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Who is the author of Broad Band?

The author of Broad Band is Claire L. Evans.

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Broad Band summary

Name: Broad Band
Rating: 4.1 (133 reviews)
Author: Claire L. Evans

Claire L. Evans

The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet

4.1 (133 ratings)

25 mins

Brief summary

Broad Band by Claire L. Evans is a compelling historical account of women who invented and shaped the internet. It highlights their contributions to digital culture, science, and technology, emphasizing the importance of supporting women in tech.

Topics

Women's Stories Digital Transformation The Internet Social Media

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Broad Band
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Key idea 1 of 8

What’s in it for me? Learn how female mental labor built the internet.

Women have been at the vanguard of every new innovation in computer science – from online publishing to information science to programming to virtual communities. Yet sexist stereotypes still persist; many people think computer science is the domain of men.

Why? Well, women’s achievements have, by and large, been erased from the history of computing technology. They’ve also just been outright ignored.

That’s where these blinks come in. They reinscribe this erased history and shine light on these women’s overlooked lives. As you’ll find out, some women became pioneers in the industry by taking up work that was considered too mundane to be handled by men; others taught themselves how to operate computers that had no user manuals. Most of them had to forge professional paths in computer science that didn’t yet exist – paths we now walk, thanks to them.

In these blinks, you’ll discover

what Lord Byron has to do with computer programming;
what a “kilogirl” is; and
how a college dropout secured a $150,000 computer for a community project.

Ada Lovelace was the world’s first computer programmer.

When the famous English poet Lord Byron died almost 200 years ago, he didn’t just bequeath to the world his beautiful verses – he also left behind a daughter, Ada Lovelace.

Ada was the only child of Byron’s short-lived marriage to a mathematics-loving aristocrat, Anna Isabella Milbanke. Milbanke wanted to make sure her daughter didn’t develop any of her father’s wildness, so she arranged a comprehensive math education for Ada from the time she was four years old. Today we remember Ada not for her famous parentage, but as a trailblazer in a field that touches nearly every aspect of our modern lives: computer programming.

The key message here is: Ada Lovelace was the world’s first computer programmer.

From a very young age, Ada excelled in her studies. She soon outgrew her tutors but continued to educate herself through books and correspondence, even developing friendships with leading scientists of the day. When she was 17, Lovelace met Charles Babbage, the creator of the difference engine – an early calculator for complicated mathematical problems. Ada was fascinated by the machine and eager to learn from Babbage.

As was the norm for aristocrats of her day, Ada married young. Her husband, William King, would go on to become the first Earl of Lovelace. Marriage, children, and the social responsibilities of a countess were time-consuming. Nevertheless, Lovelace’s interest in Babbage’s work persisted.

Babbage soon devised another machine, the analytical engine, which performed general-purpose computation. When Lovelace came across a paper about the analytical engine in a Swiss journal, she decided to translate it into English. As she did so, she corrected a number of errors made by the author. Babbage was so impressed that he encouraged her to publish her notes along with the translation.

By the time Lovelace’s work was completed and published, the paper had become three times longer – and far more sophisticated – than the original. It fully described Babbage’s vision for the analytical engine, as well as how it might be used in mathematics. Ada’s notes also showcased her artistic ability to present a technical analysis in an engaging and exciting style.

Working on her paper, Ada took inspiration from the Lovelace family motto: “Labor is its own reward.” When she died in 1852, the motto was also engraved on her coffin. It was a sadly fitting epitaph, as Ada’s achievements were little acknowledged during her lifetime. It would take almost a century before she was properly recognized.

Grace Hopper was a computer-science trailblazer.

The year was 1941, and the world – with the exception of the United States – was at war. That changed on December 7, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and the US declared war on Japan.

Grace Hopper, a 36-year-old mathematics professor at Vassar College, was determined to serve her country. So she quit her job and joined the US Navy. As a mathematician, she assumed that she would spend her military career cracking enemy codes. Instead, the Navy sent her to Harvard to become the third programmer of the world’s first computer.

The women of the ENIAC Six taught themselves to program the first electronic computer.

The word “computer” predates computers as we know them today. Originally, it referred to a person who did complicated mathematical problems by hand. The people who did these computations – the original computers – were mostly women.

In fact, there were so many women working as computers in the first half of the twentieth century that the term “kilogirl” came into use. This measurement referred to roughly a thousand hours of computing labor.

Women played a significant role in building communication networks for social good.

When the US bombed Cambodia in 1969, it set off a wave of protests and strikes. Pam Hardt-English, a computer-science graduate student at UC Berkeley, was soon involved in the protests. But she and her fellow student activists had a bigger idea: they wanted to create communication networks to connect various centers of the counterculture.

By the summer of 1970, Hardt-English and two of her classmates had dropped out of UC Berkeley. They moved into Project One, a large warehouse in San Francisco that was home to a group of hippies. It was there that the vision of Hardt-English and her former classmates would become reality.

Elizabeth “Jake” Feinler was responsible for an important precursor to the internet.

Before the internet, there was the ARPANET – an early online network funded by the US military and built in 1969. The ARPANET allowed scientists at US universities to share resources and communicate with each other.

By 1972, the ARPANET had around 30 connections, and it became clear that the growing network needed to be better organized. The central office for ARPANET affairs – the Network Information Center, or NIC – was part of the Stanford Research Institute. The computer engineers there were too busy to take on the task, however. So it went to Elizabeth “Jake” Feinler, a chemist-turned-information scientist. In taking charge of the NIC, Feinler’s job would be to maintain order on the early internet.

One of the earliest social media networks, Echo, was created by a woman and featured the first influencer.

Stacy Horn was a graduate student in New York City in the early 1980s when she joined The WELL, an online community based in California. Horn enjoyed the conversations with journalists, ex-hippies, and computer-programming enthusiasts – but she soon tired of it. Dialing up to The WELL in California was like making a long-distance call, so her phone bill was huge. She craved a community that had a more authentic New York City feel, too.

So, in 1990, Horn created her own community, which she called the “East Coast Hang-Out,” or Echo.

Dame Wendy Hall innovated in the field of hypertext, which produced the World Wide Web.

Tim Berners-Lee is famous for inventing the World Wide Web. That means he invented the internet, right?

Not so fast. The internet is a network of computers, while the World Wide Web is a network of interconnected pages built in a communal language called Hypertext Markup Language, or HTML.

Jaime Levy is a digital-publishing pioneer.

At the height of the dotcom bubble in New York City, Jaime Levy dubbed herself “the Kurt Cobain of the Internet.” It was a grandiose title, but not totally unwarranted. Growing up in Southern California, Levy had been more interested in the punk rock scene than in computers. That changed when a boyfriend showed her how to create computer animations. Levy was captivated.

It was while studying at New York University that Levy experimented with the interactive media that would bring her fame.

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What is Broad Band about?

Broad Band (2018) tells the story of the women who played significant roles in the evolution of computers and the internet. It examines how these women became trailblazers in fields of work that were initially considered boring – but later proved to be of great importance.

Broad Band Review

Broad Band (2018) by Claire L. Evans is an enlightening exploration of the forgotten women who shaped the internet. Here's why this book is definitely worth reading:

It uncovers the remarkable stories of female pioneers in tech, shedding light on their achievements and struggles, often overlooked in male-dominated narratives.
By weaving historical context and personal anecdotes, Evans provides an engaging account of how women defied societal norms to shape an essential medium.
The book celebrates the intersection of technology and feminism by highlighting how these women pushed boundaries, inspiring future generations in their wake.

Best quote from Broad Band

The main purpose of the Internet was to push information across it. So there had to be somebody who was organizing the information. – Elizabeth Jake Feinler

—Claire L. Evans

Who should read Broad Band ?

Young women interested in pursuing a career in computer science
Computer scientists and engineers
People interested in how women have shaped our world

About the Author

Claire L. Evans is a journalist and the lead singer of the Grammy-nominated pop duo YACHT. She is the founding editor of Terraform, Vice’s science-fiction vertical, and contributes to a variety of publications including Vice, the Guardian, Wired, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and Quartz. Evans is also a graduate advisor at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California.

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