Posts tagged technology

thisistheverge: Researchers use Lego to help build artificial bones! Don’t miss the video.

thisistheverge:

Researchers use Lego to help build artificial bones! Don’t miss the video.

theverge.com

The virtues of being boring

bnefsummit:

Bloomberg CEO and President Dan Doctoroff is giving our kickoff keynote on an intriguing theme:  “the virtues of being boring”. 

“Boring can be good. Very good.”  Why do we talk “boring”? Boring is a sign of mature industries, of stable technologies, but also of markets that keep growing.  Boring means markets that aren’t political footballs.  Boring means that the industry “no longer includes adjectives, explanations, or modifiers”. 

That means - clean energy is just energy; smart grids are just grids; LEED-certified buildings are just buildings. 

It also means that clean energy companies become like other companies - just as software companies and web companies became companies. 

Here’s to being boring!

Smartphone app 'improves' eyesight

realcleverscience:

emergentfutures:

A NEW smartphone app developed by scientists in Tel Aviv could delay the need for reading glasses in older people by training the mind to process blurred images, researchers said.

Full Story: The Australian

Another awesome example of smart-phones in action. Dig!

emergentfutures

soupsoup: changetheratio: This. #nofilter #changetheratio The New Yorker has come out with its profile of Facebook COO Sheyl Sandberg: “A Woman’s Place: Sheryl Sandberg & Male-Dominated Silicon Valley.” Stop for a second - it’s 2011 and it’s sort of nuts that such a title should even work. And yet! Sandberg is terrific and Auletta shines a light on the issue of access, and visibility, and opportunity - all of Change the Ratio’s favorite obsessions. It’s a great time for Sandberg’s message to be magnified (raise your hand; don’t leave before you leave; lean in) and a great time to be an awesome woman doing cool shizz ready to catch that spotlight now that it’s finally swinging around. This is great for CTR, too. I was psyched when David Remnick emailed me back in March to hear my thoughts on the matter and more psyched to get to bend Ken Auletta’s ear for 90 minutes in the Hashable office - but he spoke to lots of people and seemed focused on Sheryl and the Valley, so who knew what would make the cut. But we did - with our core mission of visibility front and center. He also included a precis of the contretemps with Michael Arrington not even a year ago - and my God, how out of date it sounds now, eh? See below:  Sandberg and many other women in Silicon Valley think the problems women encounter are usually more subtle than blatant sexism. “I think it is largely innocent,” says Rachel Sklar, a New York writer and entrepreneur who has actively protested against digital conferences that invite too few women to speak. Sklar co-founded a women’s organization called Change the Ratio, and she tries to make sure there are more women onstage. “You can’t know about what you don’t see,” she says. Some suggest that women are also to blame. Michael Arrington, the editor of TechCrunch and the organizer of the TechCrunch Disrupt conferences, defended venture capitalists and Silicon Valley males in a blog post last summer. “The problem is that not enough women want to become entrepreneurs,” he wrote. Referring to Sklar, and her campaign, Arrington added, “Yeah ok, whatever, Rachel. Every damn time we have a conference we fret over how we can find women to fill speaking slots. We ask our friends and contacts for suggestions. We beg women to come and speak… . And you know what? A lot of the time they say no. Because they are literally hounded to speak at every single tech event in the world because they are all trying so hard to find qualified women to speak at their conference.” It is SO not hard to find qualified women to speak at tech, digital and entrepreneurship conferences - good Lord, I trip over all of you every day. I can’t imagine that all but the most clueless and narrow-minded readers won’t think to themselves, huh, that doesn’t sound quite right, as they mentally go through all the amazing women who are making incredible stuff happen more and more visibly every day. This article will swing that spotlight around even more, and hopefully further illuminate the blindspot where guess what? There are lots of qualified, amazing women raising their hands and leaning in.  This is a good day!  (Taken with instagram) Amen! The only critique I would offer is this: we need less people of all sexes at tech conferences and more of them busy doing useful things! 

soupsoup:

changetheratio:

This. #nofilter #changetheratio

The New Yorker has come out with its profile of Facebook COO Sheyl Sandberg: “A Woman’s Place: Sheryl Sandberg & Male-Dominated Silicon Valley.” Stop for a second - it’s 2011 and it’s sort of nuts that such a title should even work. And yet! Sandberg is terrific and Auletta shines a light on the issue of access, and visibility, and opportunity - all of Change the Ratio’s favorite obsessions. It’s a great time for Sandberg’s message to be magnified (raise your hand; don’t leave before you leave; lean in) and a great time to be an awesome woman doing cool shizz ready to catch that spotlight now that it’s finally swinging around.

This is great for CTR, too. I was psyched when David Remnick emailed me back in March to hear my thoughts on the matter and more psyched to get to bend Ken Auletta’s ear for 90 minutes in the Hashable office - but he spoke to lots of people and seemed focused on Sheryl and the Valley, so who knew what would make the cut. But we did - with our core mission of visibility front and center. He also included a precis of the contretemps with Michael Arrington not even a year ago - and my God, how out of date it sounds now, eh? See below: 

Sandberg and many other women in Silicon Valley think the problems women encounter are usually more subtle than blatant sexism. “I think it is largely innocent,” says Rachel Sklar, a New York writer and entrepreneur who has actively protested against digital conferences that invite too few women to speak. Sklar co-founded a women’s organization called Change the Ratio, and she tries to make sure there are more women onstage. “You can’t know about what you don’t see,” she says.

Some suggest that women are also to blame. Michael Arrington, the editor of TechCrunch and the organizer of the TechCrunch Disrupt conferences, defended venture capitalists and Silicon Valley males in a blog post last summer. “The problem is that not enough women want to become entrepreneurs,” he wrote. Referring to Sklar, and her campaign, Arrington added, “Yeah ok, whatever, Rachel. Every damn time we have a conference we fret over how we can find women to fill speaking slots. We ask our friends and contacts for suggestions. We beg women to come and speak… . And you know what? A lot of the time they say no. Because they are literally hounded to speak at every single tech event in the world because they are all trying so hard to find qualified women to speak at their conference.”

It is SO not hard to find qualified women to speak at tech, digital and entrepreneurship conferences - good Lord, I trip over all of you every day. I can’t imagine that all but the most clueless and narrow-minded readers won’t think to themselves, huh, that doesn’t sound quite right, as they mentally go through all the amazing women who are making incredible stuff happen more and more visibly every day. This article will swing that spotlight around even more, and hopefully further illuminate the blindspot where guess what? There are lots of qualified, amazing women raising their hands and leaning in. 

This is a good day! 

(Taken with instagram)

Amen!

The only critique I would offer is this: we need less people of all sexes at tech conferences and more of them busy doing useful things! 

changetheratio

Girl geeks and stereotypes about technology - MenSpeakUp

Girl geeks and stereotypes about technology In today’s HuffPost Technology, Bianca Bosker writes about Marissa Mayer, a senior executive at Google. Bosker uses Mayer’s example as a case that defies stereotypes about women working in the technology sector. Her relatively late exposure to computing is something of note:   Mayer, who calls herself a “proud geek,” did not grow up obsessed with computers — she bought her first one in college — or with dreams of becoming the next Bill Gates. She wanted to be a pediatric neurosurgeon.   The article is an interplay between Mayer’s emotional and analytical outlook when offered several jobs, at Google and other companies, after graduating from Stanford. While she “created a matrix ranking how each position compared across a slew of characteristics,” she also “collapsed in tears” in frustration at the difficulty of the decision. Toward the end of the piece, Mayer’s perspective on women in technology is tied together with Bosker’s example of how the woman tech executive is not a typical “geek”:   Mayer blames the dearth of female programmers and Internet entrepreneurs in part on tech’s image problem. She argues that growing up, girls are offered a narrow stereotype of what it means to be a “geek” — something akin to the bespectacled loner who spends hours typing away at a screen. Attracting more women to the Silicon Valleys, Alleys and Roundabouts of the world requires doing away with those stereotypes and showing young women that techies don’t have to love video games. Mayer herself is no ordinary geek: she’s a former ballet dancer with a penchant for cupcakes and the fashion designer Oscar de la Renta.   Mayer’s focus on loosening rigid stereotypes of women in technology is laudable. I wonder: where might men in the technology space assist in this process?