WEBVTT

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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.

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These are models of parts of this computer,
called the Analytical Engine.

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He designed it in the 1830s.

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So Ada and Babbage met
when she was 17 and he was 41.

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And they continued as good, close personal friends

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and scientific collaborators
for nearly 20 years, until her death.

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I do not...

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Yes, that does make sense.

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So Ada.

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We get to talk about Ada.

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So her full name was Augusta Ada Byron,

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when she married William King,
she became Augusta Ada Byron King,

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and later became the Countess of Lovelace.

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But strangely, we have this modern construction
of her name as Ada Lovelace.

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I'm not quite sure how that came about,
but that's who people are talking about.

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During her lifetime,
she was known primarily

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as Lord Byron's daughter.

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This is how I like to give an idea
of what her life was like.

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So Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love,

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both famous, famous rock stars,

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have one daughter, Frances Bean Cobain.

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He kills himself very early on.

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So the interesting thing
about Frances Bean

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is that Frances Bean --
I was trying to find a picture of her,

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and she has succeeded --
good for her --

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in not having a single photograph of her
in the public domain.

00:16:50.297 --> 00:16:56.876
She's trying really hard to protect
her privacy.

00:16:56.876 --> 00:16:59.847
And you can see why.

00:16:59.847 --> 00:17:06.664
She's trying to define her own life,
and her own personality as an artist.

00:17:06.664 --> 00:17:13.099
So she recently did a display
of her visual art.

00:17:13.099 --> 00:17:14.217
She's a visual artist.

00:17:14.217 --> 00:17:16.635
Under a pseudonym,
and it was later on discovered.

00:17:16.635 --> 00:17:18.875
So this has an interesting parallel with Ada,

00:17:18.875 --> 00:17:22.717
in that she published --
she was very concerned about putting her name

00:17:22.717 --> 00:17:24.739
on any of her scientific work or publications,

00:17:24.739 --> 00:17:26.808
and you can see why.

00:17:26.808 --> 00:17:30.855
So here's a panel from Sydney Padua's
Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage.

00:17:30.855 --> 00:17:32.685
Sydney, raise your hand.

00:17:32.685 --> 00:17:34.753
It's a fantastic comic
about Ada Lovelace's --

00:17:34.753 --> 00:17:38.973
a fictionalized version
of Lovelace and Babbage's collaboration.

00:17:38.973 --> 00:17:44.306
But this is a really perfect summary
of Lady Byron's plan

00:17:44.306 --> 00:17:49.115
to keep Ada from going nuts
and shooting her way across Europe.

00:17:49.115 --> 00:17:53.779
So she decided she would teach her mathematics,

00:17:53.779 --> 00:17:55.141
to counteract the poetical influences,

00:17:55.141 --> 00:17:59.224
which is how Byron referred to his tendency
to be a terrible person.

00:17:59.224 --> 00:18:04.478
So the interesting thing about this is that,
at the same time she fulfilled

00:18:04.478 --> 00:18:08.606
all of the normal standards for women of her time
and her position,

00:18:08.606 --> 00:18:11.219
she had many, many, many other interests,

00:18:11.219 --> 00:18:13.568
including music, and specifically playing the harp.

00:18:13.568 --> 00:18:17.691
She wanted to build a flying machine,
using steam engines,

00:18:17.691 --> 00:18:19.840
and studying birds to do so.

00:18:19.840 --> 00:18:21.897
And an interesting thing I love --

00:18:21.897 --> 00:18:23.674
she loved horseback riding,

00:18:23.674 --> 00:18:25.501
and it was considered good for her health.

00:18:25.501 --> 00:18:28.433
This is a picture of her daughter,
Lady Anne Blunt,

00:18:28.433 --> 00:18:33.374
who dressed up as a Bedouin
and traveled across Northern Africa

00:18:33.374 --> 00:18:37.416
with her husband, and it was, you know,
the late 19th century,

00:18:37.416 --> 00:18:42.323
and ended up founding the most influential
Arabian horse stud,

00:18:42.323 --> 00:18:45.560
outside of Saudi Arabia.

00:18:45.560 --> 00:18:47.916
So she's a very, very interesting person.

00:18:47.916 --> 00:18:51.415
Along with Ada.

00:18:51.415 --> 00:18:56.464
So luckily for Ada,
having such a scientific and curious mind,

00:18:56.464 --> 00:19:01.004
amateur science was very in, at the time,
in her society.

00:19:01.004 --> 00:19:04.086
And so she went to a lot of salons and parties,

00:19:04.086 --> 00:19:06.482
where she met people like Charles Babbage,

00:19:06.482 --> 00:19:08.149
Mary Somerville,

00:19:08.149 --> 00:19:12.237
and many other of these amateur scientists,

00:19:12.237 --> 00:19:15.212
whose names are in the history books these days.

00:19:15.212 --> 00:19:17.903
So she followed the proper path,

00:19:17.903 --> 00:19:19.375
got married at age 19,

00:19:19.375 --> 00:19:20.641
had three children.

00:19:20.641 --> 00:19:23.751
Her husband became the Earl of Lovelace,

00:19:23.751 --> 00:19:25.752
which made her the Countess of Lovelace.

00:19:25.752 --> 00:19:31.462
So she -- during the time she was having
three children in about three years,

00:19:31.462 --> 00:19:34.020
she wasn't able to follow her studies much,

00:19:34.020 --> 00:19:35.571
but kept them up.

00:19:35.571 --> 00:19:37.027
Once she was an adult,

00:19:37.027 --> 00:19:39.494
and able to decide what she wanted to study,

00:19:39.494 --> 00:19:40.798
she continued with mathematics,

00:19:40.798 --> 00:19:42.810
and found some really good tutors.

00:19:42.810 --> 00:19:45.023
In particular, Augustus De Morgan,

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.

00:19:51.821 --> 00:19:54.348
He was an incredible mathematician,

00:19:54.348 --> 00:19:56.451
and he had an extraordinarily high,

00:19:56.451 --> 00:19:59.994
and probably justified opinion
of Ada Lovelace's potential.

00:19:59.994 --> 00:20:04.592
So Ada is looking for something to do,

00:20:04.592 --> 00:20:07.926
and at the suggestion of another scientist --

00:20:07.926 --> 00:20:09.998
what's Wheatstone's first name?

00:20:09.998 --> 00:20:11.494
>> Charles.

00:20:11.494 --> 00:20:12.583
>> Charles Wheatstone.

00:20:12.583 --> 00:20:15.619
Decides to translate 
a paper someone else has written,

00:20:15.619 --> 00:20:17.711
about Babbage's Analytical Engine.

00:20:17.711 --> 00:20:19.209
I think this is interesting.

00:20:19.209 --> 00:20:23.391
She was too humble to actually write
her own paper, so --

00:20:23.391 --> 00:20:24.745
oh, I know, I'll translate.

00:20:24.745 --> 00:20:27.709
This is a very common thing
for women in science at the time.

00:20:27.709 --> 00:20:31.142
There's an interesting note on the man
who wrote the paper,

00:20:31.142 --> 00:20:33.182
Luigi Menabrea.

00:20:33.182 --> 00:20:36.229
He ended up becoming 
the Prime Minister of Italy.

00:20:36.229 --> 00:20:39.212
so the connection between computers
and wealth and power, I think,

00:20:39.212 --> 00:20:41.093
was already in effect.

00:20:41.093 --> 00:20:46.027
So yeah,
when she sent the paper to Babbage

00:20:46.027 --> 00:20:48.231
for his approval, he said --

00:20:48.231 --> 00:20:49.806
why didn't you write your own paper?

00:20:49.806 --> 00:20:51.829
Would you like to add some notes?

00:20:51.829 --> 00:20:56.231
Ada said sure, and thus was born 
the world's first computer program.

00:20:56.231 --> 00:20:59.212
It's hard to read, because it's very small writing,

00:20:59.212 --> 00:21:01.318
because it's very large and complicated.

00:21:01.318 --> 00:21:06.983
So she ended up writing a program
to calculate something called the Bernoulli numbers,

00:21:06.983 --> 00:21:09.267
which are an extremely complex, difficult series,

00:21:09.267 --> 00:21:12.342
with great implications for science and mathematics.

00:21:12.342 --> 00:21:17.115
It was the first published computer program.

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.

00:21:24.293 --> 00:21:28.190
We'll go over the change in public opinion
about whether she was the first

00:21:28.190 --> 00:21:30.354
computer programmer in more detail,

00:21:30.354 --> 00:21:33.865
but here's sort of the base facts behind it,

00:21:33.865 --> 00:21:37.089
as filtered through my feminist consciousness.

00:21:37.089 --> 00:21:41.323
So Babbage did obviously write
simple programs first,

00:21:41.323 --> 00:21:44.965
because he was designing this machine,
and needed to figure out what it would do.

00:21:44.965 --> 00:21:48.959
He wasn't actually super interested 
in doing stuff with the machine.

00:21:48.959 --> 00:21:50.551
he was more interested in the machine itself,

00:21:50.551 --> 00:21:53.069
so there are a number of very simple 
programs in his notes.

00:21:53.069 --> 00:21:56.461
The Bernoulli numbers program
was definitely the most complicated program

00:21:56.461 --> 00:21:58.712
written at that time.

00:21:58.712 --> 00:22:02.022
And we're calling a computer program
a series of instructions

00:22:02.022 --> 00:22:04.158
for a machine to carry out.

00:22:04.158 --> 00:22:08.964
The evidence is -- the contemporary evidence 
is very strong that Ada actually wrote this.

00:22:08.964 --> 00:22:10.590
There's a bunch of letters.

00:22:10.590 --> 00:22:13.992
Babbage makes a comment in his autobiography

00:22:13.992 --> 00:22:16.767
that's often misinterpreted
to mean he wrote it,

00:22:16.767 --> 00:22:18.831
but it really says that she wrote it.

00:22:18.831 --> 00:22:24.590
And then there's the fact that's normally
very important in science,

00:22:24.590 --> 00:22:26.378
which is that Ada published it first.

00:22:26.378 --> 00:22:29.076
That's usually how you establish priority.

00:22:29.076 --> 00:22:34.303
And in addition to that,
both Babbage and everyone who knew them

00:22:34.303 --> 00:22:37.796
and everyone who reads their papers
agrees that Ada had a much deeper

00:22:37.796 --> 00:22:41.995
and more complex understanding of the potential
of computer programming.

00:22:41.995 --> 00:22:42.969
So as far as I'm concerned,

00:22:42.969 --> 00:22:45.964
Ada is definitely for sure
the first computer programmer.

00:22:45.964 --> 00:22:48.717
Unfortunately, about this time,

00:22:48.717 --> 00:22:52.214
Ada also started to become
mentally and physically ill.

00:22:52.214 --> 00:22:56.887
She -- retroactive historical diagnoses,
for what they're worth,

00:22:56.887 --> 00:22:59.183
she probably had uterine cancer.

00:22:59.183 --> 00:23:02.973
She probably was bipolar,
also known as manic depressive.

00:23:02.973 --> 00:23:06.798
She began taking laudanum
and pot, and using Mesmerists,

00:23:06.798 --> 00:23:09.991
hypnotism, to control the pain and the mania.

00:23:09.991 --> 00:23:17.520
It's around this time as well
she began gambling,

00:23:17.520 --> 00:23:19.330
which actually meant betting on the horses.

00:23:19.330 --> 00:23:20.427
Not super unusual.

00:23:20.427 --> 00:23:24.432
And was probably unfaithful to her husband,
although a lot of the letters

00:23:24.432 --> 00:23:26.717
from that time are destroyed.

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

00:23:29.905 --> 00:23:31.849
on her deathbed,
he refused to speak to her again,

00:23:31.849 --> 00:23:33.419
until her death.

00:23:33.419 --> 00:23:38.128
So I think it was probably pretty bad, for the time.

00:23:38.128 --> 00:23:40.635
This is a portrait taken of her
shortly before her death.

00:23:40.635 --> 00:23:43.631
The full size one
you can see pretty clearly --

00:23:43.631 --> 00:23:45.212
she's dying.

00:23:45.212 --> 00:23:47.586
It was pretty heartbreaking.

00:23:47.586 --> 00:23:50.531
She died at age 36,
the same age at her father,

00:23:50.531 --> 00:23:53.665
and oh, when you read her letters,

00:23:53.665 --> 00:23:57.387
she's constantly writing about how
she needs to take it carefully,

00:23:57.387 --> 00:24:01.907
develop her genius slowly,
build up a body of work piece by piece,

00:24:01.907 --> 00:24:05.177
when really she was this incredible intuitive thinker

00:24:05.177 --> 00:24:10.135
who came up with groundbreaking ideas
while writing footnotes,

00:24:10.135 --> 00:24:12.635
literal footnotes, to somebody else's paper.

00:24:12.635 --> 00:24:13.332
Right?

00:24:13.332 --> 00:24:16.325
And you want to go back in time
and just say -- just write it.

00:24:16.325 --> 00:24:17.137
Just write it.

00:24:17.137 --> 00:24:19.155
Forget about what everyone else thinks.

00:24:19.155 --> 00:24:20.493
Just do your work.

00:24:20.493 --> 00:24:24.136
Carpe diem, everyone here.

00:24:24.136 --> 00:24:26.133
Do it now.

00:24:26.133 --> 00:24:29.214
I wrote my first published paper
when I was 24,

00:24:29.214 --> 00:24:30.431
and not in grad school or anything,

00:24:30.431 --> 00:24:33.331
because I didn't know you weren't supposed to.

00:24:33.331 --> 00:24:36.743
Just go ahead and do it,
is my view.

00:24:36.743 --> 00:24:40.136
Okay. So that's the basic sort of
attempting to be pretty objective

00:24:40.136 --> 00:24:41.896
Ada Lovelace story.

00:24:41.896 --> 00:24:44.687
So how was Ada Lovelace viewed 
throughout history?

00:24:44.687 --> 00:24:47.301
We can start with the obvious.

00:24:47.301 --> 00:24:48.849
Byron's daughter.

00:24:48.849 --> 00:24:50.644
Like, here's Ada down here.

00:24:50.644 --> 00:24:52.990
That was, like, basically her whole life.

00:24:52.990 --> 00:24:56.820
This famous rock star person.

00:24:56.820 --> 00:24:58.217
So...

00:24:58.217 --> 00:25:01.564
Even in the initial call for papers for this conference,

00:25:01.564 --> 00:25:03.098
Robin, I hope you don't mind me calling this out --

00:25:03.098 --> 00:25:08.503
she was described as --
the conference about the achievements and legacies

00:25:08.503 --> 00:25:12.886
of the poet Lord Byron's only known
legitimate child, Ada Lovelace.

00:25:12.886 --> 00:25:17.011
So it's definitely the thing that hung over her,
her entire life.

00:25:17.011 --> 00:25:22.852
In 1833, she started to get
a little bit of a different reputation,

00:25:22.852 --> 00:25:26.221
which was part of this amateur science scene
that was going on.

00:25:26.221 --> 00:25:29.089
People noticed that she understood
what Babbage was saying,

00:25:29.089 --> 00:25:30.788
because nobody else did.

00:25:30.788 --> 00:25:34.064
But they were still --
when they would write letters,

00:25:34.064 --> 00:25:36.539
when they got home,
they would talk about how much Ada

00:25:36.539 --> 00:25:38.346
did or didn't resemble Byron.

00:25:38.346 --> 00:25:39.539
So that was...

00:25:39.539 --> 00:25:43.441
She was smart Byron's daughter,
at that point.

00:25:43.441 --> 00:25:47.037
1838, she got a different --
a little extra addition.

00:25:47.037 --> 00:25:48.093
The Countess of Lovelace,

00:25:48.093 --> 00:25:50.932
rather than Lady King.

00:25:50.932 --> 00:25:55.079
1843, the notes to the translation,
this first computer program,

00:25:55.079 --> 00:25:59.843
were published under just her initials, actually.

00:25:59.843 --> 00:26:01.515
Even her misspelled initials.

00:26:01.515 --> 00:26:05.545
But Babbage couldn't keep the secret entirely,

00:26:05.545 --> 00:26:08.428
and let Menabrea know
that actually it was Ada Lovelace.

00:26:08.428 --> 00:26:10.565
So a few people knew.

00:26:10.565 --> 00:26:16.474
In 1845, she discovered
that she was too immoral for the library.

00:26:16.474 --> 00:26:19.826
So this was a picture of the Royal Society Library.

00:26:19.826 --> 00:26:22.042
She wanted to get in,
so she could read books on mathematics,

00:26:22.042 --> 00:26:24.231
and things like that,
and she was advised

00:26:24.231 --> 00:26:26.950
that the word of her infidelity had gotten out,

00:26:26.950 --> 00:26:31.174
and she was not suited
to go read books in this building.

00:26:31.174 --> 00:26:32.465
Very much a thing.

00:26:32.465 --> 00:26:35.354
So that's one way to find out.

00:26:35.354 --> 00:26:36.624
Hey, I'd like to check out this book.

00:26:36.624 --> 00:26:39.255
No, sorry, we know you're having --
you're sleeping with so and so.

00:26:39.255 --> 00:26:40.587
What?

00:26:40.587 --> 00:26:41.706
So...

00:26:41.706 --> 00:26:45.083
1848, she was publicly acknowledged
as the author of the notes.

00:26:45.083 --> 00:26:47.570
No one really cared.

00:26:47.570 --> 00:26:51.309
1852, she dies,
and now she is Byron's dead daughter.

00:26:51.309 --> 00:26:57.117
Yes.

00:26:57.117 --> 00:27:03.973
She was in with -- yeah,
the second sentence, after saying where she died.

00:27:03.973 --> 00:27:05.955
She was the only daughter of Lord Byron.

00:27:05.955 --> 00:27:06.798
There you go.

00:27:06.798 --> 00:27:09.014
Blah-blah-blah, and then she was married
to some people and stuff,

00:27:09.014 --> 00:27:11.924
and they had babies,
and then it says she was distinguished

00:27:11.924 --> 00:27:13.582
for the strength of her intellect.

00:27:13.582 --> 00:27:15.709
So people noticed she was smart, at least.

00:27:15.709 --> 00:27:17.089
And that's kind of what she gets.

00:27:17.089 --> 00:27:18.942
That's all she gets in her biography.

00:27:18.942 --> 00:27:23.948
Lady Byron was kind of a mean person,

00:27:23.948 --> 00:27:28.749
and spent a lot of time making sure
everyone knew about Ada's faults and mistakes,

00:27:28.749 --> 00:27:30.914
starting around the time of her death.

00:27:30.914 --> 00:27:35.658
I'm not sure what her deal was,
but there you go.

00:27:35.658 --> 00:27:39.120
1864, Babbage wrote his autobiography,

00:27:39.120 --> 00:27:42.180
and in it, he has a very few mentions of her.

00:27:42.180 --> 00:27:46.895
I mean, there's this sense
that proper women shouldn't appear in public at all.

00:27:46.895 --> 00:27:50.733
Appear in the papers when you're born, 
when you're married, and when you died.

00:27:50.733 --> 00:27:52.439
And for the most part,
she succeeded in that.

00:27:52.439 --> 00:27:55.652
So Babbage mentions her,
praises her,

00:27:55.652 --> 00:27:57.345
talks about some of the work she's done.

00:27:57.345 --> 00:28:00.540
I'm not sure how many people
read all the way through his autobiography.

00:28:00.540 --> 00:28:03.080
But there you go.

00:28:03.080 --> 00:28:08.091
So there's -- then we have about a century
of crickets, you know.

00:28:08.091 --> 00:28:09.131
Not much going on.

00:28:09.131 --> 00:28:12.956
These are a few of the minor mentions
I could find here and there.

00:28:12.956 --> 00:28:15.461
In 1889, the notes were reprinted.

00:28:15.461 --> 00:28:20.424
1905, she has a literal footnote
in the history of calculating machines,

00:28:20.424 --> 00:28:23.217
by Maurice d'Ocagne.

00:28:23.217 --> 00:28:25.700
I kept meaning to look up
how to say that, but I never did.

00:28:25.700 --> 00:28:30.165
1932, she's mentioned in 
the MIT Technology Review.

00:28:30.165 --> 00:28:32.247
I was unable to find out what they said,

00:28:32.247 --> 00:28:36.149
because the MIT Technology Review's paywall
was not functioning,

00:28:36.149 --> 00:28:39.916
and I could not give them $9.99 to read this paper.

00:28:39.916 --> 00:28:41.129
So...

00:28:41.129 --> 00:28:42.952
Common.

00:28:42.952 --> 00:28:48.088
So 1950 is where the general public
begins to learn about Lovelace again,

00:28:48.088 --> 00:28:52.203
through Alan Turing,
who is a famous computer science pioneer,

00:28:52.203 --> 00:28:56.842
and worked -- was a key part 
of winning World War II.

00:28:56.842 --> 00:29:03.049
So Alan is very interested in machine intelligence,
artificial intelligence,

00:29:03.049 --> 00:29:05.279
and he writes about the objections to this.

00:29:05.279 --> 00:29:08.250
And he calls one of them Lady Lovelace's objection.

00:29:08.250 --> 00:29:11.278
Which I think is totally unfair,
because he completely misinterprets

00:29:11.278 --> 00:29:13.781
what she's trying to say,
on purpose, to make a point.

00:29:13.781 --> 00:29:20.401
In her notes, Lovelace is trying to counteract
this idea at the time --

00:29:20.401 --> 00:29:24.691
people were like -- whoa, this thing
just calculated the answer to 3 + 2.

00:29:24.691 --> 00:29:26.171
It must be living!

00:29:26.171 --> 00:29:28.423
You know, there was a famous question.

00:29:28.423 --> 00:29:30.750
What if I tell it the wrong question?

00:29:30.750 --> 00:29:32.376
Will it still give me the right answer?

00:29:32.376 --> 00:29:33.869
You know, people had no idea.

00:29:33.869 --> 00:29:35.146
So she was trying to explain --

00:29:35.146 --> 00:29:38.009
these machines can only do
what you tell them to do.

00:29:38.009 --> 00:29:40.617
Somebody still has to come up
with the problem, encode it,

00:29:40.617 --> 00:29:41.888
and stick it in the machine.

00:29:41.888 --> 00:29:44.945
Turing interpreted this as --
machines can never surprise you.

00:29:44.945 --> 00:29:47.050
It's like, well, no,
that's not what she was saying.

00:29:47.050 --> 00:29:52.133
But the question of artificial intelligence
is still alive today, of course.

00:29:52.133 --> 00:29:55.093
But yeah, at least Turing got her name
back in circulation.

00:29:55.093 --> 00:29:57.033
I have no idea
how he became aware of her.

00:29:57.033 --> 00:29:59.339
If it was a thing,
and everyone passed around the notes

00:29:59.339 --> 00:30:00.807
at Cambridge or something.

00:30:00.807 --> 00:30:02.505
I'd love to find that out.

00:30:02.505 --> 00:30:07.231
So in 1953,
somebody finally uses the words

00:30:07.231 --> 00:30:08.935
"first computer program".

00:30:08.935 --> 00:30:11.563
This is Bertram Bowden,
in Faster Than Thought,

00:30:11.563 --> 00:30:14.794
which is this hilarious attempt
to write a history of computing machines

00:30:14.794 --> 00:30:17.589
in 1953,
and he makes this comment of --

00:30:17.589 --> 00:30:23.282
thank you so much to my printers
for the fact that things are changing so quickly,

00:30:23.282 --> 00:30:25.963
I have to make corrections
between each proof,

00:30:25.963 --> 00:30:30.527
because stuff was being updated so quickly.

00:30:30.527 --> 00:30:34.099
So in this, he says:
"Lady Lovelace had undoubtedly

00:30:34.099 --> 00:30:39.000
a profound understanding of the principles of the machine," et cetera, and then wrote:

00:30:39.000 --> 00:30:43.703
"Including what we should now call a program
for computing the Bernoulli numbers,

00:30:43.703 --> 00:30:45.706
by a very sophisticated method."

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

00:30:48.377 --> 00:30:53.547
Babbage's interpreter,
or explaining that stuff real good now.

00:30:53.547 --> 00:30:55.954
It's -- she wrote a computer program.

00:30:55.954 --> 00:31:01.576
So 1972, Isaac Azimov,
you know, famous science fiction writer,

00:31:01.576 --> 00:31:04.293
and science writer,
calls her the Mother of Computers.

00:31:04.293 --> 00:31:05.412
Which is interesting.

00:31:05.412 --> 00:31:06.894
I would call it the Mother of Programming.

00:31:06.894 --> 00:31:09.762
But, you know, these things
are not terribly well distinguished at the time.

00:31:09.762 --> 00:31:13.240
In 1976, the first book-length biography comes out,

00:31:13.240 --> 00:31:16.611
by a historian and fashion model,
Dorothy Langley Moore,

00:31:16.611 --> 00:31:18.314
which I think is a cool combination.

00:31:18.314 --> 00:31:23.357
I couldn't actually get a copy,
but there's a couple of articles

00:31:23.357 --> 00:31:25.782
written for a women's mathematics newsletter,

00:31:25.782 --> 00:31:29.151
which used the words "first computer programmer".

00:31:29.151 --> 00:31:31.556
It also talked about her gambling,
and things like that.

00:31:31.556 --> 00:31:32.861
So as far as I can tell,

00:31:32.861 --> 00:31:36.649
1976 is the time when people said
"first computer programmer",

00:31:36.649 --> 00:31:39.316
and not just the first computer program.

00:31:39.316 --> 00:31:40.942
So yeah, it only took...

00:31:40.942 --> 00:31:47.204
133 years
for people to come to this point.

00:31:47.204 --> 00:31:52.238
So there's 133 years of Lovelace not being 
the first computer programmer.

00:31:52.238 --> 00:31:55.290
Being Byron's daughter,
being someone who explained Babbage pretty well.

00:31:55.290 --> 00:31:57.740
And then that's when that finally happened.

00:31:57.740 --> 00:32:02.656
So 1980 is when the Department of Defense
issued a new language standard,

00:32:02.656 --> 00:32:06.067
and named it Ada,
in honor of Ada Lovelace.

00:32:06.067 --> 00:32:08.522
This is an Ada language computer program.

00:32:08.522 --> 00:32:13.069
One of the parts they skipped
in my resume for the introduction

00:32:13.069 --> 00:32:18.399
is that I wrote Ada programs for a living,
for six months, straight out of college.

00:32:18.399 --> 00:32:19.497
I don't recommend it.

00:32:19.497 --> 00:32:21.136
It's a really unpleasant language.

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.

00:32:27.454 --> 00:32:30.511
At least by the United States 
Department of Defense.

00:32:30.511 --> 00:32:36.068
so in 1985, Dorothy Stein --
you can barely see this.

00:32:36.068 --> 00:32:40.022
The cover is deathly black,
and I think that reflects the opinions of the author.

00:32:40.022 --> 00:32:45.396
In 1995, Dorothy Stein published
the second book-length biography

00:32:45.396 --> 00:32:47.476
of Ada Lovelace, that I'm aware of.

00:32:47.476 --> 00:32:52.176
Which -- she presents her
as mad, bad, and moderately smart.

00:32:52.176 --> 00:32:59.951
So Dorothy Stein really had some kind of issues
with Ada Lovelace.

00:32:59.951 --> 00:33:00.924
I'm not sure what.

00:33:00.924 --> 00:33:07.051
But even Dorothy Stein still acknowledged
that Ada wrote that first computer program.

00:33:07.051 --> 00:33:08.556
She just thought that she was a terrible person.

00:33:08.556 --> 00:33:10.220
So...

00:33:10.220 --> 00:33:16.011
1986, there's a very short book
about Ada Lovelace,

00:33:16.011 --> 00:33:18.257
and mostly her work, which is nice.

00:33:18.257 --> 00:33:22.096
I think it must have been a response
to Stein, based on the forward.

00:33:22.096 --> 00:33:24.667
Like "Recently,
some people have said..."

00:33:24.667 --> 00:33:28.402
It's actually a pretty nice work,
especially if you're interested

00:33:28.402 --> 00:33:30.079
in computer programming.

00:33:30.079 --> 00:33:33.340
And she's portrayed
as a complex, whole, flawed person,

00:33:33.340 --> 00:33:35.493
who did some good work as well.

00:33:35.493 --> 00:33:37.209
So... Unfortunately, it's not very popular.

00:33:37.209 --> 00:33:39.139
I really enjoyed reading it, but...

00:33:39.139 --> 00:33:41.908
All right, so now we get into the wars.

00:33:41.908 --> 00:33:42.933
The full wars.

00:33:42.933 --> 00:33:45.185
I mean, Stein was not that great, but wow.

00:33:45.185 --> 00:33:48.950
1990, Alan G. Bromley,
a respected computer historian,

00:33:48.950 --> 00:33:50.457
wrote an article in...

00:33:50.457 --> 00:33:54.475
In which he outright denies
that she's the first computer programmer,

00:33:54.475 --> 00:33:56.724
besides saying, of course,
she's arrogant and deluded,

00:33:56.724 --> 00:33:57.740
and all these things.

00:33:57.740 --> 00:34:02.411
While, at the same time,
because their letters are so clear,

00:34:02.411 --> 00:34:03.825
even he couldn't deny this.

00:34:03.825 --> 00:34:08.044
He says that she caught a bug
in the program that Babbage wrote.

00:34:08.044 --> 00:34:10.817
So there's this saying that's common
among computer scientists.

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.

00:34:17.692 --> 00:34:20.274
You aren't smart enough to debug it.

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.

00:34:24.972 --> 00:34:28.597
So that a historian of computing
could make that claim

00:34:28.597 --> 00:34:31.678
I think kind of speaks
for that bias there.

00:34:31.678 --> 00:34:36.870
Also in 1990,
Bruce Collier's PhD thesis.

00:34:36.870 --> 00:34:39.936
Calls her mad as a hatter.

00:34:39.936 --> 00:34:42.364
That's real scholarly language there,

00:34:42.364 --> 00:34:45.544
and says she contributed little
or nothing to the notes.

00:34:45.544 --> 00:34:50.379
So yeah, that's kind of awesome as well.

00:34:50.379 --> 00:34:55.670
Actually, Sydney pointed out to me
an interesting point,

00:34:55.670 --> 00:34:59.005
which is that many of these people
who are so passionately against

00:34:59.005 --> 00:35:02.672
Lovelace having any involvement
in the first computer program

00:35:02.672 --> 00:35:05.837
are also very passionate
pro-Babbage people.

00:35:05.837 --> 00:35:07.252
Charles Babbage --

00:35:07.252 --> 00:35:10.703
they're really trying to reclaim
his place in computing history.

00:35:10.703 --> 00:35:12.295
Sure, his machine never got built,

00:35:12.295 --> 00:35:14.336
but he's still really important,
and they're tired of people

00:35:14.336 --> 00:35:15.805
taking away his credit.

00:35:15.805 --> 00:35:19.973
So that could definitely be an issue
with the whole taking away Lovelace's credit,

00:35:19.973 --> 00:35:22.147
because there's only so much credit to go around.

00:35:22.147 --> 00:35:27.564
So in 1990,
we also get our first major fictional depiction

00:35:27.564 --> 00:35:31.549
of Ada Lovelace,
as a minor character in The Difference Engine,

00:35:31.549 --> 00:35:37.497
which is sort of the novel
that popularized the steampunk movement,

00:35:37.497 --> 00:35:41.788
which you're probably all more familiar
than you want to be with.

00:35:41.788 --> 00:35:46.222
So in the book,
Ada is portrayed

00:35:46.222 --> 00:35:48.668
as a mathematical genius.

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,

00:35:52.334 --> 00:35:54.758
and is busy trying to gamble,
and all that kind of stuff.

00:35:54.758 --> 00:35:59.378
So it's sort of an absent-minded
professor stereotype.

00:35:59.378 --> 00:36:02.096
When you read Ada's letters,
she's probably not that practical,

00:36:02.096 --> 00:36:07.225
so part of what I like about this
is that they show her deriving

00:36:07.225 --> 00:36:11.398
and discovering mathematical theorems
that didn't come until the '30s,

00:36:11.398 --> 00:36:12.921
that are foundational.

00:36:12.921 --> 00:36:15.360
So it's a neat portrayal.

00:36:15.360 --> 00:36:20.796
1992 is the longest,
most sympathetic biography,

00:36:20.796 --> 00:36:25.110
called Ada, the Enchantress of Numbers,
by Betty Alexandra Toole.

00:36:25.110 --> 00:36:29.737
It's mostly the letters Ada sent,
and some sent to her.

00:36:29.737 --> 00:36:33.059
And she presents her --
she's very sympathetic.

00:36:33.059 --> 00:36:36.699
Presents her as ambitious,
complex, flawed, and brilliant.

00:36:36.699 --> 00:36:41.858
It unfortunately also tries to draw
a number of analogies

00:36:41.858 --> 00:36:45.227
between the Ada programming language
and Ada's thought process,

00:36:45.227 --> 00:36:47.996
which don't make a ton of sense,
as a computer programmer.

00:36:47.996 --> 00:36:51.214
But it's especially great
as a primary source

00:36:51.214 --> 00:36:53.878
for understanding who Ada was as a person.

00:36:53.878 --> 00:36:57.778
So I'll try to go a little more quickly
on the rest of these.

00:36:57.778 --> 00:37:00.651
1993, Tom Stoppard's Arcadia.

00:37:00.651 --> 00:37:04.234
He says that Ada Lovelace
was an inspiration

00:37:04.234 --> 00:37:08.437
for one of the characters,
a young girl who's working with a math tutor,

00:37:08.437 --> 00:37:11.234
and continually comes up with
mathematical ideas

00:37:11.234 --> 00:37:14.218
so ahead of her time
that he always dismisses them

00:37:14.218 --> 00:37:16.690
as nonsense,
and they're later rediscovered,

00:37:16.690 --> 00:37:19.671
and hailed as the first
understanding of fractals,

00:37:19.671 --> 00:37:21.187
so I thought that was a neat portrayal.

00:37:21.187 --> 00:37:23.501
Very accurate to her life.

00:37:23.501 --> 00:37:26.170
In 1997,
I have not been able

00:37:26.170 --> 00:37:27.830
to bring myself to watch this movie.

00:37:27.830 --> 00:37:29.267
There's a movie called Conceiving Ada,

00:37:29.267 --> 00:37:32.171
which is sort of loosely inspired
by something or other.

00:37:32.171 --> 00:37:37.416
In it, Ada Lovelace
figures out how to communicate

00:37:37.416 --> 00:37:40.374
back and forth with the future,
by the means of undying information waves,

00:37:40.374 --> 00:37:42.546
and the people in the future
think she's so important,

00:37:42.546 --> 00:37:45.220
they're trying to bring her back to life
by genetic engineering,

00:37:45.220 --> 00:37:46.927
or so Wikipedia tells me.

00:37:46.927 --> 00:37:49.608
So clearly -- pretty sure
it was a positive portrayal,

00:37:49.608 --> 00:37:51.185
or at least intended to be.

00:37:51.185 --> 00:37:52.400
So...

00:37:52.400 --> 00:37:54.722
1998, the British Computing Society

00:37:54.722 --> 00:37:56.801
creates the Lovelace Medal in her honor.

00:37:56.801 --> 00:37:59.563
This is the 2007 Lovelace Medal winner,

00:37:59.563 --> 00:38:01.006
Karen Sparck Jones.

00:38:01.006 --> 00:38:03.773
The Ada Initiative considered 
naming ourselves after her,

00:38:03.773 --> 00:38:06.757
but Sparck Jones
just wasn't quite as good as Ada.

00:38:06.757 --> 00:38:08.370
Sparck would have been awesome.

00:38:08.370 --> 00:38:09.942
The Sparck Initiative.

00:38:09.942 --> 00:38:13.315
So 2000, Doron Swade
comes up with a history

00:38:13.315 --> 00:38:16.046
of Charles Babbage's computing machines,

00:38:16.046 --> 00:38:19.925
in which he describes Ada
as deluded, bossy,

00:38:19.925 --> 00:38:22.197
coquettish, and demanding,

00:38:22.197 --> 00:38:24.376
which are all, like,
wonderfully gendered insults.

00:38:24.376 --> 00:38:30.010
I took a photo of the index --
entry in the index for Lovelace,

00:38:30.010 --> 00:38:32.376
because I just thought it was so
representative.

00:38:32.376 --> 00:38:37.778
He says "exaggeration of contribution
to Babbage's engines, 166-9"

00:38:37.778 --> 00:38:43.045
"Self-regard and conviction of own genius, 158-9".

00:38:43.045 --> 00:38:45.342
Babbage didn't think
he was a genius, no.

00:38:45.342 --> 00:38:48.646
No, Babbage thought he was a genius,
just in case you weren't sure.

00:38:48.646 --> 00:38:52.510
Again, another Babbage-ist, right?

00:38:52.510 --> 00:38:59.575
2001, I mean, this is supposedly
a book about Ada and her achievements,

00:38:59.575 --> 00:39:02.104
by Benjamin Woolley,
the Bride of Science,

00:39:02.104 --> 00:39:05.026
but it focuses mostly
on her emotions,

00:39:05.026 --> 00:39:07.301
and her life, and her personal life,
and all that stuff,

00:39:07.301 --> 00:39:12.306
and it's not that...
It's only a part of her life,

00:39:12.306 --> 00:39:13.888
shall we say.

00:39:13.888 --> 00:39:16.653
So 2009,
Suw Charman-Anderson,

00:39:16.653 --> 00:39:20.850
who is in some way, perhaps,
responsible for all of this happening,

00:39:20.850 --> 00:39:23.485
founded Ada Lovelace Day,

00:39:23.485 --> 00:39:27.523
which is now --
to raise the profile

00:39:27.523 --> 00:39:30.106
of women in science,
technology, engineering, and mathematics.

00:39:30.106 --> 00:39:31.636
That's the STEM we keep talking about.

00:39:31.636 --> 00:39:34.493
It's grown and grown.

00:39:34.493 --> 00:39:39.899
This conference was actually scheduled
to go with Ada Lovelace Day.

00:39:39.899 --> 00:39:44.771
It's just a fantastic time,
where people write blog posts

00:39:44.771 --> 00:39:46.615
and update Wikipedia pages

00:39:46.615 --> 00:39:47.905
about women scientists.

00:39:47.905 --> 00:39:49.435
They're just the greatest stories.

00:39:49.435 --> 00:39:51.918
All the stories we know are so boring.

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

00:39:56.306 --> 00:39:59.107
in the popular imagination,
if she wasn't already.

00:39:59.107 --> 00:40:05.494
2009, by no coincidence,
because they were friends,

00:40:05.494 --> 00:40:10.563
Sydney Padua put together the first
and assumed to be last issue

00:40:10.563 --> 00:40:14.566
of the comic, the Origin of Ada Lovelace,

00:40:14.566 --> 00:40:18.365
which became this wonderful series
called Lovelace and Babbage.

00:40:18.365 --> 00:40:22.901
In it, she and Babbage
team up to fight crime.

00:40:22.901 --> 00:40:25.522
They just have different definitions of crime.

00:40:25.522 --> 00:40:28.021
She thinks it's poetry.

00:40:28.021 --> 00:40:29.188
He thinks it's music.

00:40:29.188 --> 00:40:30.317
You can see why.

00:40:30.317 --> 00:40:35.353
She's not just, like,
sort of the more practical person,

00:40:35.353 --> 00:40:36.897
which is what she was in their lifetime.

00:40:36.897 --> 00:40:40.157
She's also shown as, like, brooding and brilliant,
and occasionally unhinged.

00:40:40.157 --> 00:40:44.800
It's a really fun, full-featured person.

00:40:44.800 --> 00:40:49.023
It's not Ada herself,
but it's a great person who could exist,

00:40:49.023 --> 00:40:50.313
and you want to get to know better,

00:40:50.313 --> 00:40:52.636
and has all sorts of hilarious gags.

00:40:52.636 --> 00:40:53.807
So check it out.

00:40:53.807 --> 00:40:56.016
I can't leave out The Ada Initiative.

00:40:56.016 --> 00:41:01.389
2011,
we use Ada as our --

00:41:01.389 --> 00:41:05.699
we did a new modern portrait of her.

00:41:05.699 --> 00:41:10.712
The Ada Initiative is focused more
on Open Source software

00:41:10.712 --> 00:41:11.967
than software in general.

00:41:11.967 --> 00:41:13.687
We try to keep our scope.

00:41:13.687 --> 00:41:15.635
So the thing we brought to the Ada Lovelace story

00:41:15.635 --> 00:41:18.521
is that she's the world's first
Open Source software programmer,

00:41:18.521 --> 00:41:21.062
because she published the source code 
to her program,

00:41:21.062 --> 00:41:24.083
and whether or not she meant it
to be under any kind of license,

00:41:24.083 --> 00:41:27.552
it went into the public domain
some time in the 19th century.

00:41:27.552 --> 00:41:30.809
So anybody can take this code,
alter it, and reuse it.

00:41:30.809 --> 00:41:32.192
It's Open Source software.

00:41:32.192 --> 00:41:33.183
So...

00:41:33.183 --> 00:41:35.651
The world's first computer programmer
was also a woman,

00:41:35.651 --> 00:41:37.989
who was also an Open Source programmer.

00:41:37.989 --> 00:41:43.995
So there's been some more
recent fictional depictions,

00:41:43.995 --> 00:41:47.501
which I only learned about
thanks to Vicky's talk earlier today.

00:41:47.501 --> 00:41:51.194
And here's a book
that came out in 2011,

00:41:51.194 --> 00:41:52.785
All Men of Genius.

00:41:52.785 --> 00:41:55.619
She's a character who's in her 60s,

00:41:55.619 --> 00:41:59.350
and is successful, respected,
influential, a bit naughty.

00:41:59.350 --> 00:42:03.162
I am so excited this book exists.

00:42:03.162 --> 00:42:05.268
The Lazarus Machine.

00:42:05.268 --> 00:42:08.518
In it, she co-founds a computer company 
with Babbage.

00:42:08.518 --> 00:42:10.719
This is great, because it's a direct --

00:42:10.719 --> 00:42:15.274
it's great for many reasons,
but she proposed this to Babbage

00:42:15.274 --> 00:42:16.152
in one of her letters.

00:42:16.152 --> 00:42:17.378
We have a letter that says --
hey, Babbage.

00:42:17.378 --> 00:42:19.853
Why don't you let me take care
of the business and the PR,

00:42:19.853 --> 00:42:22.136
and then we could actually get these
engines built?

00:42:22.136 --> 00:42:23.435
And he's like -- well, no, of course not.

00:42:23.435 --> 00:42:24.962
I don't want to let go of all that control.

00:42:24.962 --> 00:42:28.106
But this is kind of a neat idea
of what could have happened.

00:42:28.106 --> 00:42:31.168
And this is a new biography
that just came out on Tuesday,

00:42:31.168 --> 00:42:32.103
so I haven't read it.

00:42:32.103 --> 00:42:34.270
Called A Female Genius.

00:42:34.270 --> 00:42:40.187
All I can tell from the blurb
is that he believes

00:42:40.187 --> 00:42:43.203
that she wrote the computer program,
she was hampered by sexism,

00:42:43.203 --> 00:42:45.324
and that she and Babbage became lovers.

00:42:45.324 --> 00:42:49.954
Which I see no hints of,
but that's another story we can tell.

00:42:49.954 --> 00:42:53.774
So here's what I think
are the top four stories that we tell

00:42:53.774 --> 00:42:54.772
about Ada Lovelace today.

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.

00:43:00.066 --> 00:43:03.646
So the first computer programmer --

00:43:03.646 --> 00:43:05.571
just, like, this really one-dimensional story.

00:43:05.571 --> 00:43:10.419
And it ignores all the rest of her life,

00:43:10.419 --> 00:43:14.212
and perpetuates this horrible stereotype
that computer programmers

00:43:14.212 --> 00:43:16.650
have to only be interested in computing.

00:43:16.650 --> 00:43:18.916
I was definitely considered
a very strange person in college,

00:43:18.916 --> 00:43:20.792
studying computer science,

00:43:20.792 --> 00:43:24.390
because I liked my English literature class.

00:43:24.390 --> 00:43:25.798
"What's wrong with you?"

00:43:25.798 --> 00:43:30.020
Ada rode horses and played music.

00:43:30.020 --> 00:43:32.189
She was much more like a complex fractal,

00:43:32.189 --> 00:43:33.332
and I really want people --

00:43:33.332 --> 00:43:35.525
besides the good interests,

00:43:35.525 --> 00:43:39.434
she gambled, and cheated on her husband,

00:43:39.434 --> 00:43:42.109
and had children,
and had mixed feelings about her children,

00:43:42.109 --> 00:43:43.438
and was trying to be a good daughter.

00:43:43.438 --> 00:43:44.437
All that stuff.

00:43:44.437 --> 00:43:48.518
And she was able to come up with
these amazing advances in computing.

00:43:48.518 --> 00:43:51.959
So you just don't have to be this single-minded,
nose-down kind of person.

00:43:51.959 --> 00:43:55.485
So as an icon for women in STEM,
this is limiting,

00:43:55.485 --> 00:43:57.297
and I'm guilty of this, obviously.

00:43:57.297 --> 00:44:00.521
For several reasons,
but one is that it erases

00:44:00.521 --> 00:44:03.071
the other people,
other women who were working in STEM,

00:44:03.071 --> 00:44:04.063
at that time.

00:44:04.063 --> 00:44:06.770
It makes her seem like
an exceptional, strange person.

00:44:06.770 --> 00:44:08.023
You know, Lord Byron's daughter.

00:44:08.023 --> 00:44:09.775
Her incredible mental gifts.

00:44:09.775 --> 00:44:10.688
Which she had.

00:44:10.688 --> 00:44:14.716
But she also had the ability
to have a mathematics education,

00:44:14.716 --> 00:44:18.241
and if more women had
had the same mathematics education,

00:44:18.241 --> 00:44:21.253
they could have also accomplished
similar things.

00:44:21.253 --> 00:44:23.213
Here are a few of her contemporaries.

00:44:23.213 --> 00:44:25.960
Marie Sophie Germain
was a physicist.

00:44:25.960 --> 00:44:28.888
Mary Somerville
was one of her good friends,

00:44:28.888 --> 00:44:30.459
and a mathematician and scientist.

00:44:30.459 --> 00:44:34.291
And Maria Mitchell was an astronomer.

00:44:34.291 --> 00:44:37.204
And these are all just women
whose names were variations on Mary.

00:44:37.204 --> 00:44:38.515
So many, many women.

00:44:38.515 --> 00:44:41.593
The problem with the delusional --
the Stein take.

00:44:41.593 --> 00:44:44.238
She's delusional, immoral,
a terrible person.

00:44:44.238 --> 00:44:45.510
Oh yeah,
she wrote the first computer program.

00:44:45.510 --> 00:44:49.757
That's not the focus we give
to male scientists.

00:44:49.757 --> 00:44:53.546
These are just three --
these are the first three male scientists I thought of,

00:44:53.546 --> 00:44:56.659
and they all --
Nicola Tesla, John Nash --

00:44:56.659 --> 00:44:59.709
a mathematician, but --
and Isaac Newton.

00:44:59.709 --> 00:45:03.543
They all had terrible mental problems,
and terrible personal problems,

00:45:03.543 --> 00:45:06.936
but nobody diminishes their science
as a result of it.

00:45:06.936 --> 00:45:13.552
Focusing on her personality and life
and putting down her accomplishments,

00:45:13.552 --> 00:45:14.967
as a result, I mean,
people do say --

00:45:14.967 --> 00:45:16.108
well, she was so arrogant.

00:45:16.108 --> 00:45:18.130
She was clearly manic depressive.

00:45:18.130 --> 00:45:20.416
Therefore, she could not have written
the computer program.

00:45:20.416 --> 00:45:23.746
Well, let's talk schizophrenic.

00:45:23.746 --> 00:45:25.302
Let's talk manic depressive.

00:45:25.302 --> 00:45:26.628
Let's talk --
I don't know what was going on

00:45:26.628 --> 00:45:27.758
with Isaac Newton.

00:45:27.758 --> 00:45:29.780
But I'm glad it happened,
because it furthered science.

00:45:29.780 --> 00:45:33.485
But that's only a claim people make
for women, and not men.

00:45:33.485 --> 00:45:36.965
And then this is the 100%
all bad, all across the way,

00:45:36.965 --> 00:45:39.162
total fraud point of view.

00:45:39.162 --> 00:45:40.670
There's this great book --
if you haven't read it,

00:45:40.670 --> 00:45:41.932
you need to go buy it right away.

00:45:41.932 --> 00:45:44.673
Unfortunately, I think it's out of print,
but it's easy to get used.

00:45:44.673 --> 00:45:47.398
Yeah, hm, wonder why it's out of print.

00:45:47.398 --> 00:45:49.401
It's called How to Suppress Women's Writing,

00:45:49.401 --> 00:45:50.711
by Joanna Russ.

00:45:50.711 --> 00:45:52.353
It's a Bible.

00:45:52.353 --> 00:45:54.802
And you can replace all of, like,
writing with programming,

00:45:54.802 --> 00:45:56.890
or any kind of science in here,
and it's all the same.

00:45:56.890 --> 00:45:59.485
So the general attacks are --

00:45:59.485 --> 00:46:00.441
she didn't write it.

00:46:00.441 --> 00:46:02.633
That's a claim people make about Ada.

00:46:02.633 --> 00:46:04.966
She wrote it,
but she only wrote one of it.

00:46:04.966 --> 00:46:06.613
She only wrote one paper, you guys.

00:46:06.613 --> 00:46:07.526
Clearly.

00:46:07.526 --> 00:46:10.108
She wrote it,
but she had help.

00:46:10.108 --> 00:46:12.360
Look, she and Babbage corresponded,

00:46:12.360 --> 00:46:14.526
because he was the only --
he wouldn't write down

00:46:14.526 --> 00:46:17.055
his own -- the description of his own machine.

00:46:17.055 --> 00:46:17.907
Yeah.

00:46:17.907 --> 00:46:21.719
And then there's sort of a final one,

00:46:21.719 --> 00:46:23.751
which is she wrote it,
but it's not art,

00:46:23.751 --> 00:46:25.023
and she's not an artist.

00:46:25.023 --> 00:46:26.024
And that's one of the arguments.

00:46:26.024 --> 00:46:27.447
Well, that wasn't...

00:46:27.447 --> 00:46:29.050
She wrote it,
but it wasn't a computer program.

00:46:29.050 --> 00:46:31.949
And she was not a computer programmer.

00:46:31.949 --> 00:46:33.021
How could she be?

00:46:33.021 --> 00:46:33.863
Blah-blah-blah.

00:46:33.863 --> 00:46:35.101
She had no compiler.

00:46:35.101 --> 00:46:36.738
So that's just --

00:46:36.738 --> 00:46:39.937
when you're telling that story,
that's what you're subscribing to.

00:46:39.937 --> 00:46:42.530
So here are a few of my ideas

00:46:42.530 --> 00:46:43.838
for new stories we can tell.

00:46:43.838 --> 00:46:48.943
So there's this --
we'll start out kind of tame.

00:46:48.943 --> 00:46:53.225
Somebody should write a history
of women Victorian mathematicians and scientists,

00:46:53.225 --> 00:46:55.690
and their influence on modern day 
science and computing,

00:46:55.690 --> 00:46:58.121
and include Ada Lovelace, Mary Somerville,
all the rest,

00:46:58.121 --> 00:47:02.438
and things like the women's magazines
that had algebra puzzles in them.

00:47:02.438 --> 00:47:05.106
So that would give you, like,
the whole big picture,

00:47:05.106 --> 00:47:07.900
instead of being like --
oh, this freak who predicted computing.

00:47:07.900 --> 00:47:11.168
I like this one.

00:47:11.168 --> 00:47:12.496
I love Anne Hathaway.

00:47:12.496 --> 00:47:14.623
In a moving and sensitive portrayal,

00:47:14.623 --> 00:47:18.691
Anne Hathaway plays brilliant
yet tortured Victorian scientist Ada Lovelace,

00:47:18.691 --> 00:47:21.979
exploring the conflicting pull
of her passions towards mathematics,

00:47:21.979 --> 00:47:24.639
art, family, fame, and madness.

00:47:24.639 --> 00:47:27.664
Won Oscars for best actress,
best supporting actress,

00:47:27.664 --> 00:47:31.079
so this is going to pass the Bechdel Test, baby.

00:47:31.079 --> 00:47:33.182
And best picture.

00:47:33.182 --> 00:47:36.432
Yeah, and I was kind of thinking
of A Beautiful Mind,

00:47:36.432 --> 00:47:37.528
when I wrote this.

00:47:37.528 --> 00:47:38.650
Also Anne Hathaway.

00:47:38.650 --> 00:47:43.446
Maybe you can figure out
what I was thinking of here.

00:47:43.446 --> 00:47:47.329
Ada Lovelace and Mary Somerville
found an academy for young women,

00:47:47.329 --> 00:47:50.008
where they teach harp, horseback riding,
and computer programming.

00:47:50.008 --> 00:47:52.800
The second computer program
is a menstrual period tracker.

00:47:52.800 --> 00:47:57.965
Alumnae instigate and lead 
the information revolution of 1852.

00:47:57.965 --> 00:48:01.633
I imagine that they all wear, like,
black PVC dresses,

00:48:01.633 --> 00:48:03.966
and have big Xs on their chests.

00:48:03.966 --> 00:48:05.690
So yeah, that would be super fun.

00:48:05.690 --> 00:48:08.548
Ada Lovelace...

00:48:08.548 --> 00:48:10.338
See if you can get this one.

00:48:10.338 --> 00:48:13.008
Ada Lovelace,
a mediocre poet at best...

00:48:13.008 --> 00:48:14.981
Oh my gosh,
she was a terrible poet, you guys...

00:48:14.981 --> 00:48:18.213
Programs the Analytical Engine
to help her write poetry,

00:48:18.213 --> 00:48:21.633
which she publishes anonymously,
under the name Equus Libros.

00:48:21.633 --> 00:48:25.091
All London wonders --
is the author man or machine?

00:48:25.091 --> 00:48:27.709
No one suspects the truth,
until she reveals all,

00:48:27.709 --> 00:48:29.182
in a live performance.

00:48:29.182 --> 00:48:31.816
And yes, I am talking about horse ebooks.

00:48:31.816 --> 00:48:35.211
And if you don't know what horse ebooks is,
it's too late.

00:48:35.211 --> 00:48:36.024
It's over.

00:48:36.024 --> 00:48:37.155
You missed it.

00:48:37.155 --> 00:48:38.900
All right, so this is my last story.

00:48:38.900 --> 00:48:41.537
Ada Lovelace
becomes the first literal rock star,

00:48:41.537 --> 00:48:43.626
rather than the figurative one
her father was,

00:48:43.626 --> 00:48:45.599
playing computer-generated music,

00:48:45.599 --> 00:48:48.128
and inventing electronic amplification of instruments.

00:48:48.128 --> 00:48:49.963
She makes millions,
and blows it all

00:48:49.963 --> 00:48:52.447
on harps, horses, and laudanum.

00:48:52.447 --> 00:48:54.967
Babbage refuses to speak to her
ever again.

00:48:54.967 --> 00:48:57.798
That would be a freaking great story.

00:48:57.798 --> 00:48:59.461
I mean, she had that mentality.

00:48:59.461 --> 00:49:00.302
It would be great.

00:49:00.302 --> 00:49:03.586
So yeah, this is sort of
trying to look at...

00:49:03.586 --> 00:49:05.758
Even the "positive" stories, unquote,

00:49:05.758 --> 00:49:07.463
that we tell,
and showing how limited they are,

00:49:07.463 --> 00:49:09.238
and how they limit women in science,

00:49:09.238 --> 00:49:10.546
and our society in general.

00:49:10.546 --> 00:49:12.097
I didn't even get into the part where --

00:49:12.097 --> 00:49:15.546
because Ada Lovelace was so
multidimensional and complex,

00:49:15.546 --> 00:49:20.717
I think computing founded by her
would have been immediately connected

00:49:20.717 --> 00:49:25.173
with the Arts and Humanities in a way
modern computing,

00:49:25.173 --> 00:49:27.275
which grew out of World War II, was not.

00:49:27.275 --> 00:49:29.876
It would have been so interesting,

00:49:29.876 --> 00:49:32.749
and so that's part of what I want to tell here,
with these stories.

00:49:32.749 --> 00:49:36.633
It's like --
computing can be so much more,

00:49:36.633 --> 00:49:38.999
and so much better connected
with our society and ourselves,

00:49:38.999 --> 00:49:43.218
and also, as a woman,
you can be a whole person.

00:49:43.218 --> 00:49:44.795
You can have a family.

00:49:44.795 --> 00:49:46.025
You can sleep around.

00:49:46.025 --> 00:49:47.930
You can do drugs,
and you can still do

00:49:47.930 --> 00:49:49.629
fantastic, amazing work.

00:49:49.629 --> 00:49:52.941
So guys have been able to do this
for a long, long time.

00:49:52.941 --> 00:49:54.302
Just check it out.

00:49:54.302 --> 00:49:56.336
But I think that would be really cool.

00:49:56.336 --> 00:49:58.879
All right, so questions
and answers.

00:49:58.879 --> 00:50:01.678
If you have any great
Ada Lovelace story ideas,

00:50:01.678 --> 00:50:03.383
that would be wonderful to hear too.

00:50:03.383 --> 00:50:04.468
Thank you.

00:50:04.468 --> 00:50:12.165
(applause)

00:50:12.165 --> 00:50:13.115
>> Okay, the question is --

00:50:13.115 --> 00:50:16.198
if the students are inspired by this,

00:50:16.198 --> 00:50:19.570
but they don't want to write
an Ada Lovelace story,

00:50:19.570 --> 00:50:20.786
what can they do?

00:50:20.786 --> 00:50:22.935
And I really want people
to write Ada Lovelace stories.

00:50:22.935 --> 00:50:25.734
One of the things I'm doing
as a hobby right now

00:50:25.734 --> 00:50:27.734
is learning how to make zines.

00:50:27.734 --> 00:50:30.567
Just little paper printouts
of a few pages,

00:50:30.567 --> 00:50:31.642
that you can, like --

00:50:31.642 --> 00:50:33.452
are so cheap,
you can just give them away.

00:50:33.452 --> 00:50:38.898
I think learning more about
the history of computing,

00:50:38.898 --> 00:50:41.893
but also the general forms
of sexism is, frankly,

00:50:41.893 --> 00:50:44.062
a great idea,
to learn how you're using it

00:50:44.062 --> 00:50:45.430
in your everyday life.

00:50:45.430 --> 00:50:49.165
One of the first things I learned
from joining a women in computing group,

00:50:49.165 --> 00:50:52.822
after I discovered I was the only
Linux kernel programmer in the world

00:50:52.822 --> 00:50:54.703
who was female, in 2002,

00:50:54.703 --> 00:50:57.065
there are simple rules, like --

00:50:57.065 --> 00:51:00.273
if you're trying to help a woman
learn something on the computer,

00:51:00.273 --> 00:51:02.042
never take away the keyboard.

00:51:02.042 --> 00:51:03.650
Very simple rule.

00:51:03.650 --> 00:51:04.824
Follow that.

00:51:04.824 --> 00:51:05.945
You'll do a lot better.

00:51:05.945 --> 00:51:09.757
Wait for women to speak
and give the answers to questions.

00:51:09.757 --> 00:51:11.226
Things like that.

00:51:11.226 --> 00:51:12.210
So...

00:51:12.210 --> 00:51:13.961
But I really think
you should go out and draw,

00:51:13.961 --> 00:51:16.094
or make a rap video,
or something like that.

00:51:16.094 --> 00:51:17.431
So...

00:51:17.431 --> 00:51:19.630
>> Okay, wow.

00:51:19.630 --> 00:51:21.506
What a wonderful story.

00:51:21.506 --> 00:51:24.028
(laughter)

00:51:24.028 --> 00:51:26.523
>> Said and expressed.

00:51:26.523 --> 00:51:27.948
So thank you very much.

00:51:27.948 --> 00:51:31.948
(applause)