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Changing Tech Culture’s Attitude Towards Women

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com  Steve’s Tumblr)

Management consultant Erwin Van Der Koogh wrote an essay on tech and how women are treated, “This industry and living life on the lowest difficulty setting,”  Go read the entire thing, but he pretty much sums it up by noting that at a tech conference his worst fear is making a mistake, but a female colleague’s worst fear is sexual assault and harassment.

It pretty much sums up issues of women in tech in that they face inordinate issues men don’t face, and these issues are pretty horrific.  When people say white male is the lowest difficulty setting in, say, tech, that’s because we’re not facing the same challenges.  We’re playing a game with infinite lives; women are playing Dark Souls III.

His experiences and those of the woman he writes about are not alone.  I’ve talked about bias in tech to a room nodding sadly.  Everyone in tech who listens can hear stories about sexism.  Just watch the news in tech, and stories of bias pop up repeatedly.

It’s wrong.

It’s wrong on any number of ethical levels, moral levels, societal levels, and civic levels.  Bigotry of any kind is corrosive, acid on the soul, eating away decent things.

It’s wrong in tech, an industry that should put ideas and work and creativity first – but too often doesn’t.  When someone’s gender matters more than their work, then that’s anathema to what we’re supposedly about.

And as a white guy – and if you’re one of me in tech – as Erwin points out, we need to make an effort to solve it.  I’ll put it simply – we’re having a comparatively easy time, we have the (at times unwarranted) attention, so we have the ability to make a difference, and we should.  Else we’re letting our industry be something it shouldn’t be, as well as letting our fellow techs drag themselves down with their own bias.

Tech should be what we think it is.

 

Erwin proposes solutions where we work on ourselves, which is vital.  Start with yourself – I can thank my lucky stars I had several female managers and co-workers that helped me see sexism and deal with it.

I’d say we also need to call out sexism in tech when possible, be it in person or on Twitter or whatever.  Just get into the habit of it.

However a big thing we should do is change the culture of tech.  To do that, there’s plenty of places to get involved in REALLY changing the culture – the organizations.  If you want to make a difference promote these or help out.  We change the culture by getting involved and supporting women getting into tech – and staying there.

  • Girl Develop IT – A nonprofit that provides accessible programs for women who want to learn coding.
  • Girls Learning Code – A Canadian non-profit that focuses on helping young women learn technical skills in a supportive atmosphere.
  • Girls Teaching Girls To Code – A Bay Area program where women in CS teach Bay Area high school girls to code.
  • Grace Hopper Celebration – Produced by the Anita Borg institute, this is a celebration of women in computing.
  • Ladies Learning Code – A Canadian non-profit that focuses on helping people learn beginner technical skills in a comfortable, social way.
  • Made With Code – Promotes women in coding with projects, events, and mentoring. Has several alliances and supporters.
  • Mothercoders – An organization focused on helping mothers get tech-savvy and up-to-date for this economy
  • National Center For Women And Information Technology – Focuses on correcting gender imbalance in technology, and bringing the balance of diversity to the industry.
  • Rails Girls – A worldwide group that works to empower women with technology.
  • The Ada Initiative – An organization that supports women in technology, with a heavy emphasis on codes of conduct, training, and an embrace of open source.
  • Tech Girls Canada – Provides national leadership for the various industry groups in Canada encouraging women in tech careers.
  • Girls Make Games – A series of international summer camps encouraging girls to explore the world of video games.

The resources are there.

– Steve

No Man’s Sky: The Need For Procedural History

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, www.SeventhSanctum.com, and Steve’s Tumblr)

I’m hyped for No Man’s Sky, the space exploration game that uses math to give us a procedural universe – since it’s all constructed from equations, the game has quintillions of possible world to explore.  On the rare time two people find the same world, it would be the same for both due to – math.

But as I’ve read and watched the news on NMS, there’s also talk of the lore of the game.  The story, the meaning.  The developer Hello Games has been very cagey on it, for obvious reasons – they don’t want to spoil the “story” in the game.

This lore, however, is already designed as far as we know.  That brings up something I think it a potential disadvantage in NMS – and in many procedural/random games.  A lot of the “story” is disconnected from the way the setting is made.  The lore is set, and at best sets the stage for the generation of the world – or at worst isn’t just connected anyway.

This means in many cases the randomness of the world is sort of meaningless even if there’s some meaning in the components.  There’s no history, just algorithms.  Why is the dungeon built the way it is?  Why are these artifacts on this world?  I see little to no attention paid to not just generating a setting but the meaning behind it – the history – in many a game.

Like it or not, a lot of these procedural games are about making something that seems “right” but doesn’t have much real history.  Now I love procedural games, I can get into them, but I admit this flaw, and I think the art is limited by this disconnection.  There’s no “real history,” just a shadow play of numbers.

But this also gives us an insight into what future procedural games could be.

What if large chunks of their history, their backstory, are generated?  What if, in turn this history affects the generated environments.  What if this history is part of the lore characters find, from the names of places to the powers of procedurally generated items?  Perhaps the characters themselves are connected to some procedurally generated lore.

Some examples.

  • Imagine an NMS-like-game where the basic expansion patterns/conflicts of various species are procedurally generated – and in turn the effects on certain worlds and areas is created.  Places between two peaceful species have great trade.  Worlds right at areas of conflicts may have graveyards of crashed spaceships.  Bits of history can be worked in, again procedural – you don’t just salvage equipment from a downed ship, but find out when and why it fell.
  • A procedural dungeon crawler could have history generated depending on what the origin is.  If there’s a gate from the netherworld burrowing up from underground, later levels would be older and more hellish.  Perhaps earlier heroes went in to battle and fell, so each treasure has meaning.
  • A game of global domination (or galactic domination) could start not just with the usual empty planet/galaxy trope but one filled with existing politics and peoples – with histories (and relations).  The games become not just standard 4X experiences, but ones of discovering – and manipulating, a rich history.
  • Such games would be not just fun like any good random/procedural game, but also far more compelling.  Rich, unique lore exists -perhaps even if only until roguelike permadeath means you start a new dungeon.  That lore in turn is meaningful because it explains and tells you something about the world.  The tale comes to life because the history has a living quality, not one made static or one bolted onto a randomizer.

Procedural history is procedural meaning, and that brings the game further to life.

Maybe NMS will inspire enough people to do even more procedural work, some will look at procedural history for their games.

– Steve

Civic Diary 4/29/2016

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr)

Hey all! So what’s the latest on my civic diary – my efforts to be more of a citizen?

Not much happened since last week as I got insanely busy. There’s a good lesson here in that you cannot do everything all the time. Sometimes you have to take care of yourself.

I think this is a big reason some people don’t really “dive into” citizenship activities; it’s exhausting and hard to pace yourself.

A few insights:

  • I’m realizing a lot of people do not know how to discuss politics – they know how to argue and fight, but not actually talk. I clearly need to get better at the discussion part.
  • Still convinced I need to get more involved in political organizations or organizing, which is hard as I have to pick something. For now I’m staying aware I should be more involved, and looking for opportunities to do so. I like observing this publicly as it makes me more self-conscious – so I do it.
  • The above has made me realize that, though I may understand many things of the world, my understanding of the political establishment (in the broad sense of everyone engaged in organized politics) is really quite poor. My work with Civic Geek helped me see how many organizations there are doing good in the world, and in turn I now see how much of our world, our society, are these interlinked structures. Being outside them disempowers you.
  • I think the disempowerment people feel is often real – but the solution is being empowered and empowering others. Getting aware and involved. A lot of political rage we see is just people finding new ways to be enslaved by jumping on fads.
  • Haven’t found anything new to write my representatives on. I am never sure how much of an effect it has, but I figure enough pebbles forms an avalanche.
  • Finally, I look at my other social involvements – clubs, speaking, museums, and worry I’ll downplay those too much. THere’s probably a balance – or a continuum – of healthy, different kinds of civic involvement.  Maybe you can be too political.

– Steve