The Coding Cycle (Kristin, Jonathan, Madeline)
Our multimedia project is focused on how our present technology is inherently racist, sexist, heteronormative, homophobic, and transphobic. Looking into the past, our internet and technology has mainly been created and coded by white cis males. This is because historically, white males have been the only ones privileged enough to have the opportunity and resources to learn how to code in the first place. After decades of only white male presence and perspective in technology, our internet and its applications have had all of the racial and mysogynistic biases of its creators integrated into the code. Since our society cannot survive without the Internet, the global population of the world is consuming and learning content that is biased. We rely on the Internet from everything ranging between very basic facts to highly experimental and theoretical AI technology; this means we unknowingly rely on information that is prejudiced and learn it as truth. Code disseminates across all areas and crevices of the internet, meaning that internalizing these biases are unavoidable to us. It’s not until much later, when we’re much older, that we realize what we’ve learned must be reversed and unlearned. Furthermore, this establishes an oppressive cycle that we can’t escape: CS education relies on biased training data for machine learning training, which is why we see so few BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and women represented in technology.
This image that we made demonstrates the perpetual cycle that our society is stuck in. On the left hand side are all computer scientists and technologists that coded apps and businesses that our world rely on: Steve Jobs, Tim Cook, and Steve Wozniak from Apple, Bill Gates from Microsoft, Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook, Jack Dorsey from Twitter, the Apollo 11 space program team, and so on and so forth. On the right hand side are women and BIPOC women in computer science and technology. None of them are recognizable. To symbolize how women and BIPOC are oppressed in CS and technology, our group darkened the images of the women.
Something to consider is how women have been erased from coding history and have rarely ever been given recognition for their contributions. For example, Grace Hopper, in the upper right, was part of the team that developed ENIAC, the first electronic digital computer. Shockingly, during the 1940s and 50s, it was primarily women, not men, who were developing code for the nation’s first computers. Yet in spite of this, the field of computing has become and remained male-dominant, erasing significant female contribution and discouraging modern representation and participation in the CS field.
Our cyclical arrow in the middle is strategically placed, where the beginning of the arrow begins on the panel with white males and ends on the panel of the BIPOC females, but does not make a full circle back into the white male panel. This is to represent how white cis males are the dominant group in technology, and are constantly putting out content but never receive diverse feedback or content in return. Because information travels only in one direction, it creates a never ending cycle of systemic oppression. The code that is placed in the middle of the cycle was also deliberately selected: the code is based on the language mySQL and involves controversial syntax terminology called "Master/Slave," a technological term defined as a model of communication between hardware devices. Many languages, including Python, have removed this label from their documentation and replaced it with “parent/ child” and “writer/ reader.”
Citations:
Breland, A. (2017, December 04). How white engineers built racist code – and why it's dangerous for black people. Retrieved October 30, 2020, from https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/dec/04/racist-facial-recognition-white-coders-black-people-police
Cohen, R. (2016, October 21). What Programming's Past Reveals About Today's Gender-Pay Gap. Retrieved October 30, 2020, from https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/09/what-programmings-past-reveals-about-todays-gender-pay-gap/498797/
Collins, K. (2016, July 9). The code that took America to the moon was just published to GitHub, and it's like a 1960s time capsule. Retrieved October 30, 2020, from https://qz.com/726338/the-code-that-took-america-to-the-moon-was-just-published-to-github-and-its-like-a-1960s-time-capsule/
Dinkins, S. (n.d.). STEPHANIE DINKINS. Retrieved October 30, 2020, from https://www.stephaniedinkins.com/
Erenow.net. (n.d.). Q&A WITH ERICA BAKER SENIOR ENGINEER, TECH EDUCATOR, AND DIVERSITY ADVOCATE. Retrieved October 29, 2020, from https://erenow.net/biographies/wonder-women-25-innovators-inventors-trailblazers/29.php
Eyeofestival. (2020, October 29). Eyeo 2017 - Mimi Onuoha. Retrieved October 29, 2020, from https://vimeo.com/233011125
TED. (2017, March 29). How I'm fighting bias in algorithms | Joy Buolamwini. Retrieved October 29, 2020, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UG_X_7g63rY