Study Journal 5

Nov 05

The idea that women shouldn't be placed in gender roles / gender degrees. Samuelson taught that women should be in the sciences if they wish or medical or any role. Although for male and females, all should remember to leave balance in their life.

Even here at BYU, maybe especially here at BYU, there is a large barrier for women to cross in order to succeed in computer science. with minor changes, and a better attitude for students for fellow students, maybe we could have more success.

Interesting comment is that men didn't always have overwhelming number compared to girls in computer science. At one point women and men were about the same. They have been decreasing over the last some years. This is why it is important we fix this down going trend, while we still can.

The discriminating factors that cloud the culture of computer scientists needs to be lessened. These factors are hard to see and is why there are programs like the Gender HCI Project to help identify these issues.

Nov 10

The quote about how the link between violence in video games and increased aggression in players was one of the most studied field in this area. This was fairly interesting statement, I think I may want to come back to. Even if I don't want to believe it sometimes.

Addiction is an important topic which I see in most parts of the world. The addiction through video games though I had never thought as an issue. During the information discussed from the readings, I noted the amount of ideas given, suggests this is a bigger issue than I would have imagined.

addictions can also be caused through social media and not just social video games. This suggests we need to be proactive to defend ourselves and families against this issues.

Nov 12

Studies show that tech groups succeed better with both gender groups vs just all males or all females. One of the important reasons to help support the fix of the gender imbalance.

Females are in schools (more graduate then males), many in the work field… so this shows women driven out someone in the path. If these culture or other points are fixed, then there is a chance the culture problem will be fixed

We say different things for males doing the same thing a females is doing something. (usually more negative for females). We do different thing for males / females. The CEO example (golfing, basketball … more), female=(uhh… not sure). This is one of the major issues according to speaker.

Females in tech: They are different than males. Different life styles. Example: Cant make it to breakfast or evening meeting because of family. By switching to lunch time, the women can make it now. Little changes can make all the difference.

Nov 17

A big statement reminded to us in class was that the average person uses social media 16 minutes per hour. This may have meant 16 minutes per hour while at work, or maybe 16 minutes per hour throughout the day. Ether way that is a lot of time that is used on social media that could be used for beneficial reasons. (if using social media to communicate isn't a reason enough.)

We re-read the study done about for women in computer science. The study examined how stereotypes pushed or attracted people into computer science. It was suggested that women would return in much larger scale to computer science if simply non-stereotypical objects replaced stereotypical objects in computer science environments.

Interesting in that in the article, when non-stereotypical objects were used as the environment, not only were their more females, the males felt more uncomfortable, and resulted in less males. This may make a strong point that males are (maybe unknowingly) pushing and wanting a particular environment that females do not like.

Current Event 5

http://bowdoinorient.com/article/10569

The gender imbalance of those who study computer science has been an obvious fact since the beginning of computers. From the start, the culture around programming was unique and very influential. One example would be the effect this culture has done to the strict business culture. Although it has thought to be very progressive, in general the culture has had a repelling effect towards females. The programming scene was a guys thing. In the article by, The Bowdoin Orient, they report how this imbalance of genders is starting to change. There was the a whole conference focused on women in computing in which 12,000 female college students attended. This was unthinkable a few years ago. There was one school in particular which had a doubled female enrollment in their computer science program over a short period of time. Other schools are also approaching this trend. Companies are providing extra support for women programmers. These events are advancing us closer to a time where we may not have the issue of not enough support for women in computer science. This will allow it to grow more naturally. Maybe a more important effect of these treads is that the current female-excluding programmer culture will change for the better.

Study Journal 4

Oct 27

• In the dot com boom, there were 3500+ new .com companies. This is a huge amount of new companies, in which most when to IPO very fast.
• One example of an IPO first day money is from ChaseFlow which started at $28 and rose to $125. This wasn't actually all that good for company. This meant that many investors would just "flip", and sell their cheaply bought stocks on the first day for a huge profit.
• Friends of Frank where those who got to work with Frank and get in to huge deals
• Black Friday is the term given to the day when everyone started selling and the dot com era ended for many companies

Oct 29 postman (talked about on Nov 3)

• One of the biggest ideas through out the article we talked about is that technological changes have pluses and minuses. This is important to allow ourselves to open our eyes to the idea of something new
• I like the comment about the trade off of technologies. To ask the question, "What will a new technology undo?" is an important one. Culture is one that takes the hardest hit usually.
• The idea that technology becomes mythic was originally surprising for me. After we discussed, the alphabet, or automobiles, I come to realize I really have no idea how the different life was without those. It is very unnatural to try and think about how life would have been without actively studying a history.

Nov 03 - tangled in the web, I have a question, Families and the Internet.

• In the story about the wife who first learned about the computer, she ended up using to play games 4-7 hours a day. This was because it was just too easy to use, and it replaced the harder but more important tasks, with a very easy one.
• In the article about, "I have a question", the church has a definite stand internet protection for our families. Some of the important points were to keep computers in a public place, and to talk with our families to understand the dangers.
• In the talk by Charles Knutson, he talks about how parents should react with the internet and computers. Interestingly, he let us know that the computer is not bad, and we should not turn it off. Actually, we need to leave it on! we should have a filter, but the key is to teach our families. We should have active conversations with our kids to protect them and us.