:19:51,821 --> 00:19:54,348
He was an incredible mathematician,

325
00:19:54,348 --> 00:19:56,451
and he had an extraordinarily high,

326
00:19:56,451 --> 00:19:59,994
and probably justified opinion
of Ada Lovelace's potential.

327
00:19:59,994 --> 00:20:04,592
So Ada is looking for something to do,

328
00:20:04,592 --> 00:20:07,926
and at the suggestion of another scientist --

329
00:20:07,926 --> 00:20:09,998
what's Wheatstone's first name?

330
00:20:09,998 --> 00:20:11,494
>> Charles.

331
00:20:11,494 --> 00:20:12,583
>> Charles Wheatstone.

332
00:20:12,583 --> 00:20:15,619
Decides to translate 
a paper someone else has written,

333
00:20:15,619 --> 00:20:17,711
about Babbage's Analytical Engine.

334
00:20:17,711 --> 00:20:19,209
I think this is interesting.

335
00:20:19,209 --> 00:20:23,391
She was too humble to actually write
her own paper, so --

336
00:20:23,391 --> 00:20:24,745
oh, I know, I'll translate.

337
00:20:24,745 --> 00:20:27,709
This is a very common thing
for women in science at the time.

338
00:20:27,709 --> 00:20:31,142
There's an interesting note on the man
who wrote the paper,

339
00:20:31,142 --> 00:20:33,182
Luigi Menabrea.

340
00:20:33,182 --> 00:20:36,229
He ended up becoming 
the Prime Minister of Italy.

341
00:20:36,229 --> 00:20:39,212
so the connection between computers
and wealth and power, I think,

342
00:20:39,212 --> 00:20:41,093
was already in effect.

343
00:20:41,093 --> 00:20:46,027
So yeah,
when she sent the paper to Babbage

344
00:20:46,027 --> 00:20:48,231
for his approval, he said --

345
00:20:48,231 --> 00:20:49,806
why didn't you write your own paper?

346
00:20:49,806 --> 00:20:51,829
Would you like to add some notes?

347
00:20:51,829 --> 00:20:56,231
Ada said sure, and thus was born 
the world's first computer program.

348
00:20:56,231 --> 00:20:59,212
It's hard to read, because it's very small writing,

349
00:20:59,212 --> 00:21:01,318
because it's very large and complicated.

350
00:21:01,318 --> 00:21:06,983
So she ended up writing a program
to calculate something called the Bernoulli numbers,

351
00:21:06,983 --> 00:21:09,267
which are an extremely complex, difficult series,

352
00:21:09,267 --> 00:21:12,342
with great implications for science and mathematics.

353
00:21:12,342 --> 00:21:17,115
It was the first published computer program.

354
00:21:17,115 --> 00:21:24,293
So I just want to give a brief summary of the controversy over the first programmer title.

355
00:21:24,293 --> 00:21:28,190
We'll go over the change in public opinion
about whether she was the first

356
00:21:28,190 --> 00:21:30,354
computer programmer in more detail,

357
00:21:30,354 --> 00:21:33,865
but here's sort of the base facts behind it,

358
00:21:33,865 --> 00:21:37,089
as filtered through my feminist consciousness.

359
00:21:37,089 --> 00:21:41,323
So Babbage did obviously write
simple programs first,

360
00:21:41,323 --> 00:21:44,965
because he was designing this machine,
and needed to figure out what it would do.

361
00:21:44,965 --> 00:21:48,959
He wasn't actually super interested 
in doing stuff with the machine.

362
00:21:48,959 --> 00:21:50,551
he was more interested in the machine itself,

363
00:21:50,551 --> 00:21:53,069
so there are a number of very simple 
programs in his notes.

364
00:21:53,069 --> 00:21:56,461
The Bernoulli numbers program
was definitely the most complicated program

365
00:21:56,461 --> 00:21:58,712
written at that time.

366
00:21:58,712 --> 00:22:02,022
And we're calling a computer program
a series of instructions

367
00:22:02,022 --> 00:22:04,158
for a machine to carry out.

368
00:22:04,158 --> 00:22:08,964
The evidence is -- the contemporary evidence 
is very strong that Ada actually wrote this.

369
00:22:08,964 --> 00:22:10,590
There's a bunch of letters.

370
00:22:10,590 --> 00:22:13,992
Babbage makes a comment in his autobiography

371
00:22:13,992 --> 00:22:16,767
that's often misinterpreted
to mean he wrote it,

372
00:22:16,767 --> 00:22:18,831
but it really says that she wrote it.

373
00:22:18,831 --> 00:22:24,590
And then there's the fact that's normally
very important in science,

374
00:22:24,590 --> 00:22:26,378
which is that Ada published it first.

375
00:22:26,378 --> 00:22:29,076
That's usually how you establish priority.

376
00:22:29,076 --> 00:22:34,303
And in addition to that,
both Babbage and everyone who knew them

377
00:22:34,303 --> 00:22:37,796
and everyone who reads their papers
agrees that Ada had a much deeper

378
00:22:37,796 --> 00:22:41,995
and more complex understanding of the potential
of computer programming.

379
00:22:41,995 --> 00:22:42,969
So as far as I'm concerned,

380
00:22:42,969 --> 00:22:45,964
Ada is definitely for sure
the first computer programmer.

381
00:22:45,964 --> 00:22:48,717
Unfortunately, about this time,

382
00:22:48,717 --> 00:22:52,214
Ada also started to become
mentally and physically ill.

383
00:22:52,214 --> 00:22:56,887
She -- retroactive historical diagnoses,
for what they're worth,

384
00:22:56,887 --> 00:22:59,183
she probably had uterine cancer.

385
00:22:59,183 --> 00:23:02,973
She probably was bipolar,
also known as manic depressive.

386
00:23:02,973 --> 00:23:06,798
She began taking laudanum
and pot, and using Mesmerists,

387
00:23:06,798 --> 00:23:09,991
hypnotism, to control the pain and the mania.

388
00:23:09,991 --> 00:23:17,520
It's around this time as well
she began gambling,

389
00:23:17,520 --> 00:23:19,330
which actually meant betting on the horses.

390
00:23:19,330 --> 00:23:20,427
Not super unusual.

391
00:23:20,427 --> 00:23:24,432
And was probably unfaithful to her husband,
although a lot of the letters

392
00:23:24,432 --> 00:23:26,717
from that time are destroyed.

393
00:23:26,717 --> 00:23:29,905
What I can say for sure is that,
when she told her husband what she had done

394
00:23:29,905 --> 00:23:31,849
on her deathbed,
he refused to speak to her again,

395
00:23:31,849 --> 00:23:33,419
until her death.

396
00:23:33,419 --> 00:23:38,128
So I think it was probably pretty bad, for the time.

397
00:23:38,128 --> 00:23:40,635
This is a portrait taken of her
shortly before her death.

398
00:23:40,635 --> 00:23:43,631
The full size one
you can see pretty clearly --

399
00:23:43,631 --> 00:23:45,212
she's dying.

400
00:23:45,212 --> 00:23:47,586
It was pretty heartbreaking.

401
00:23:47,586 --> 00:23:50,531
She died at age 36,
the same age at her father,

402
00:23:50,531 --> 00:23:53,665
and oh, when you read her letters,

403
00:23:53,665 --> 00:23:57,387
she's constantly writing about how
she needs to take it carefully,

404
00:23:57,387 --> 00:24:01,907
develop her genius slowly,
build up a body of work piece by piece,

405
00:24:01,907 --> 00:24:05,177
when really she was this incredible intuitive thinker

406
00:24:05,177 --> 00:24:10,135
who came up with groundbreaking ideas
while writing footnotes,

407
00:24:10,135 --> 00:24:12,635
literal footnotes, to somebody else's paper.

408
00:24:12,635 --> 00:24:13,332
Right?

409
00:24:13,332 --> 00:24:16,325
And you want to go back in time
and just say -- just write it.

410
00:24:16,325 --> 00:24:17,137
Just write it.

411
00:24:17,137 --> 00:24:19,155
Forget about what everyone else thinks.

412
00:24:19,155 --> 00:24:20,493
Just do your work.

413
00:24:20,493 --> 00:24:24,136
Carpe diem, everyone here.

414
00:24:24,136 --> 00:24:26,133
Do it now.

415
00:24:26,133 --> 00:24:29,214
I wrote my first published paper
when I was 24,

416
00:24:29,214 --> 00:24:30,431
and not in grad school or anything,

417
00:24:30,431 --> 00:24:33,331
because I didn't know you weren't supposed to.

418
00:24:33,331 --> 00:24:36,743
Just go ahead and do it,
is my view.

419
00:24:36,743 --> 00:24:40,136
Okay. So that's the basic sort of
attempting to be pretty objective

420
00:24:40,136 --> 00:24:41,896
Ada Lovelace story.

421
00:24:41,896 --> 00:24:44,687
So how was Ada Lovelace viewed 
throughout history?

422
00:24:44,687 --> 00:24:47,301
We can start with the obvious.

423
00:24:47,301 --> 00:24:48,849
Byron's daughter.

424
00:24:48,849 --> 00:24:50,644
Like, here's Ada down here.

425
00:24:50,644 --> 00:24:52,990
That was, like, basically her whole life.

426
00:24:52,990 --> 00:24:56,820
This famous rock star person.

427
00:24:56,820 --> 00:24:58,217
So...

428
00:24:58,217 --> 00:25:01,564
Even in the initial call for papers for this conference,

429
00:25:01,564 --> 00:25:03,098
Robin, I hope you don't mind me calling this out --

430
00:25:03,098 --> 00:25:08,503
she was described as --
the conference about the achievements and legacies

431
00:25:08,503 --> 00:25:12,886
of the poet Lord Byron's only known
legitimate child, Ada Lovelace.

432
00:25:12,886 --> 00:25:17,011
So it's definitely the thing that hung over her,
her entire life.

433
00:25:17,011 --> 00:25:22,852
In 1833, she started to get
a little bit of a different reputation,

434
00:25:22,852 --> 00:25:26,221
which was part of this amateur science scene
that was going on.

435
00:25:26,221 --> 00:25:29,089
People noticed that she understood
what Babbage was saying,

436
00:25:29,089 --> 00:25:30,788
because nobody else did.

437
00:25:30,788 --> 00:25:34,064
But they were still --
when they would write letters,

438
00:25:34,064 --> 00:25:36,539
when they got home,
they would talk about how much Ada

439
00:25:36,539 --> 00:25:38,346
did or didn't resemble Byron.

440
00:25:38,346 --> 00:25:39,539
So that was...

441
00:25:39,539 --> 00:25:43,441
She was smart Byron's daughter,
at that point.

442
00:25:43,441 --> 00:25:47,037
1838, she got a different --
a little extra addition.

443
00:25:47,037 --> 00:25:48,093
The Countess of Lovelace,

444
00:25:48,093 --> 00:25:50,932
rather than Lady King.

445
00:25:50,932 --> 00:25:55,079
1843, the notes to the translation,
this first computer program,

446
00:25:55,079 --> 00:25:59,843
were published under just her initials, actually.

447
00:25:59,843 --> 00:26:01,515
Even her misspelled initials.

448
00:26:01,515 --> 00:26:05,545
But Babbage couldn't keep the secret entirely,

449
00:26:05,545 --> 00:26:08,428
and let Menabrea know
that actually it was Ada Lovelace.

450
00:26:08,428 --> 00:26:10,565
So a few people knew.

451
00:26:10,565 --> 00:26:16,474
In 1845, she discovered
that she was too immoral for the library.

452
00:26:16,474 --> 00:26:19,826
So this was a picture of the Royal Society Library.

453
00:26:19,826 --> 00:26:22,042
She wanted to get in,
so she could read books on mathematics,

454
00:26:22,042 --> 00:26:24,231
and things like that,
and she was advised

455
00:26:24,231 --> 00:26:26,950
that the word of her infidelity had gotten out,

456
00:26:26,950 --> 00:26:31,174
and she was not suited
to go read books in this building.

457
00:26:31,174 --> 00:26:32,465
Very much a thing.

458
00:26:32,465 --> 00:26:35,354
So that's one way to find out.

459
00:26:35,354 --> 00:26:36,624
Hey, I'd like to check out this book.

460
00:26:36,624 --> 00:26:39,255
No, sorry, we know you're having --
you're sleeping with so and so.

461
00:26:39,255 --> 00:26:40,587
What?

462
00:26:40,587 --> 00:26:41,706
So...

463
00:26:41,706 --> 00:26:45,083
1848, she was publicly acknowledged
as the author of the notes.

464
00:26:45,083 --> 00:26:47,570
No one really cared.

465
00:26:47,570 --> 00:26:51,309
1852, she dies,
and now she is Byron's dead daughter.

466
00:26:51,309 --> 00:26:57,117
Yes.

467
00:26:57,117 --> 00:27:03,973
She was in with -- yeah,
the second sentence, after saying where she died.

468
00:27:03,973 --> 00:27:05,955
She was the only daughter of Lord Byron.

469
00:27:05,955 --> 00:27:06,798
There you go.

470
00:27:06,798 --> 00:27:09,014
Blah-blah-blah, and then she was married
to some people and stuff,

471
00:27:09,014 --> 00:27:11,924
and they had babies,
and then it says she was distinguished

472
00:27:11,924 --> 00:27:13,582
for the strength of her intellect.

473
00:27:13,582 --> 00:27:15,709
So people noticed she was smart, at least.

474
00:27:15,709 --> 00:27:17,089
And that's kind of what she gets.

475
00:27:17,089 --> 00:27:18,942
That's all she gets in her biography.

476
00:27:18,942 --> 00:27:23,948
Lady Byron was kind of a mean person,

477
00:27:23,948 --> 00:27:28,749
and spent a lot of time making sure
everyone knew about Ada's faults and mistakes,

478
00:27:28,749 --> 00:27:30,914
starting around the time of her death.

479
00:27:30,914 --> 00:27:35,658
I'm not sure what her deal was,
but there you go.

480
00:27:35,658 --> 00:27:39,120
1864, Babbage wrote his autobiography,

481
00:27:39,120 --> 00:27:42,180
and in it, he has a very few mentions of her.

482
00:27:42,180 --> 00:27:46,895
I mean, there's this sense
that proper women shouldn't appear in public at all.

483
00:27:46,895 --> 00:27:50,733
Appear in the papers when you're born, 
when you're married, and when you died.

484
00:27:50,733 --> 00:27:52,439
And for the most part,
she succeeded in that.

485
00:27:52,439 --> 00:27:55,652
So Babbage mentions her,
praises her,

486
00:27:55,652 --> 00:27:57,345
talks about some of the work she's done.

487
00:27:57,345 --> 00:28:00,540
I'm not sure how many people
read all the way through his autobiography.

488
00:28:00,540 --> 00:28:03,080
But there you go.

489
00:28:03,080 --> 00:28:08,091
So there's -- then we have about a century
of crickets, you know.

490
00:28:08,091 --> 00:28:09,131
Not much going on.

491
00:28:09,131 --> 00:28:12,956
These are a few of the minor mentions
I could find here and there.

492
00:28:12,956 --> 00:28:15,461
In 1889, the notes were reprinted.

493
00:28:15,461 --> 00:28:20,424
1905, she has a literal footnote
in the history of calculating machines,

494
00:28:20,424 --> 00:28:23,217
by Maurice d'Ocagne.

495
00:28:23,217 --> 00:28:25,700
I kept meaning to look up
how to say that, but I never did.

496
00:28:25,700 --> 00:28:30,165
1932, she's mentioned in 
the MIT Technology Review.

497
00:28:30,165 --> 00:28:32,247
I was unable to find out what they said,

498
00:28:32,247 --> 00:28:36,149
because the MIT Technology Review's paywall
was not functioning,

499
00:28:36,149 --> 00:28:39,916
and I could not give them $9.99 to read this paper.

500
00:28:39,916 --> 00:28:41,129
So...

501
00:28:41,129 --> 00:28:42,952
Common.

502
00:28:42,952 --> 00:28:48,088
So 1950 is where the general public
begins to learn about Lovelace again,

503
00:28:48,088 --> 00:28:52,203
through Alan Turing,
who is a famous computer science pioneer,

504
00:28:52,203 --> 00:28:56,842
and worked -- was a key part 
of winning World War II.

505
00:28:56,842 --> 00:29:03,049
So Alan is very interested in machine intelligence,
artificial intelligence,

506
00:29:03,049 --> 00:29:05,279
and he writes about the objections to this.

507
00:29:05,279 --> 00:29:08,250
And he calls one of them Lady Lovelace's objection.

508
00:29:08,250 --> 00:29:11,278
Which I think is totally unfair,
because he completely misinterprets

509
00:29:11,278 --> 00:29:13,781
what she's trying to say,
on purpose, to make a point.

510
00:29:13,781 --> 00:29:20,401
In her notes, Lovelace is trying to counteract
this idea at the time --

511
00:29:20,401 --> 00:29:24,691
people were like -- whoa, this thing
just calculated the answer to 3 + 2.

512
00:29:24,691 --> 00:29:26,171
It must be living!

513
00:29:26,171 --> 00:29:28,423
You know, there was a famous question.

514
00:29:28,423 --> 00:29:30,750
What if I tell it the wrong question?

515
00:29:30,750 --> 00:29:32,376
Will it still give me the right answer?

516
00:29:32,376 --> 00:29:33,869
You know, people had no idea.

517
00:29:33,869 --> 00:29:35,146
So she was trying to explain --

518
00:29:35,146 --> 00:29:38,009
these machines can only do
what you tell them to do.

519
00:29:38,009 --> 00:29:40,617
Somebody still has to come up
with the problem, encode it,

520
00:29:40,617 --> 00:29:41,888
and stick it in the machine.

521
00:29:41,888 --> 00:29:44,945
Turing interpreted this as --
machines can never surprise you.

522
00:29:44,945 --> 00:29:47,050
It's like, well, no,
that's not what she was saying.

523
00:29:47,050 --> 00:29:52,133
But the question of artificial intelligence
is still alive today, of course.

524
00:29:52,133 --> 00:29:55,093
But yeah, at least Turing got her name
back in circulation.

525
00:29:55,093 --> 00:29:57,033
I have no idea
how he became aware of her.

526
00:29:57,033 --> 00:29:59,339
If it was a thing,
and everyone passed around the notes

527
00:29:59,339 --> 00:30:00,807
at Cambridge or something.

528
00:30:00,807 --> 00:30:02,505
I'd love to find that out.

529
00:30:02,505 --> 00:30:07,231
So in 1953,
somebody finally uses the words

530
00:30:07,231 --> 00:30:08,935
"first computer program".

531
00:30:08,935 --> 00:30:11,563
This is Bertram Bowden,
in Faster Than Thought,

532
00:30:11,563 --> 00:30:14,794
which is this hilarious attempt
to write a history of computing machines

533
00:30:14,794 --> 00:30:17,589
in 1953,
and he makes this comment of --

534
00:30:17,589 --> 00:30:23,282
thank you so much to my printers
for the fact that things are changing so quickly,

535
00:30:23,282 --> 00:30:25,963
I have to make corrections
between each proof,

536
00:30:25,963 --> 00:30:30,527
because stuff was being updated so quickly.

537
00:30:30,527 --> 00:30:34,099
So in this, he says:
"Lady Lovelace had undoubtedly

538
00:30:34,099 --> 00:30:39,000
a profound understanding of the principles of the machine," et cetera, and then wrote:

539
00:30:39,000 --> 00:30:43,703
"Including what we should now call a program
for computing the Bernoulli numbers,

540
00:30:43,703 --> 00:30:45,706
by a very sophisticated method."

541
00:30:45,706 --> 00:30:48,377
So that's the first time I can really say --
find someone who's not calling her

542
00:30:48,377 --> 00:30:53,547
Babbage's interpreter,
or explaining that stuff real good now.

543
00:30:53,547 --> 00:30:55,954
It's -- she wrote a computer program.

544
00:30:55,954 --> 00:31:01,576
So 1972, Isaac Azimov,
you know, famous science fiction writer,

545
00:31:01,576 --> 00:31:04,293
and science writer,
calls her the Mother of Computers.

546
00:31:04,293 --> 00:31:05,412
Which is interesting.

547
00:31:05,412 --> 00:31:06,894
I would call it the Mother of Programming.

548
00:31:06,894 --> 00:31:09,762
But, you know, these things
are not terribly well distinguished at the time.

549
00:31:09,762 --> 00:31:13,240
In 1976, the first book-length biography comes out,

550
00:31:13,240 --> 00:31:16,611
by a historian and fashion model,
Dorothy Langley Moore,

551
00:31:16,611 --> 00:31:18,314
which I think is a cool combination.

552
00:31:18,314 --> 00:31:23,357
I couldn't actually get a copy,
but there's a couple of articles

553
00:31:23,357 --> 00:31:25,782
written for a women's mathematics newsletter,

554
00:31:25,782 --> 00:31:29,151
which used the words "first computer programmer".

555
00:31:29,151 --> 00:31:31,556
It also talked about her gambling,
and things like that.

556
00:31:31,556 --> 00:31:32,861
So as far as I can tell,

557
00:31:32,861 --> 00:31:36,649
1976 is the time when people said
"first computer programmer",

558
00:31:36,649 --> 00:31:39,316
and not just the first computer program.

559
00:31:39,316 --> 00:31:40,942
So yeah, it only took...

560
00:31:40,942 --> 00:31:47,204
133 years
for people to come to this point.

561
00:31:47,204 --> 00:31:52,238
So there's 133 years of Lovelace not being 
the first computer programmer.

562
00:31:52,238 --> 00:31:55,290
Being Byron's daughter,
being someone who explained Babbage pretty well.

563
00:31:55,290 --> 00:31:57,740
And then that's when that finally happened.

564
00:31:57,740 --> 00:32:02,656
So 1980 is when the Department of Defense
issued a new language standard,

565
00:32:02,656 --> 00:32:06,067
and named it Ada,
in honor of Ada Lovelace.

566
00:32:06,067 --> 00:32:08,522
This is an Ada language computer program.

567
00:32:08,522 --> 00:32:13,069
One of the parts they skipped
in my resume for the introduction

568
00:32:13,069 --> 00:32:18,399
is that I wrote Ada programs for a living,
for six months, straight out of college.

569
00:32:18,399 --> 00:32:19,497
I don't recommend it.

570
00:32:19,497 --> 00:32:21,136
It's a really unpleasant language.

571
00:32:21,136 --> 00:32:27,454
But naming her -- naming the language after her
shows the regard she was held in at that time.

572
00:32:27,454 --> 00:32:30,511
At least by the United States 
Department of Defense.

573
00:32:30,511 --> 00:32:36,068
so in 1985, Dorothy Stein --
you can barely see this.

574
00:32:36,068 --> 00:32:40,022
The cover is deathly black,
and I think that reflects the opinions of the author.

575
00:32:40,022 --> 00:32:45,396
In 1995, Dorothy Stein published
the second book-length biography

576
00:32:45,396 --> 00:32:47,476
of Ada Lovelace, that I'm aware of.

577
00:32:47,476 --> 00:32:52,176
Which -- she presents her
as mad, bad, and moderately smart.

578
00:32:52,176 --> 00:32:59,951
So Dorothy Stein really had some kind of issues
with Ada Lovelace.

579
00:32:59,951 --> 00:33:00,924
I'm not sure what.

580
00:33:00,924 --> 00:33:07,051
But even Dorothy Stein still acknowledged
that Ada wrote that first computer program.

581
00:33:07,051 --> 00:33:08,556
She just thought that she was a terrible person.

582
00:33:08,556 --> 00:33:10,220
So...

583
00:33:10,220 --> 00:33:16,011
1986, there's a very short book
about Ada Lovelace,

584
00:33:16,011 --> 00:33:18,257
and mostly her work, which is nice.

585
00:33:18,257 --> 00:33:22,096
I think it must have been a response
to Stein, based on the forward.

586
00:33:22,096 --> 00:33:24,667
Like "Recently,
some people have said..."

587
00:33:24,667 --> 00:33:28,402
It's actually a pretty nice work,
especially if you're interested

588
00:33:28,402 --> 00:33:30,079
in computer programming.

589
00:33:30,079 --> 00:33:33,340
And she's portrayed
as a complex, whole, flawed person,

590
00:33:33,340 --> 00:33:35,493
who did some good work as well.

591
00:33:35,493 --> 00:33:37,209
So... Unfortunately, it's not very popular.

592
00:33:37,209 --> 00:33:39,139
I really enjoyed reading it, but...

593
00:33:39,139 --> 00:33:41,908
All right, so now we get into the wars.

594
00:33:41,908 --> 00:33:42,933
The full wars.

595
00:33:42,933 --> 00:33:45,185
I mean, Stein was not that great, but wow.

596
00:33:45,185 --> 00:33:48,950
1990, Alan G. Bromley,
a respected computer historian,

597
00:33:48,950 --> 00:33:50,457
wrote an article in...

598
00:33:50,457 --> 00:33:54,475
In which he outright denies
that she's the first computer programmer,

599
00:33:54,475 --> 00:33:56,724
besides saying, of course,
she's arrogant and deluded,

600
00:33:56,724 --> 00:33:57,740
and all these things.

601
00:33:57,740 --> 00:34:02,411
While, at the same time,
because their letters are so clear,

602
00:34:02,411 --> 00:34:03,825
even he couldn't deny this.

603
00:34:03,825 --> 00:34:08,044
He says that she caught a bug
in the program that Babbage wrote.

604
00:34:08,044 --> 00:34:10,817
So there's this saying that's common
among computer scientists.

605
00:34:10,817 --> 00:34:17,692
That, if you write a computer program,
that's the very most complicated one you can write.

606
00:34:17,692 --> 00:34:20,274
You aren't smart enough to debug it.

607
00:34:20,274 --> 00:34:24,972
It's more difficult to debug a computer program
than it is to write it in the first place.

608
00:34:24,972 --> 00:34:28,597
So that a historian of computing
could make that claim

609
00:34:28,597 --> 00:34:31,678
I think kind of speaks
for that bias there.

610
00:34:31,678 --> 00:34:36,870
Also in 1990,
Bruce Collier's PhD thesis.

611
00:34:36,870 --> 00:34:39,936
Calls her mad as a hatter.

612
00:34:39,936 --> 00:34:42,364
That's real scholarly language there,

613
00:34:42,364 --> 00:34:45,544
and says she contributed little
or nothing to the notes.

614
00:34:45,544 --> 00:34:50,379
So yeah, that's kind of awesome as well.

615
00:34:50,379 --> 00:34:55,670
Actually, Sydney pointed out to me
an interesting point,

616
00:34:55,670 --> 00:34:59,005
which is that many of these people
who are so passionately against

617
00:34:59,005 --> 00:35:02,672
Lovelace having any involvement
in the first computer program

618
00:35:02,672 --> 00:35:05,837
are also very passionate
pro-Babbage people.

619
00:35:05,837 --> 00:35:07,252
Charles Babbage --

620
00:35:07,252 --> 00:35:10,703
they're really trying to reclaim
his place in computing history.

621
00:35:10,703 --> 00:35:12,295
Sure, his machine never got built,

622
00:35:12,295 --> 00:35:14,336
but he's still really important,
and they're tired of people

623
00:35:14,336 --> 00:35:15,805
taking away his credit.

624
00:35:15,805 --> 00:35:19,973
So that could definitely be an issue
with the whole taking away Lovelace's credit,

625
00:35:19,973 --> 00:35:22,147
because there's only so much credit to go around.

626
00:35:22,147 --> 00:35:27,564
So in 1990,
we also get our first major fictional depiction

627
00:35:27,564 --> 00:35:31,549
of Ada Lovelace,
as a minor character in The Difference Engine,

628
00:35:31,549 --> 00:35:37,497
which is sort of the novel
that popularized the steampunk movement,

629
00:35:37,497 --> 00:35:41,788
which you're probably all more familiar
than you want to be with.

630
00:35:41,788 --> 00:35:46,222
So in the book,
Ada is portrayed

631
00:35:46,222 --> 00:35:48,668
as a mathematical genius.

632
00:35:48,668 --> 00:35:52,334
She's also kind of not that bright
when it comes to the ways of the world,

633
00:35:52,334 --> 00:35:54,758
and is busy trying to gamble,
and all that kind of stuff.

634
00:35:54,758 --> 00:35:59,378
So it's sort of an absent-minded
professor stereotype.

635
00:35:59,378 --> 00:36:02,096
When you read Ada's letters,
she's probably not that practical,

636
00:36:02,096 --> 00:36:07,225
so part of what I like about this
is that they show her deriving

637
00:36:07,225 --> 00:36:11,398
and discovering mathematical theorems
that didn't come until the '30s,

638
00:36:11,398 --> 00:36:12,921
that are foundational.

639
00:36:12,921 --> 00:36:15,360
So it's a neat portrayal.

640
00:36:15,360 --> 00:36:20,796
1992 is the longest,
most sympathetic biography,

641
00:36:20,796 --> 00:36:25,110
called Ada, the Enchantress of Numbers,
by Betty Alexandra Toole.

642
00:36:25,110 --> 00:36:29,737
It's mostly the letters Ada sent,
and some sent to her.

643
00:36:29,737 --> 00:36:33,059
And she presents her --
she's very sympathetic.

644
00:36:33,059 --> 00:36:36,699
Presents her as ambitious,
complex, flawed, and brilliant.

645
00:36:36,699 --> 00:36:41,858
It unfortunately also tries to draw
a number of analogies

646
00:36:41,858 --> 00:36:45,227
between the Ada programming language
and Ada's thought process,

647
00:36:45,227 --> 00:36:47,996
which don't make a ton of sense,
as a computer programmer.

648
00:36:47,996 --> 00:36:51,214
But it's especially great
as a primary source

649
00:36:51,214 --> 00:36:53,878
for understanding who Ada was as a person.

650
00:36:53,878 --> 00:36:57,778
So I'll try to go a little more quickly
on the rest of these.

651
00:36:57,778 --> 00:37:00,651
1993, Tom Stoppard's Arcadia.

652
00:37:00,651 --> 00:37:04,234
He says that Ada Lovelace
was an inspiration

653
00:37:04,234 --> 00:37:08,437
for one of the characters,
a young girl who's working with a math tutor,

654
00:37:08,437 --> 00:37:11,234
and continually comes up with
mathematical ideas

655
00:37:11,234 --> 00:37:14,218
so ahead of her time
that he always dismisses them

656
00:37:14,218 --> 00:37:16,690
as nonsense,
and they're later rediscovered,

657
00:37:16,690 --> 00:37:19,671
and hailed as the first
understanding of fractals,

658
00:37:19,671 --> 00:37:21,187
so I thought that was a neat portrayal.

659
00:37:21,187 --> 00:37:23,501
Very accurate to her life.

660
00:37:23,501 --> 00:37:26,170
In 1997,
I have not been able

661
00:37:26,170 --> 00:37:27,830
to bring myself to watch this movie.

662
00:37:27,830 --> 00:37:29,267
There's a movie called Conceiving Ada,

663
00:37:29,267 --> 00:37:32,171
which is sort of loosely inspired
by something or other.

664
00:37:32,171 --> 00:37:37,416
In it, Ada Lovelace
figures out how to communicate

665
00:37:37,416 --> 00:37:40,374
back and forth with the future,
by the means of undying information waves,

666
00:37:40,374 --> 00:37:42,546
and the people in the future
think she's so important,

667
00:37:42,546 --> 00:37:45,220
they're trying to bring her back to life
by genetic engineering,

668
00:37:45,220 --> 00:37:46,927
or so Wikipedia tells me.

669
00:37:46,927 --> 00:37:49,608
So clearly -- pretty sure
it was a positive portrayal,

670
00:37:49,608 --> 00:37:51,185
or at least intended to be.

671
00:37:51,185 --> 00:37:52,400
So...

672
00:37:52,400 --> 00:37:54,722
1998, the British Computing Society

673
00:37:54,722 --> 00:37:56,801
creates the Lovelace Medal in her honor.

674
00:37:56,801 --> 00:37:59,563
This is the 2007 Lovelace Medal winner,

675
00:37:59,563 --> 00:38:01,006
Karen Sparck Jones.

676
00:38:01,006 --> 00:38:03,773
The Ada Initiative considered 
naming ourselves after her,

677
00:38:03,773 --> 00:38:06,757
but Sparck Jones
just wasn't quite as good as Ada.

678
00:38:06,757 --> 00:38:08,370
Sparck would have been awesome.

679
00:38:08,370 --> 00:38:09,942
The Sparck Initiative.

680
00:38:09,942 --> 00:38:13,315
So 2000, Doron Swade
comes up with a history

681
00:38:13,315 --> 00:38:16,046
of Charles Babbage's computing machines,

682
00:38:16,046 --> 00:38:19,925
in which he describes Ada
as deluded, bossy,

683
00:38:19,925 --> 00:38:22,197
coquettish, and demanding,

684
00:38:22,197 --> 00:38:24,376
which are all, like,
wonderfully gendered insults.

685
00:38:24,376 --> 00:38:30,010
I took a photo of the index --
entry in the index for Lovelace,

686
00:38:30,010 --> 00:38:32,376
because I just thought it was so
representative.

687
00:38:32,376 --> 00:38:37,778
He says "exaggeration of contribution
to Babbage's engines, 166-9"

688
00:38:37,778 --> 00:38:43,045
"Self-regard and conviction of own genius, 158-9".

689
00:38:43,045 --> 00:38:45,342
Babbage didn't think
he was a genius, no.

690
00:38:45,342 --> 00:38:48,646
No, Babbage thought he was a genius,
just in case you weren't sure.

691
00:38:48,646 --> 00:38:52,510
Again, another Babbage-ist, right?

692
00:38:52,510 --> 00:38:59,575
2001, I mean, this is supposedly
a book about Ada and her achievements,

693
00:38:59,575 --> 00:39:02,104
by Benjamin Woolley,
the Bride of Science,

694
00:39:02,104 --> 00:39:05,026
but it focuses mostly
on her emotions,

695
00:39:05,026 --> 00:39:07,301
and her life, and her personal life,
and all that stuff,

696
00:39:07,301 --> 00:39:12,306
and it's not that...
It's only a part of her life,

697
00:39:12,306 --> 00:39:13,888
shall we say.

698
00:39:13,888 --> 00:39:16,653
So 2009,
Suw Charman-Anderson,

699
00:39:16,653 --> 00:39:20,850
who is in some way, perhaps,
responsible for all of this happening,

700
00:39:20,850 --> 00:39:23,485
founded Ada Lovelace Day,

701
00:39:23,485 --> 00:39:27,523
which is now --
to raise the profile

702
00:39:27,523 --> 00:39:30,106
of women in science,
technology, engineering, and mathematics.

703
00:39:30,106 --> 00:39:31,636
That's the STEM we keep talking about.

704
00:39:31,636 --> 00:39:34,493
It's grown and grown.

705
00:39:34,493 --> 00:39:39,899
This conference was actually scheduled
to go with Ada Lovelace Day.

706
00:39:39,899 --> 00:39:44,771
It's just a fantastic time,
where people write blog posts

707
00:39:44,771 --> 00:39:46,615
and update Wikipedia pages

708
00:39:46,615 --> 00:39:47,905
about women scientists.

709
00:39:47,905 --> 00:39:49,435
They're just the greatest stories.

710
00:39:49,435 --> 00:39:51,918
All the stories we know are so boring.

711
00:39:51,918 --> 00:39:56,306
I think you can say at this point in time
Ada Lovelace is definitely a feminist icon

712
00:39:56,306 --> 00:39:59,107
in the popular imagination,
if she wasn't already.

713
00:39:59,107 --> 00:40:05,494
2009, by no coincidence,
because they were friends,

714
00:40:05,494 --> 00:40:10,563
Sydney Padua put together the first
and assumed to be last issue

715
00:40:10,563 --> 00:40:14,566
of the comic, the Origin of Ada Lovelace,

716
00:40:14,566 --> 00:40:18,365
which became this wonderful series
called Lovelace and Babbage.

717
00:40:18,365 --> 00:40:22,901
In it, she and Babbage
team up to fight crime.

718
00:40:22,901 --> 00:40:25,522
They just have different definitions of crime.

719
00:40:25,522 --> 00:40:28,021
She thinks it's poetry.

720
00:40:28,021 --> 00:40:29,188
He thinks it's music.

721
00:40:29,188 --> 00:40:30,317
You can see why.

722
00:40:30,317 --> 00:40:35,353
She's not just, like,
sort of the more practical person,

723
00:40:35,353 --> 00:40:36,897
which is what she was in their lifetime.

724
00:40:36,897 --> 00:40:40,157
She's also shown as, like, brooding and brilliant,
and occasionally unhinged.

725
00:40:40,157 --> 00:40:44,800
It's a really fun, full-featured person.

726
00:40:44,800 --> 00:40:49,023
It's not Ada herself,
but it's a great person who could exist,

727
00:40:49,023 --> 00:40:50,313
and you want to get to know better,

728
00:40:50,313 --> 00:40:52,636
and has all sorts of hilarious gags.

729
00:40:52,636 --> 00:40:53,807
So check it out.

730
00:40:53,807 --> 00:40:56,016
I can't leave out The Ada Initiative.

731
00:40:56,016 --> 00:41:01,389
2011,
we use Ada as our --

732
00:41:01,389 --> 00:41:05,699
we did a new modern portrait of her.

733
00:41:05,699 --> 00:41:10,712
The Ada Initiative is focused more
on Open Source software

734
00:41:10,712 --> 00:41:11,967
than software in general.

735
00:41:11,967 --> 00:41:13,687
We try to keep our scope.

736
00:41:13,687 --> 00:41:15,635
So the thing we brought to the Ada Lovelace story

737
00:41:15,635 --> 00:41:18,521
is that she's the world's first
Open Source software programmer,

738
00:41:18,521 --> 00:41:21,062
because she published the source code 
to her program,

739
00:41:21,062 --> 00:41:24,083
and whether or not she meant it
to be under any kind of license,

740
00:41:24,083 --> 00:41:27,552
it went into the public domain
some time in the 19th century.

741
00:41:27,552 --> 00:41:30,809
So anybody can take this code,
alter it, and reuse it.

742
00:41:30,809 --> 00:41:32,192
It's Open Source software.

743
00:41:32,192 --> 00:41:33,183
So...

744
00:41:33,183 --> 00:41:35,651
The world's first computer programmer
was also a woman,

745
00:41:35,651 --> 00:41:37,989
who was also an Open Source programmer.

746
00:41:37,989 --> 00:41:43,995
So there's been some more
recent fictional depictions,

747
00:41:43,995 --> 00:41:47,501
which I only learned about
thanks to Vicky's talk earlier today.

748
00:41:47,501 --> 00:41:51,194
And here's a book
that came out in 2011,

749
00:41:51,194 --> 00:41:52,785
All Men of Genius.

750
00:41:52,785 --> 00:41:55,619
She's a character who's in her 60s,

751
00:41:55,619 --> 00:41:59,350
and is successful, respected,
influential, a bit naughty.

752
00:41:59,350 --> 00:42:03,162
I am so excited this book exists.

753
00:42:03,162 --> 00:42:05,268
The Lazarus Machine.

754
00:42:05,268 --> 00:42:08,518
In it, she co-founds a computer company 
with Babbage.

755
00:42:08,518 --> 00:42:10,719
This is great, because it's a direct --

756
00:42:10,719 --> 00:42:15,274
it's great for many reasons,
but she proposed this to Babbage

757
00:42:15,274 --> 00:42:16,152
in one of her letters.

758
00:42:16,152 --> 00:42:17,378
We have a letter that says --
hey, Babbage.

759
00:42:17,378 --> 00:42:19,853
Why don't you let me take care
of the business and the PR,

760
00:42:19,853 --> 00:42:22,136
and then we could actually get these
engines built?

761
00:42:22,136 --> 00:42:23,435
And he's like -- well, no, of course not.

762
00:42:23,435 --> 00:42:24,962
I don't want to let go of all that control.

763
00:42:24,962 --> 00:42:28,106
But this is kind of a neat idea
of what could have happened.

764
00:42:28,106 --> 00:42:31,168
And this is a new biography
that just came out on Tuesday,

765
00:42:31,168 --> 00:42:32,103
so I haven't read it.

766
00:42:32,103 --> 00:42:34,270
Called A Female Genius.

767
00:42:34,270 --> 00:42:40,187
All I can tell from the blurb
is that he believes

768
00:42:40,187 --> 00:42:43,203
that she wrote the computer program,
she was hampered by sexism,

769
00:42:43,203 --> 00:42:45,324
and that she and Babbage became lovers.

770
00:42:45,324 --> 00:42:49,954
Which I see no hints of,
but that's another story we can tell.

771
00:42:49,954 --> 00:42:53,774
So here's what I think
are the top four stories that we tell

772
00:42:53,774 --> 00:42:54,772
about Ada Lovelace today.

773
00:42:54,772 --> 00:43:00,066
And I'll talk about each one of them,
and what's the effect it has on society.

774
00:43:00,066 --> 00:43:03,646
So the first computer programmer --

775
00:43:03,646 --> 00:43:05,571
just, like, this really one-dimensional story.

776
00:43:05,571 --> 00:43:10,419
And it ignores all the rest of her life,

777
00:43:10,419 --> 00:43:14,212
and perpetuates this horrible stereotype
that computer programmers

778
00:43:14,212 --> 00:43:16,650
have to only be interested in computing.

779
00:43:16,650 --> 00:43:18,916
I was definitely considered
a very strange person in college,

780
00:43:18,916 --> 00:43:20,792
studying computer science,

781
00:43:20,792 --> 00:43:24,390
because I liked my English literature class.

782
00:43:24,390 --> 00:43:25,798
"What's wrong with you?"

783
00:43:25,798 --> 00:43:30,020
Ada rode horses and played music.

784
00:43:30,020 --> 00:43:32,189
She was much more like a complex fractal,

785
00:43:32,189 --> 00:43:33,332
and I really want people --

786
00:43:33,332 --> 00:43:35,525
besides the good interests,

787
00:43:35,525 --> 00:43:39,434
she gambled, and cheated on her husband,

788
00:43:39,434 --> 00:43:42,109
and had children,
and had mixed feelings about her children,

789
00:43:42,109 --> 00:43:43,438
and was trying to be a good daughter.

790
00:43:43,438 --> 00:43:44,437
All that stuff.

791
00:43:44,437 --> 00:43:48,518
And she was able to come up with
these amazing advances in computing.

792
00:43:48,518 --> 00:43:51,959
So you just don't have to be this single-minded,
nose-down kind of person.

793
00:43:51,959 --> 00:43:55,485
So as an icon for women in STEM,
this is limiting,

794
00:43:55,485 --> 00:43:57,297
and I'm guilty of this, obviously.

795
00:43:57,297 --> 00:44:00,521
For several reasons,
but one is that it erases

796
00:44:00,521 --> 00:44:03,071
the other people,
other women who were working in STEM,

797
00:44:03,071 --> 00:44:04,063
at that time.

798
00:44:04,063 --> 00:44:06,770
It makes her seem like
an exceptional, strange person.

799
00:44:06,770 --> 00:44:08,023
You know, Lord Byron's daughter.

800
00:44:08,023 --> 00:44:09,775
Her incredible mental gifts.

801
00:44:09,775 --> 00:44:10,688
Which she had.

802
00:44:10,688 --> 00:44:14,716
But she also had the ability
to have a mathematics education,

803
00:44:14,716 --> 00:44:18,241
and if more women had
had the same mathematics education,

804
00:44:18,241 --> 00:44:21,253
they could have also accomplished
similar things.

805
00:44:21,253 --> 00:44:23,213
Here are a few of her contemporaries.

806
00:44:23,213 --> 00:44:25,960
Marie Sophie Germain
was a physicist.

807
00:44:25,960 --> 00:44:28,888
Mary Somerville
was one of her good friends,

808
00:44:28,888 --> 00:44:30,459
and a mathematician and scientist.

809
00:44:30,459 --> 00:44:34,291
And Maria Mitchell was an astronomer.

810
00:44:34,291 --> 00:44:37,204
And these are all just women
whose names were variations on Mary.

811
00:44:37,204 --> 00:44:38,515
So many, many women.

812
00:44:38,515 --> 00:44:41,593
The problem with the delusional --
the Stein take.

813
00:44:41,593 --> 00:44:44,238
She's delusional, immoral,
a terrible person.

814
00:44:44,238 --> 00:44:45,510
Oh yeah,
she wrote the first computer program.

815
00:44:45,510 --> 00:44:49,757
That's not the focus we give
to male scientists.

816
00:44:49,757 --> 00:44:53,546
These are just three --
these are the first three male scientists I thought of,

817
00:44:53,546 --> 00:44:56,659
and they all --
Nicola Tesla, John Nash --

818
00:44:56,659 --> 00:44:59,709
a mathematician, but --
and Isaac Newton.

819
00:44:59,709 --> 00:45:03,543
They all had terrible mental problems,
and terrible personal problems,

820
00:45:03,543 --> 00:45:06,936
but nobody diminishes their science
as a result of it.

821
00:45:06,936 --> 00:45:13,552
Focusing on her personality and life
and putting down her accomplishments,

822
00:45:13,552 --> 00:45:14,967
as a result, I mean,
people do say --

823
00:45:14,967 --> 00:45:16,108
well, she was so arrogant.

824
00:45:16,108 --> 00:45:18,130
She was clearly manic depressive.

825
00:45:18,130 --> 00:45:20,416
Therefore, she could not have written
the computer program.

826
00:45:20,416 --> 00:45:23,746
Well, let's talk schizophrenic.

827
00:45:23,746 --> 00:45:25,302
Let's talk manic depressive.

828
00:45:25,302 --> 00:45:26,628
Let's talk --
I don't know what was going on

829
00:45:26,628 --> 00:45:27,758
with Isaac Newton.

830
00:45:27,758 --> 00:45:29,780
But I'm glad it happened,
because it furthered science.

831
00:45:29,780 --> 00:45:33,485
But that's only a claim people make
for women, and not men.

832
00:45:33,485 --> 00:45:36,965
And then this is the 100%
all bad, all across the way,

833
00:45:36,965 --> 00:45:39,162
total fraud point of view.

834
00:45:39,162 --> 00:45:40,670
There's this great book --
if you haven't read it,

835
00:45:40,670 --> 00:45:41,932
you need to go buy it right away.

836
00:45:41,932 --> 00:45:44,673
Unfortunately, I think it's out of print,
but it's easy to get used.

837
00:45:44,673 --> 00:45:47,398
Yeah, hm, wonder why it's out of print.

838
00:45:47,398 --> 00:45:49,401
It's called How to Suppress Women's Writing,

839
00:45:49,401 --> 00:45:50,711
by Joanna Russ.

840
00:45:50,711 --> 00:45:52,353
It's a Bible.

841
00:45:52,353 --> 00:45:54,802
And you can replace all of, like,
writing with programming,

842
00:45:54,802 --> 00:45:56,890
or any kind of science in here,
and it's all the same.

843
00:45:56,890 --> 00:45:59,485
So the general attacks are --

844
00:45:59,485 --> 00:46:00,441
she didn't write it.

845
00:46:00,441 --> 00:46:02,633
That's a claim people make about Ada.

846
00:46:02,633 --> 00:46:04,966
She wrote it,
but she only wrote one of it.

847
00:46:04,966 --> 00:46:06,613
She only wrote one paper, you guys.

848
00:46:06,613 --> 00:46:07,526
Clearly.

849
00:46:07,526 --> 00:46:10,108
She wrote it,
but she had help.

850
00:46:10,108 --> 00:46:12,360
Look, she and Babbage corresponded,

851
00:46:12,360 --> 00:46:14,526
because he was the only --
he wouldn't write down

852
00:46:14,526 --> 00:46:17,055
his own -- the description of his own machine.

853
00:46:17,055 --> 00:46:17,907
Yeah.

854
00:46:17,907 --> 00:46:21,719
And then there's sort of a final one,

855
00:46:21,719 --> 00:46:23,751
which is she wrote it,
but it's not art,

856
00:46:23,751 --> 00:46:25,023
and she's not an artist.

857
00:46:25,023 --> 00:46:26,024
And that's one of the arguments.

858
00:46:26,024 --> 00:46:27,447
Well, that wasn't...

859
00:46:27,447 --> 00:46:29,050
She wrote it,
but it wasn't a computer program.

860
00:46:29,050 --> 00:46:31,949
And she was not a computer programmer.

861
00:46:31,949 --> 00:46:33,021
How could she be?

862
00:46:33,021 --> 00:46:33,863
Blah-blah-blah.

863
00:46:33,863 --> 00:46:35,101
She had no compiler.

864
00:46:35,101 --> 00:46:36,738
So that's just --

865
00:46:36,738 --> 00:46:39,937
when you're telling that story,
that's what you're subscribing to.

866
00:46:39,937 --> 00:46:42,530
So here are a few of my ideas

867
00:46:42,530 --> 00:46:43,838
for new stories we can tell.

868
00:46:43,838 --> 00:46:48,943
So there's this --
we'll start out kind of tame.

869
00:46:48,943 --> 00:46:53,225
Somebody should write a history
of women Victorian mathematicians and scientists,

870
00:46:53,225 --> 00:46:55,690
and their influence on modern day 
science and computing,

871
00:46:55,690 --> 00:46:58,121
and include Ada Lovelace, Mary Somerville,
all the rest,

872
00:46:58,121 --> 00:47:02,438
and things like the women's magazines
that had algebra puzzles in them.

873
00:47:02,438 --> 00:47:05,106
So that would give you, like,
the whole big picture,

874
00:47:05,106 --> 00:47:07,900
instead of being like --
oh, this freak who predicted computing.

875
00:47:07,900 --> 00:47:11,168
I like this one.

876
00:47:11,168 --> 00:47:12,496
I love Anne Hathaway.

877
00:47:12,496 --> 00:47:14,623
In a moving and sensitive portrayal,

878
00:47:14,623 --> 00:47:18,691
Anne Hathaway plays brilliant
yet tortured Victorian scientist Ada Lovelace,

879
00:47:18,691 --> 00:47:21,979
exploring the conflicting pull
of her passions towards mathematics,

880
00:47:21,979 --> 00:47:24,639
art, family, fame, and madness.

881
00:47:24,639 --> 00:47:27,664
Won Oscars for best actress,
best supporting actress,

882
00:47:27,664 --> 00:47:31,079
so this is going to pass the Bechdel Test, baby.

883
00:47:31,079 --> 00:47:33,182
And best picture.

884
00:47:33,182 --> 00:47:36,432
Yeah, and I was kind of thinking
of A Beautiful Mind,

885
00:47:36,432 --> 00:47:37,528
when I wrote this.

886
00:47:37,528 --> 00:47:38,650
Also Anne Hathaway.

887
00:47:38,650 --> 00:47:43,446
Maybe you can figure out
what I was thinking of here.

888
00:47:43,446 --> 00:47:47,329
Ada Lovelace and Mary Somerville
found an academy for young women,

889
00:47:47,329 --> 00:47:50,008
where they teach harp, horseback riding,
and computer programming.

890
00:47:50,008 --> 00:47:52,800
The second computer program
is a menstrual period tracker.

891
00:47:52,800 --> 00:47:57,965
Alumnae instigate and lead 
the information revolution of 1852.

892
00:47:57,965 --> 00:48:01,633
I imagine that they all wear, like,
black PVC dresses,

893
00:48:01,633 --> 00:48:03,966
and have big Xs on their chests.

894
00:48:03,966 --> 00:48:05,690
So yeah, that would be super fun.

895
00:48:05,690 --> 00:48:08,548
Ada Lovelace...

896
00:48:08,548 --> 00:48:10,338
See if you can get this one.

897
00:48:10,338 --> 00:48:13,008
Ada Lovelace,
a mediocre poet at best...

898
00:48:13,008 --> 00:48:14,981
Oh my gosh,
she was a terrible poet, you guys...

899
00:48:14,981 --> 00:48:18,213
Programs the Analytical Engine
to help her write poetry,

900
00:48:18,213 --> 00:48:21,633
which she publishes anonymously,
under the name Equus Libros.

901
00:48:21,633 --> 00:48:25,091
All London wonders --
is the author man or machine?

902
00:48:25,091 --> 00:48:27,709
No one suspects the truth,
until she reveals all,

903
00:48:27,709 --> 00:48:29,182
in a live performance.

904
00:48:29,182 --> 00:48:31,816
And yes, I am talking about horse ebooks.

905
00:48:31,816 --> 00:48:35,211
And if you don't know what horse ebooks is,
it's too late.

906
00:48:35,211 --> 00:48:36,024
It's over.

907
00:48:36,024 --> 00:48:37,155
You missed it.

908
00:48:37,155 --> 00:48:38,900
All right, so this is my last story.

909
00:48:38,900 --> 00:48:41,537
Ada Lovelace
becomes the first literal rock star,

910
00:48:41,537 --> 00:48:43,626
rather than the figurative one
her father was,

911
00:48:43,626 --> 00:48:45,599
playing computer-generated music,

912
00:48:45,599 --> 00:48:48,128
and inventing electronic amplification of instruments.

913
00:48:48,128 --> 00:48:49,963
She makes millions,
and blows it all

914
00:48:49,963 --> 00:48:52,447
on harps, horses, and laudanum.

915
00:48:52,447 --> 00:48:54,967
Babbage refuses to speak to her
ever again.

916
00:48:54,967 --> 00:48:57,798
That would be a freaking great story.

917
00:48:57,798 --> 00:48:59,461
I mean, she had that mentality.

918
00:48:59,461 --> 00:49:00,302
It would be great.

919
00:49:00,302 --> 00:49:03,586
So yeah, this is sort of
trying to look at...

920
00:49:03,586 --> 00:49:05,758
Even the "positive" stories, unquote,

921
00:49:05,758 --> 00:49:07,463
that we tell,
and showing how limited they are,

922
00:49:07,463 --> 00:49:09,238
and how they limit women in science,

923
00:49:09,238 --> 00:49:10,546
and our society in general.

924
00:49:10,546 --> 00:49:12,097
I didn't even get into the part where --

925
00:49:12,097 --> 00:49:15,546
because Ada Lovelace was so
multidimensional and complex,

926
00:49:15,546 --> 00:49:20,717
I think computing founded by her
would have been immediately connected

927
00:49:20,717 --> 00:49:25,173
with the Arts and Humanities in a way
modern computing,

928
00:49:25,173 --> 00:49:27,275
which grew out of World War II, was not.

929
00:49:27,275 --> 00:49:29,876
It would have been so interesting,

930
00:49:29,876 --> 00:49:32,749
and so that's part of what I want to tell here,
with these stories.

931
00:49:32,749 --> 00:49:36,633
It's like --
computing can be so much more,

932
00:49:36,633 --> 00:49:38,999
and so much better connected
with our society and ourselves,

933
00:49:38,999 --> 00:49:43,218
and also, as a woman,
you can be a whole person.

934
00:49:43,218 --> 00:49:44,795
You can have a family.

935
00:49:44,795 --> 00:49:46,025
You can sleep around.

936
00:49:46,025 --> 00:49:47,930
You can do drugs,
and you can still do

937
00:49:47,930 --> 00:49:49,629
fantastic, amazing work.

938
00:49:49,629 --> 00:49:52,941
So guys have been able to do this
for a long, long time.

939
00:49:52,941 --> 00:49:54,302
Just check it out.

940
00:49:54,302 --> 00:49:56,336
But I think that would be really cool.

941
00:49:56,336 --> 00:49:58,879
All right, so questions
and answers.

942
00:49:58,879 --> 00:50:01,678
If you have any great
Ada Lovelace story ideas,

943
00:50:01,678 --> 00:50:03,383
that would be wonderful to hear too.

944
00:50:03,383 --> 00:50:04,468
Thank you.

945
00:50:04,468 --> 00:50:12,165
(applause)

946
00:50:12,165 --> 00:50:13,115
>> Okay, the question is --

947
00:50:13,115 --> 00:50:16,198
if the students are inspired by this,

948
00:50:16,198 --> 00:50:19,570
but they don't want to write
an Ada Lovelace story,

949
00:50:19,570 --> 00:50:20,786
what can they do?

950
00:50:20,786 --> 00:50:22,935
And I really want people
to write Ada Lovelace stories.

951
00:50:22,935 --> 00:50:25,734
One of the things I'm doing
as a hobby right now

952
00:50:25,734 --> 00:50:27,734
is learning how to make zines.

953
00:50:27,734 --> 00:50:30,567
Just little paper printouts
of a few pages,

954
00:50:30,567 --> 00:50:31,642
that you can, like --

955
00:50:31,642 --> 00:50:33,452
are so cheap,
you can just give them away.

956
00:50:33,452 --> 00:50:38,898
I think learning more about
the history of computing,

957
00:50:38,898 --> 00:50:41,893
but also the general forms
of sexism is, frankly,

958
00:50:41,893 --> 00:50:44,062
a great idea,
to learn how you're using it

959
00:50:44,062 --> 00:50:45,430
in your everyday life.

960
00:50:45,430 --> 00:50:49,165
One of the first things I learned
from joining a women in computing group,

961
00:50:49,165 --> 00:50:52,822
after I discovered I was the only
Linux kernel programmer in the world

962
00:50:52,822 --> 00:50:54,703
who was female, in 2002,

963
00:50:54,703 --> 00:50:57,065
there are simple rules, like --

964
00:50:57,065 --> 00:51:00,273
if you're trying to help a woman
learn something on the computer,

965
00:51:00,273 --> 00:51:02,042
never take away the keyboard.

966
00:51:02,042 --> 00:51:03,650
Very simple rule.

967
00:51:03,650 --> 00:51:04,824
Follow that.

968
00:51:04,824 --> 00:51:05,945
You'll do a lot better.

969
00:51:05,945 --> 00:51:09,757
Wait for women to speak
and give the answers to questions.

970
00:51:09,757 --> 00:51:11,226
Things like that.

971
00:51:11,226 --> 00:51:12,210
So...

972
00:51:12,210 --> 00:51:13,961
But I really think
you should go out and draw,

973
00:51:13,961 --> 00:51:16,094
or make a rap video,
or something like that.

974
00:51:16,094 --> 00:51:17,431
So...

975
00:51:17,431 --> 00:51:19,630
>> Okay, wow.

976
00:51:19,630 --> 00:51:21,506
What a wonderful story.

977
00:51:21,506 --> 00:51:24,028
(laughter)

978
00:51:24,028 --> 00:51:26,523
>> Said and expressed.

979
00:51:26,523 --> 00:51:27,948
So thank you very much.

980
00:51:27,948 --> 00:51:31,948
(applause)