The Ladies Vanish

This article took a huge dive in second half.

> Silicon Valley really is a man’s world. Men have great ideas. Men code. Men attract money. Men fund start-ups. Men generate jobs. Men hire other men. Men are the next Steve Jobses, the innovators, the inventors, the disruptors. But women complete the tasks that men have not yet programmed computers to do, the tasks that make their “genius” and their “innovation” possible. And they do it for pennies.

Persecution complex meets "quality journalism". Jezebel worthy article.

> Silicon Valley really is a man’s world. Men have great ideas. Men code. Men attract money. Men fund start-ups. Men generate jobs. Men hire other men. Men are the next Steve Jobses, the innovators, the inventors, the disruptors. But women complete the tasks that men have not yet programmed computers to do, the tasks that make their “genius” and their “innovation” possible. And they do it for pennies.

So imagine transposing this, saying that all of the work done by women at fashion houses was only made possible by the male construction workers that built their offices. You'd be laughed out of the room, and deservedly so.

The issues surrounding women in tech are very important, but that doesn't come with a license to make shit up. Mechanical Turk could disappear tomorrow and SV would be just fine.

> Which means that mechanical turkers (mostly women) teach computers to do what engineers (mostly men) cannot on their own program computers to do.

This is an infuriating article, but the above sentence really stands out. Phrasing the issue in terms of men vs women is entirely missing the point.

For a much better take on the subject, see "In praise of idleness", by Bertrand Russell.

http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html

The article never actually specifies whether the "mostly black and Latino" women who digitize the books are treated as independent contractors. It implies it, by launching into a section on Mechanical Turk, Uber, TaskRabbit, etc, but never actually discusses the book digitizers.

It's an odd world where tech departments are suddenly considered prestigious instead of cost centers you need to cut. I'm wholly unconvinced this article captures anything but a wildly distorted version of actual reality.

And, more to the point, you certainly wouldn't look to Mechanical Turk as the central evidence on your overreaching theory on women and computing, the driving force that somehow transforms menial work into algorithmic perfection. That just smacks of ignorance.

The same arguments presented by the article could be applied equally to the fate of farmers after the mechanization of farming. A mechanically inclined boy in a rural area is now more likely to grow up and become a tractor mechanic than a farmer.

There is an interesting story underneath this article about how technology displaces people and changes how society sees them (and how they see themselves). But that story isn't told. Instead a bunch of navel gazing about Silicon Valley gender inequities steals the focus.

I agree that it's harmful to society to create "marketplaces" where workers are more free to undercut each other on price. Everywhere in nature and history, arms races are "fair" but they waste resources, so society should focus on creating and enforcing rules against arms races.

This has the feel of a well-intentioned, but badly executed college paper. The kind that you'd get red ink on it saying 'interesting start, but you have to connect the dots etc...'

Reading the comments, I can see the Google Brigade is back in force.

Reminds me of worker bees dutifully trying to protect the hive.

This is a content-farm piece based on the actual article by Wilson, which is here:

http://www.aperture.org/magazine-2013/andrew-norman-wilson-w...