Stevens Institute of Technology: Valerie Aurora - Rebooting the Ada Lovelace Mythos

Valerie Aurora (Executive Director and co-founder, the Ada Lovelace Initiative) delivers the Ada Lovelace conference keynote address and Provost's Lecture Series on Women in Leadership to highlight the contribution of women in STEM. Learn more here:

http://www.stevens.edu/calconference.

>> Tonight's lecture is part of a published lecture series on women in leadership.

This is an ongoing program, as you know,

and it was designed to showcase

prominent and successful women in leadership.

And in leadership positions, actually.

In an effort to motivate
the next generation of women leaders.

We launched this last year,

and the series aims to bring

distinguished women researchers,

scholars and leaders

in science, engineering, and business,

to share their experiences

to the Stevens community,

and since we're videotaping this,

beyond the Stevens community.

The thought is to inspire community.

To inspire not only our female faculty and students,

but the entire community.

It is important, because if you --

see, these are the things
I'm going to be mentioning --

we're not doing such a great job

in having women in STEM positions.

It is relevant today, this topic of STEM.

Despite our awareness of how important STEM fields are for our future,

and we can call upon numbers,

such as 80% to 85%, depending on who you listen to,

of our GDP depends directly --
directly -- is related to technology.

And if you look at the number of people that produce the technology, it's less than 4%

of the workforce in the United States.

So the importance of technology and STEM education is extremely important.

But if you've seen, a couple weeks ago,

the New York Times Magazine published an article,

where the title was:

Why Are There Still So Few Women In Science?

I don't know if you've seen it.

>> Yes.

>> There's a very dramatic picture in front.

The picture -- which essentially -- a 1927 picture,

that was taken on the occasion of a Solvay Conference on physics,

which brought up 29 prominent scientists,

physicists, 17 of whom either had
or were about to get -- I think it was -- a Nobel Prize.

and only one out of the 29 was a woman.

And those of you that read the article, probably --

who do you think it was?

Anybody?

>> Marie Curie.

>> Right.

So...

Today, current data
do not paint any better a picture.

A recent study by the
National Science And Math Initiative

revealed that only 30% of Bachelor degrees
in engineering are held by women.

23% of workers in STEM-related jobs are women,

despite the fact that they make up
48% of the workforce.

And the higher you go up the corporate ladder,

the less and the lower those percentages become.

According to another report by the National Center
of Women In information Technology,

women hold just 9% of the IT management positions,

and account for only 14% of the senior management positions in Silicon Valley, the startup world.

All told, it's more imperative than ever now

that we provide a forum to showcase the accomplishments of women leaders in this field,

and we hope that others will inspire us

and will inspire the next generation.

I'm confident that it is because of the efforts
of women like Valerie Aurora,

that we have with us today,

that this goal will be achieved.

So as many of you know,

Valerie is with us today as a keynote speaker

for the daylong conference organized by
the College of Arts and Letters,

that was devoted to celebrating
the accomplishments of Ada Lovelace,

a truly remarkable woman of her own right.

Ada is considered to be the very first
computer programmer,

and said to be the inspiration behind

much of the computer technology that has
become a routine for us today.

Ms. Aurora has drawn inspiration

from the life and works of Ada Lovelace,

in founding The Ada Initiative,

a not-for-profit organization that seeks

to increase the participation of women in open technology and to advance women's literacy

in the technology sector.

Today, The Ada Initiative reaches 2 million leaders

and emerging professionals in the tech sector and related fields, through various outreach efforts,

that have been supported in part by Google, Mozilla, Microsoft, Bloomberg,

the Linux Foundation, and Twitter.

In addition to serving as the Executive Director
of the Ada initiative,

Valerie has also invented
several new file system concepts,

including relative datetime and power saving features in file systems widely used in Linux, Mac OS X,

Solaris, and OpenBSD.

She served as senior software engineer at IBM, Intel...
IBM, Intel, and Sun Microsystems,

that were in California for some time.

And currently serves as a consultant and
senior software engineer at Red Hat,

the leading global provider
of Open Source solutions.

In 2011, Feminomics listed Aurora as number three amongst the top 50 women to watch in technology,

and in 2012, SC Magazine named her one of the most influential people in computer security.

She holds a double degree in computer science and mathematics from the New Mexico Institute

of Mining and Technology,

and continues to inspire women across the globe

to study these disciplines and apply them
in a creative and impactful way.

So I'm really thankful for the organizers of the conference for having captured Valerie

and brought her here today,

and I'm thankful to her for being willing to spend some time with us this evening.

To give us a flavor of what it is
to be a woman in leadership,

and what it is to inspire others
to go into STEM fields.

So with that, Valerie, thank you.

(applause)

>> Thank you so much for the very
flattering introduction.

I forgot I used to do those things.

I want to make one quick correction.

This was amazingly correct for an introduction.

I don't currently work at Red Hat anymore.

Ada Initiative is my full-time job.

But Red Hat -- great company.

So yes, I am super excited to be here.

It was not at all difficult to capture me.

Ada Lovelace has been a long time interest of mine,

and I was just so excited to even get to attend
this conference, much less get to speak at it.

So thank you, Robin Hammerman,
and everyone who made this possible.

So I'm going to talk today

about rebooting the Ada Lovelace mythos.

I'll talk quickly about my non-profit first.

We -- The Ada Initiative, named after Ada Lovelace,

is a non-profit dedicated to supporting

and increasing the participation
of women in open technology and culture.

So that includes Open Source software,

which is what's behind most of the internet.

Most of Google, most of Facebook.

If you've ever used Firefox,
that's all Open Source software.

So I co-founded The Ada Initiative in 2011,

after a friend of mine was groped for the third time in one year at an Open Source software conference.

I just had it, and that's what I needed to do

to change things and make the industry
better for women.

The Ada Initiative has several lead projects.

Probably the most famous is the conference antiharassment policy.

This is my solution to this kind of
physical assault, but also, like, pornography

and sexist jokes that were common in our field,

which many people just react to and say --
that's unthinkable,

but that was how things were in 2011,

and still are in many other fields.

We've also done the AdaCamp unconference,

for women in open technology and culture.

It's incredibly fun.

We get women together from
the Open Library Technology Movement,

from Wikipedia, from open hardware,
building little blinking lights into your jackets,

and things like that.

It's really fun.

And we do training as well.

We're supported almost entirely
by individual donations.

The conference sponsorships
only go so far.

And you can support us yourself,
if you'd like.

All right. I've done that.

Now I get to talk about Ada Lovelace.

So the very short version --

this is a little ironic,

because half of you have spent the day
learning all about Ada Lovelace,

and half of you may have never heard of her before.

So there will be a lot of review,

but I'll try to make it interesting.

So she wrote the world's first
computer program in 1843.

Yes, that's 1843.

That's 160 years ago?

It was written for a computer that didn't exist
and was not built,

but it was still a computer program.

She was known during her lifetime,
and even today,

mostly as the only legitimate daughter
of the poet Lord Byron,

and she died at age 36,
after a very painful illness,

cutting off a promising career.

So there's a lot of people who like to imagine --

if she had lived, perhaps the computer age
would have started in 1850,

instead of 1950.

So it's sort of -- you can see why a myth built up around this amazing person.

So the questions I wanted to explore for this talk
were to first talk about what are the stories we tell,

what is the mythos today, about Ada Lovelace,

what are the effects of those stories
on our society today,

and the people around us and our technology,

and what new stories could we tell,
that had better effects?

So here's what to expect in the talk.

So you aren't wondering where things are going.

I'm going to start out with a cast of characters.

The people who are important
in the Ada Lovelace myth.

I'm going to give a --
hopefully a rather brief biography of Ada,

but covering the important points that come out
in the various versions of the stories.

And I'm going to talk about how Ada was viewed
through history.

Not just the different ways she's viewed today,

but how her reputation changed and evolved,

as time went by.

And then I'm going to talk about my ideas
for new stories to tell.

And hopefully you can bring your own.

So, to start out with the obvious person,

the most famous person in this story
is Ada's father,

the poet, Lord Byron, George Gordon.

He was wildly famous in his lifetime.

Often considered to be the most famous person
in Europe, up to that point in time.

Sort of like a rock star, basically.

The flip side -- and I'm going to make
some Byron fans angry, possibly --

is that, even by the standards of his time,
Lord Byron was a violent, abusive,

serial sexual predator.

And he came from a long line of people
similar to him.

His father was called Mad Jack.

His great uncle was called The Wicked Lord.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find a picture of him.

For doing things like shooting his coachman,

and throwing the body on his wife in the carriage,
and driving home.

And because, at the time, he was a nobleman,

he wasn't actually punished for this.

So Byron himself was famously described as
"mad, bad, and dangerous to know".

And I just want to note --

you can appreciate his poetry,

while also acknowledging
that he was kind of a terrible human.

So he died at age 36,
of illness, far from home,

and cut off an amazing career.

He was only partway through
many fantastic works of poetry,

and we are all the worse for this.

Ada's mother is an interesting person as well.

A little less famous,
but just as strong a personality, I believe.

Her name is Anne Isabella Milbanke,

often known as Annabella.

She was minor nobility,
and the strong, independent daughter

of a strong, independent mother.

Byron used to call her
the Princess of Parallelograms, here.

She was very interested in mathematics,
and had that sort of rational, logical mind,

or at least expressed herself that way.

I don't think this was a compliment, personally.

You can read some of his poetry and find out.

So Byron left after only a month
into their marriage,

and Annabella got really tired
of all the abuse, and separated.

So Byron didn't see Ada again
after she was about a month old,

and Annabella put a lot of effort into raising Ada,

in order to try to reduce these
poetical tendencies,

which is what they called it.

You look at the family history.

It's -- yeah, you can see
why she was so nervous.

So our final character is Charles Babbage,

who was a really famous inventor,
mathematician, engineer.

That just covers a few of his careers.

Who was famous in his own time,
but also was famous for a number --

he was a character.

He was known for his hatred of street music.

Which -- I don't know if you've ever heard the joke
about paying the violinist to go away from your table.

That's what street music was in London.

In Victorian London.

He designed but never built
the world's first general purpose computer,

that conforms to our modern definition
of a general purpose computer,

that can do anything any other computer can do.

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

He designed it in the 1830s.

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

And they continued as good, close personal friends

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

I do not...

Yes, that does make sense.

So Ada.

We get to talk about Ada.

So her full name was Augusta Ada Byron,

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

and later became the Countess of Lovelace.

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

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

During her lifetime,
she was known primarily

as Lord Byron's daughter.

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

So Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love,

both famous, famous rock stars,

have one daughter, Frances Bean Cobain.

He kills himself very early on.

So the interesting thing
about Frances Bean

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

and she has succeeded --
good for her --

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

She's trying really hard to protect
her privacy.

And you can see why.

She's trying to define her own life,
and her own personality as an artist.

So she recently did a display
of her visual art.

She's a visual artist.

Under a pseudonym,
and it was later on discovered.

So this has an interesting parallel with Ada,

in that she published --
she was very concerned about putting her name

on any of her scientific work or publications,

and you can see why.

So here's a panel from Sydney Padua's
Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage.

Sydney, raise your hand.

It's a fantastic comic
about Ada Lovelace's --

a fictionalized version
of Lovelace and Babbage's collaboration.

But this is a really perfect summary
of Lady Byron's plan

to keep Ada from going nuts
and shooting her way across Europe.

So she decided she would teach her mathematics,

to counteract the poetical influences,

which is how Byron referred to his tendency
to be a terrible person.

So the interesting thing about this is that,
at the same time she fulfilled

all of the normal standards for women of her time
and her position,

she had many, many, many other interests,

including music, and specifically playing the harp.

She wanted to build a flying machine,
using steam engines,

and studying birds to do so.

And an interesting thing I love --

she loved horseback riding,

and it was considered good for her health.

This is a picture of her daughter,
Lady Anne Blunt,

who dressed up as a Bedouin
and traveled across Northern Africa

with her husband, and it was, you know,
the late 19th century,

and ended up founding the most influential
Arabian horse stud,

outside of Saudi Arabia.

So she's a very, very interesting person.

Along with Ada.

So luckily for Ada,
having such a scientific and curious mind,

amateur science was very in, at the time,
in her society.

And so she went to a lot of salons and parties,

where she met people like Charles Babbage,

Mary Somerville,

and many other of these amateur scientists,

whose names are in the history books these days.

So she followed the proper path,

got married at age 19,

had three children.

Her husband became the Earl of Lovelace,

which made her the Countess of Lovelace.

So she -- during the time she was having
three children in about three years,

she wasn't able to follow her studies much,

but kept them up.

Once she was an adult,

and able to decide what she wanted to study,

she continued with mathematics,

and found some really good tutors.

In particular, Augustus De Morgan,

who you may be familiar, from your logic and algebra classes, as the namesake of De Morgan's law.

He was an incredible mathematician,

and he had an extraordinarily high,

and probably justified opinion
of Ada Lovelace's potential.

So Ada is looking for something to do,

and at the suggestion of another scientist --

what's Wheatstone's first name?

>> Charles.

>> Charles Wheatstone.

Decides to translate
a paper someone else has written,

about Babbage's Analytical Engine.

I think this is interesting.

She was too humble to actually write
her own paper, so --

oh, I know, I'll translate.

This is a very common thing
for women in science at the time.

There's an interesting note on the man
who wrote the paper,

Luigi Menabrea.

He ended up becoming
the Prime Minister of Italy.

so the connection between computers
and wealth and power, I think,

was already in effect.

So yeah,
when she sent the paper to Babbage

for his approval, he said --

why didn't you write your own paper?

Would you like to add some notes?

Ada said sure, and thus was born
the world's first computer program.

It's hard to read, because it's very small writing,

because it's very large and complicated.

So she ended up writing a program
to calculate something called the Bernoulli numbers,

which are an extremely complex, difficult series,

with great implications for science and mathematics.

It was the first published computer program.

So I just want to give a brief summary of the controversy over the first programmer title.

We'll go over the change in public opinion
about whether she was the first

computer programmer in more detail,

but here's sort of the base facts behind it,

as filtered through my feminist consciousness.

So Babbage did obviously write
simple programs first,

because he was designing this machine,
and needed to figure out what it would do.

He wasn't actually super interested
in doing stuff with the machine.

he was more interested in the machine itself,

so there are a number of very simple
programs in his notes.

The Bernoulli numbers program
was definitely the most complicated program

written at that time.

And we're calling a computer program
a series of instructions

for a machine to carry out.

The evidence is -- the contemporary evidence
is very strong that Ada actually wrote this.

There's a bunch of letters.

Babbage makes a comment in his autobiography

that's often misinterpreted
to mean he wrote it,

but it really says that she wrote it.

And then there's the fact that's normally
very important in science,

which is that Ada published it first.

That's usually how you establish priority.

And in addition to that,
both Babbage and everyone who knew them

and everyone who reads their papers
agrees that Ada had a much deeper

and more complex understanding of the potential
of computer programming.

So as far as I'm concerned,

Ada is definitely for sure
the first computer programmer.

Unfortunately, about this time,

Ada also started to become
mentally and physically ill.

She -- retroactive historical diagnoses,
for what they're worth,

she probably had uterine cancer.

She probably was bipolar,
also known as manic depressive.

She began taking laudanum
and pot, and using Mesmerists,

hypnotism, to control the pain and the mania.

It's around this time as well
she began gambling,

which actually meant betting on the horses.

Not super unusual.

And was probably unfaithful to her husband,
although a lot of the letters

from that time are destroyed.

What I can say for sure is that,
when she told her husband what she had done

on her deathbed,
he refused to speak to her again,

until her death.

So I think it was probably pretty bad, for the time.

This is a portrait taken of her
shortly before her death.

The full size one
you can see pretty clearly --

she's dying.

It was pretty heartbreaking.

She died at age 36,
the same age at her father,

and oh, when you read her letters,

she's constantly writing about how
she needs to take it carefully,

develop her genius slowly,
build up a body of work piece by piece,

when really she was this incredible intuitive thinker

who came up with groundbreaking ideas
while writing footnotes,

literal footnotes, to somebody else's paper.

Right?

And you want to go back in time
and just say -- just write it.

Just write it.

Forget about what everyone else thinks.

Just do your work.

Carpe diem, everyone here.

Do it now.

I wrote my first published paper
when I was 24,

and not in grad school or anything,

because I didn't know you weren't supposed to.

Just go ahead and do it,
is my view.

Okay. So that's the basic sort of
attempting to be pretty objective

Ada Lovelace story.

So how was Ada Lovelace viewed
throughout history?

We can start with the obvious.

Byron's daughter.

Like, here's Ada down here.

That was, like, basically her whole life.

This famous rock star person.

So...

Even in the initial call for papers for this conference,

Robin, I hope you don't mind me calling this out --

she was described as --
the conference about the achievements and legacies

of the poet Lord Byron's only known
legitimate child, Ada Lovelace.

So it's definitely the thing that hung over her,
her entire life.

In 1833, she started to get
a little bit of a different reputation,

which was part of this amateur science scene
that was going on.

People noticed that she understood
what Babbage was saying,

because nobody else did.

But they were still --
when they would write letters,

when they got home,
they would talk about how much Ada

did or didn't resemble Byron.

So that was...

She was smart Byron's daughter,
at that point.

1838, she got a different --
a little extra addition.

The Countess of Lovelace,

rather than Lady King.

1843, the notes to the translation,
this first computer program,

were published under just her initials, actually.

Even her misspelled initials.

But Babbage couldn't keep the secret entirely,

and let Menabrea know
that actually it was Ada Lovelace.

So a few people knew.

In 1845, she discovered
that she was too immoral for the library.

So this was a picture of the Royal Society Library.

She wanted to get in,
so she could read books on mathematics,

and things like that,
and she was advised

that the word of her infidelity had gotten out,

and she was not suited
to go read books in this building.

Very much a thing.

So that's one way to find out.

Hey, I'd like to check out this book.

No, sorry, we know you're having --
you're sleeping with so and so.

What?

So...

1848, she was publicly acknowledged
as the author of the notes.

No one really cared.

1852, she dies,
and now she is Byron's dead daughter.

Yes.

She was in with -- yeah,
the second sentence, after saying where she died.

She was the only daughter of Lord Byron.

There you go.

Blah-blah-blah, and then she was married
to some people and stuff,

and they had babies,
and then it says she was distinguished

for the strength of her intellect.

So people noticed she was smart, at least.

And that's kind of what she gets.

That's all she gets in her biography.

Lady Byron was kind of a mean person,

and spent a lot of time making sure
everyone knew about Ada's faults and mistakes,

starting around the time of her death.

I'm not sure what her deal was,
but there you go.

1864, Babbage wrote his autobiography,

and in it, he has a very few mentions of her.

I mean, there's this sense
that proper women shouldn't appear in public at all.

Appear in the papers when you're born,
when you're married, and when you died.

And for the most part,
she succeeded in that.

So Babbage mentions her,
praises her,

talks about some of the work she's done.

I'm not sure how many people
read all the way through his autobiography.

But there you go.

So there's -- then we have about a century
of crickets, you know.

Not much going on.

These are a few of the minor mentions
I could find here and there.

In 1889, the notes were reprinted.

1905, she has a literal footnote
in the history of calculating machines,

by Maurice d'Ocagne.

I kept meaning to look up
how to say that, but I never did.

1932, she's mentioned in
the MIT Technology Review.

I was unable to find out what they said,

because the MIT Technology Review's paywall
was not functioning,

and I could not give them $9.99 to read this paper.

So...

Common.

So 1950 is where the general public
begins to learn about Lovelace again,

through Alan Turing,
who is a famous computer science pioneer,

and worked -- was a key part
of winning World War II.

So Alan is very interested in machine intelligence,
artificial intelligence,

and he writes about the objections to this.

And he calls one of them Lady Lovelace's objection.

Which I think is totally unfair,
because he completely misinterprets

what she's trying to say,
on purpose, to make a point.

In her notes, Lovelace is trying to counteract
this idea at the time --

people were like -- whoa, this thing
just calculated the answer to 3 + 2.

It must be living!

You know, there was a famous question.

What if I tell it the wrong question?

Will it still give me the right answer?

You know, people had no idea.

So she was trying to explain --

these machines can only do
what you tell them to do.

Somebody still has to come up
with the problem, encode it,

and stick it in the machine.

Turing interpreted this as --
machines can never surprise you.

It's like, well, no,
that's not what she was saying.

But the question of artificial intelligence
is still alive today, of course.

But yeah, at least Turing got her name
back in circulation.

I have no idea
how he became aware of her.

If it was a thing,
and everyone passed around the notes

at Cambridge or something.

I'd love to find that out.

So in 1953,
somebody finally uses the words

"first computer program".

This is Bertram Bowden,
in Faster Than Thought,

which is this hilarious attempt
to write a history of computing machines

in 1953,
and he makes this comment of --

thank you so much to my printers
for the fact that things are changing so quickly,

I have to make corrections
between each proof,

because stuff was being updated so quickly.

So in this, he says:
"Lady Lovelace had undoubtedly

a profound understanding of the principles of the machine," et cetera, and then wrote:

"Including what we should now call a program
for computing the Bernoulli numbers,

by a very sophisticated method."

So that's the first time I can really say --
find someone who's not calling her

Babbage's interpreter,
or explaining that stuff real good now.

It's -- she wrote a computer program.

So 1972, Isaac Azimov,
you know, famous science fiction writer,

and science writer,
calls her the Mother of Computers.

Which is interesting.

I would call it the Mother of Programming.

But, you know, these things
are not terribly well distinguished at the time.

In 1976, the first book-length biography comes out,

by a historian and fashion model,
Dorothy Langley Moore,

which I think is a cool combination.

I couldn't actually get a copy,
but there's a couple of articles

written for a women's mathematics newsletter,

which used the words "first computer programmer".

It also talked about her gambling,
and things like that.

So as far as I can tell,

1976 is the time when people said
"first computer programmer",

and not just the first computer program.

So yeah, it only took...

133 years
for people to come to this point.

So there's 133 years of Lovelace not being
the first computer programmer.

Being Byron's daughter,
being someone who explained Babbage pretty well.

And then that's when that finally happened.

So 1980 is when the Department of Defense
issued a new language standard,

and named it Ada,
in honor of Ada Lovelace.

This is an Ada language computer program.

One of the parts they skipped
in my resume for the introduction

is that I wrote Ada programs for a living,
for six months, straight out of college.

I don't recommend it.

It's a really unpleasant language.

But naming her -- naming the language after her
shows the regard she was held in at that time.

At least by the United States
Department of Defense.

so in 1985, Dorothy Stein --
you can barely see this.

The cover is deathly black,
and I think that reflects the opinions of the author.

In 1995, Dorothy Stein published
the second book-length biography

of Ada Lovelace, that I'm aware of.

Which -- she presents her
as mad, bad, and moderately smart.

So Dorothy Stein really had some kind of issues
with Ada Lovelace.

I'm not sure what.

But even Dorothy Stein still acknowledged
that Ada wrote that first computer program.

She just thought that she was a terrible person.

So...

1986, there's a very short book
about Ada Lovelace,

and mostly her work, which is nice.

I think it must have been a response
to Stein, based on the forward.

Like "Recently,
some people have said..."

It's actually a pretty nice work,
especially if you're interested

in computer programming.

And she's portrayed
as a complex, whole, flawed person,

who did some good work as well.

So... Unfortunately, it's not very popular.

I really enjoyed reading it, but...

All right, so now we get into the wars.

The full wars.

I mean, Stein was not that great, but wow.

1990, Alan G. Bromley,
a respected computer historian,

wrote an article in...

In which he outright denies
that she's the first computer programmer,

besides saying, of course,
she's arrogant and deluded,

and all these things.

While, at the same time,
because their letters are so clear,

even he couldn't deny this.

He says that she caught a bug
in the program that Babbage wrote.

So there's this saying that's common
among computer scientists.

That, if you write a computer program,
that's the very most complicated one you can write.

You aren't smart enough to debug it.

It's more difficult to debug a computer program
than it is to write it in the first place.

So that a historian of computing
could make that claim

I think kind of speaks
for that bias there.

Also in 1990,
Bruce Collier's PhD thesis.

Calls her mad as a hatter.

That's real scholarly language there,

and says she contributed little
or nothing to the notes.

So yeah, that's kind of awesome as well.

Actually, Sydney pointed out to me
an interesting point,

which is that many of these people
who are so passionately against

Lovelace having any involvement
in the first computer program

are also very passionate
pro-Babbage people.

Charles Babbage --

they're really trying to reclaim
his place in computing history.

Sure, his machine never got built,

but he's still really important,
and they're tired of people

taking away his credit.

So that could definitely be an issue
with the whole taking away Lovelace's credit,

because there's only so much credit to go around.

So in 1990,
we also get our first major fictional depiction

of Ada Lovelace,
as a minor character in The Difference Engine,

which is sort of the novel
that popularized the steampunk movement,

which you're probably all more familiar
than you want to be with.

So in the book,
Ada is portrayed

as a mathematical genius.

She's also kind of not that bright
when it comes to the ways of the world,

and is busy trying to gamble,
and all that kind of stuff.

So it's sort of an absent-minded
professor stereotype.

When you read Ada's letters,
she's probably not that practical,

so part of what I like about this
is that they show her deriving

and discovering mathematical theorems
that didn't come until the '30s,

that are foundational.

So it's a neat portrayal.

1992 is the longest,
most sympathetic biography,

called Ada, the Enchantress of Numbers,
by Betty Alexandra Toole.

It's mostly the letters Ada sent,
and some sent to her.

And she presents her --
she's very sympathetic.

Presents her as ambitious,
complex, flawed, and brilliant.

It unfortunately also tries to draw
a number of analogies

between the Ada programming language
and Ada's thought process,

which don't make a ton of sense,
as a computer programmer.

But it's especially great
as a primary source

for understanding who Ada was as a person.

So I'll try to go a little more quickly
on the rest of these.

1993, Tom Stoppard's Arcadia.

He says that Ada Lovelace
was an inspiration

for one of the characters,
a young girl who's working with a math tutor,

and continually comes up with
mathematical ideas

so ahead of her time
that he always dismisses them

as nonsense,
and they're later rediscovered,

and hailed as the first
understanding of fractals,

so I thought that was a neat portrayal.

Very accurate to her life.

In 1997,
I have not been able

to bring myself to watch this movie.

There's a movie called Conceiving Ada,

which is sort of loosely inspired
by something or other.

In it, Ada Lovelace
figures out how to communicate

back and forth with the future,
by the means of undying information waves,

and the people in the future
think she's so important,

they're trying to bring her back to life
by genetic engineering,

or so Wikipedia tells me.

So clearly -- pretty sure
it was a positive portrayal,

or at least intended to be.

So...

1998, the British Computing Society

creates the Lovelace Medal in her honor.

This is the 2007 Lovelace Medal winner,

Karen Sparck Jones.

The Ada Initiative considered
naming ourselves after her,

but Sparck Jones
just wasn't quite as good as Ada.

Sparck would have been awesome.

The Sparck Initiative.

So 2000, Doron Swade
comes up with a history

of Charles Babbage's computing machines,

in which he describes Ada
as deluded, bossy,

coquettish, and demanding,

which are all, like,
wonderfully gendered insults.

I took a photo of the index --
entry in the index for Lovelace,

because I just thought it was so
representative.

He says "exaggeration of contribution
to Babbage's engines, 166-9"

"Self-regard and conviction of own genius, 158-9".

Babbage didn't think
he was a genius, no.

No, Babbage thought he was a genius,
just in case you weren't sure.

Again, another Babbage-ist, right?

2001, I mean, this is supposedly
a book about Ada and her achievements,

by Benjamin Woolley,
the Bride of Science,

but it focuses mostly
on her emotions,

and her life, and her personal life,
and all that stuff,

and it's not that...
It's only a part of her life,

shall we say.

So 2009,
Suw Charman-Anderson,

who is in some way, perhaps,
responsible for all of this happening,

founded Ada Lovelace Day,

which is now --
to raise the profile

of women in science,
technology, engineering, and mathematics.

That's the STEM we keep talking about.

It's grown and grown.

This conference was actually scheduled
to go with Ada Lovelace Day.

It's just a fantastic time,
where people write blog posts

and update Wikipedia pages

about women scientists.

They're just the greatest stories.

All the stories we know are so boring.

I think you can say at this point in time
Ada Lovelace is definitely a feminist icon

in the popular imagination,
if she wasn't already.

2009, by no coincidence,
because they were friends,

Sydney Padua put together the first
and assumed to be last issue

of the comic, the Origin of Ada Lovelace,

which became this wonderful series
called Lovelace and Babbage.

In it, she and Babbage
team up to fight crime.

They just have different definitions of crime.

She thinks it's poetry.

He thinks it's music.

You can see why.

She's not just, like,
sort of the more practical person,

which is what she was in their lifetime.

She's also shown as, like, brooding and brilliant,
and occasionally unhinged.

It's a really fun, full-featured person.

It's not Ada herself,
but it's a great person who could exist,

and you want to get to know better,

and has all sorts of hilarious gags.

So check it out.

I can't leave out The Ada Initiative.

2011,
we use Ada as our --

we did a new modern portrait of her.

The Ada Initiative is focused more
on Open Source software

than software in general.

We try to keep our scope.

So the thing we brought to the Ada Lovelace story

is that she's the world's first
Open Source software programmer,

because she published the source code
to her program,

and whether or not she meant it
to be under any kind of license,

it went into the public domain
some time in the 19th century.

So anybody can take this code,
alter it, and reuse it.

It's Open Source software.

So...

The world's first computer programmer
was also a woman,

who was also an Open Source programmer.

So there's been some more
recent fictional depictions,

which I only learned about
thanks to Vicky's talk earlier today.

And here's a book
that came out in 2011,

All Men of Genius.

She's a character who's in her 60s,

and is successful, respected,
influential, a bit naughty.

I am so excited this book exists.

The Lazarus Machine.

In it, she co-founds a computer company
with Babbage.

This is great, because it's a direct --

it's great for many reasons,
but she proposed this to Babbage

in one of her letters.

We have a letter that says --
hey, Babbage.

Why don't you let me take care
of the business and the PR,

and then we could actually get these
engines built?

And he's like -- well, no, of course not.

I don't want to let go of all that control.

But this is kind of a neat idea
of what could have happened.

And this is a new biography
that just came out on Tuesday,

so I haven't read it.

Called A Female Genius.

All I can tell from the blurb
is that he believes

that she wrote the computer program,
she was hampered by sexism,

and that she and Babbage became lovers.

Which I see no hints of,
but that's another story we can tell.

So here's what I think
are the top four stories that we tell

about Ada Lovelace today.

And I'll talk about each one of them,
and what's the effect it has on society.

So the first computer programmer --

just, like, this really one-dimensional story.

And it ignores all the rest of her life,

and perpetuates this horrible stereotype
that computer programmers

have to only be interested in computing.

I was definitely considered
a very strange person in college,

studying computer science,

because I liked my English literature class.

"What's wrong with you?"

Ada rode horses and played music.

She was much more like a complex fractal,

and I really want people --

besides the good interests,

she gambled, and cheated on her husband,

and had children,
and had mixed feelings about her children,

and was trying to be a good daughter.

All that stuff.

And she was able to come up with
these amazing advances in computing.

So you just don't have to be this single-minded,
nose-down kind of person.

So as an icon for women in STEM,
this is limiting,

and I'm guilty of this, obviously.

For several reasons,
but one is that it erases

the other people,
other women who were working in STEM,

at that time.

It makes her seem like
an exceptional, strange person.

You know, Lord Byron's daughter.

Her incredible mental gifts.

Which she had.

But she also had the ability
to have a mathematics education,

and if more women had
had the same mathematics education,

they could have also accomplished
similar things.

Here are a few of her contemporaries.

Marie Sophie Germain
was a physicist.

Mary Somerville
was one of her good friends,

and a mathematician and scientist.

And Maria Mitchell was an astronomer.

And these are all just women
whose names were variations on Mary.

So many, many women.

The problem with the delusional --
the Stein take.

She's delusional, immoral,
a terrible person.

Oh yeah,
she wrote the first computer program.

That's not the focus we give
to male scientists.

These are just three --
these are the first three male scientists I thought of,

and they all --
Nicola Tesla, John Nash --

a mathematician, but --
and Isaac Newton.

They all had terrible mental problems,
and terrible personal problems,

but nobody diminishes their science
as a result of it.

Focusing on her personality and life
and putting down her accomplishments,

as a result, I mean,
people do say --

well, she was so arrogant.

She was clearly manic depressive.

Therefore, she could not have written
the computer program.

Well, let's talk schizophrenic.

Let's talk manic depressive.

Let's talk --
I don't know what was going on

with Isaac Newton.

But I'm glad it happened,
because it furthered science.

But that's only a claim people make
for women, and not men.

And then this is the 100%
all bad, all across the way,

total fraud point of view.

There's this great book --
if you haven't read it,

you need to go buy it right away.

Unfortunately, I think it's out of print,
but it's easy to get used.

Yeah, hm, wonder why it's out of print.

It's called How to Suppress Women's Writing,

by Joanna Russ.

It's a Bible.

And you can replace all of, like,
writing with programming,

or any kind of science in here,
and it's all the same.

So the general attacks are --

she didn't write it.

That's a claim people make about Ada.

She wrote it,
but she only wrote one of it.

She only wrote one paper, you guys.

Clearly.

She wrote it,
but she had help.

Look, she and Babbage corresponded,

because he was the only --
he wouldn't write down

his own -- the description of his own machine.

Yeah.

And then there's sort of a final one,

which is she wrote it,
but it's not art,

and she's not an artist.

And that's one of the arguments.

Well, that wasn't...

She wrote it,
but it wasn't a computer program.

And she was not a computer programmer.

How could she be?

Blah-blah-blah.

She had no compiler.

So that's just --

when you're telling that story,
that's what you're subscribing to.

So here are a few of my ideas

for new stories we can tell.

So there's this --
we'll start out kind of tame.

Somebody should write a history
of women Victorian mathematicians and scientists,

and their influence on modern day
science and computing,

and include Ada Lovelace, Mary Somerville,
all the rest,

and things like the women's magazines
that had algebra puzzles in them.

So that would give you, like,
the whole big picture,

instead of being like --
oh, this freak who predicted computing.

I like this one.

I love Anne Hathaway.

In a moving and sensitive portrayal,

Anne Hathaway plays brilliant
yet tortured Victorian scientist Ada Lovelace,

exploring the conflicting pull
of her passions towards mathematics,

art, family, fame, and madness.

Won Oscars for best actress,
best supporting actress,

so this is going to pass the Bechdel Test, baby.

And best picture.

Yeah, and I was kind of thinking
of A Beautiful Mind,

when I wrote this.

Also Anne Hathaway.

Maybe you can figure out
what I was thinking of here.

Ada Lovelace and Mary Somerville
found an academy for young women,

where they teach harp, horseback riding,
and computer programming.

The second computer program
is a menstrual period tracker.

Alumnae instigate and lead
the information revolution of 1852.

I imagine that they all wear, like,
black PVC dresses,

and have big Xs on their chests.

So yeah, that would be super fun.

Ada Lovelace...

See if you can get this one.

Ada Lovelace,
a mediocre poet at best...

Oh my gosh,
she was a terrible poet, you guys...

Programs the Analytical Engine
to help her write poetry,

which she publishes anonymously,
under the name Equus Libros.

All London wonders --
is the author man or machine?

No one suspects the truth,
until she reveals all,

in a live performance.

And yes, I am talking about horse ebooks.

And if you don't know what horse ebooks is,
it's too late.

It's over.

You missed it.

All right, so this is my last story.

Ada Lovelace
becomes the first literal rock star,

rather than the figurative one
her father was,

playing computer-generated music,

and inventing electronic amplification of instruments.

She makes millions,
and blows it all

on harps, horses, and laudanum.

Babbage refuses to speak to her
ever again.

That would be a freaking great story.

I mean, she had that mentality.

It would be great.

So yeah, this is sort of
trying to look at...

Even the "positive" stories, unquote,

that we tell,
and showing how limited they are,

and how they limit women in science,

and our society in general.

I didn't even get into the part where --

because Ada Lovelace was so
multidimensional and complex,

I think computing founded by her
would have been immediately connected

with the Arts and Humanities in a way
modern computing,

which grew out of World War II, was not.

It would have been so interesting,

and so that's part of what I want to tell here,
with these stories.

It's like --
computing can be so much more,

and so much better connected
with our society and ourselves,

and also, as a woman,
you can be a whole person.

You can have a family.

You can sleep around.

You can do drugs,
and you can still do

fantastic, amazing work.

So guys have been able to do this
for a long, long time.

Just check it out.

But I think that would be really cool.

All right, so questions
and answers.

If you have any great
Ada Lovelace story ideas,

that would be wonderful to hear too.

Thank you.

(applause)

>> Okay, the question is --

if the students are inspired by this,

but they don't want to write
an Ada Lovelace story,

what can they do?

And I really want people
to write Ada Lovelace stories.

One of the things I'm doing
as a hobby right now

is learning how to make zines.

Just little paper printouts
of a few pages,

that you can, like --

are so cheap,
you can just give them away.

I think learning more about
the history of computing,

but also the general forms
of sexism is, frankly,

a great idea,
to learn how you're using it

in your everyday life.

One of the first things I learned
from joining a women in computing group,

after I discovered I was the only
Linux kernel programmer in the world

who was female, in 2002,

there are simple rules, like --

if you're trying to help a woman
learn something on the computer,

never take away the keyboard.

Very simple rule.

Follow that.

You'll do a lot better.

Wait for women to speak
and give the answers to questions.

Things like that.

So...

But I really think
you should go out and draw,

or make a rap video,
or something like that.

So...

>> Okay, wow.

What a wonderful story.

(laughter)

>> Said and expressed.

So thank you very much.

(applause)