CounterInsurgentGeeks

Ian Hacking on "Humans, Aliens and Autism"

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 14:41:27 -0400

Ian Hacking on "Humans, Aliens and Autism"

Girls Season 2 Episode 1

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 18:58:35 -0500

Girls Season 2 Episode 1

yakotta: sisterlegionnaire: Kenyan Susan Oguya created an app...

Sun, 06 Jan 2013 14:07:07 -0500

yakotta:

sisterlegionnaire:

Kenyan Susan Oguya created an app to help farmers in her homeland. Shown here in the office of her company, M-Farm, she also belongs to the group Akirachix, which seeks to bring more Kenyan women into the tech world.

Kenyan Women Create Their Own ‘Geek Culture’

When a collective of female computer programmers in Kenya needed a name for their ladies-only club, they took their inspiration from the Japanese cult film Akira.

“So akira is a Japanese word. It means energy and intelligence. And we are energetic and intelligent chicks,” says Judith Owigar, the president of Akirachix.

A group like Akirachix would have been unthinkable even five years ago. But Kenya is making a big push toward IT — part of a plan to create a middle-class country by the year 2030.

Kenya has laid hundreds of miles of fiber optic cable. Google and IBM set up shop here. The city even has plans for a $7 billion technology hub just outside the capital, Nairobi.

But you need more than tech giants and broadband and even money to launch a local tech industry. You also need a culture of computer geeks. That’s where Owigar and her collective Akirachix come in. They want to make sure that the girl geeks are encouraged as much as the guys.

Bridging The Gender Gap

“You know you’re the oddball just because of your gender,” Owigar says.

It turns out that in Kenya, exactly as in Silicon Valley, the problem with getting more women in tech is that there aren’t more women in tech.

“There are probably other women in tech who are alone, and they think they’re the weird ones, but if enough of us meet together, you know, it won’t be so weird anymore,” Owigar says.

Susan Oguya is also an Akirachick. She grew up on a farm in western Kenya without a computer. But she was lucky enough to have an uncle who worked in Nairobi.

When he came home for the holidays, he would haul his entire workstation in the car back with him — the monitor, the CPU, the keyboard, the mouse — and set it up in Oguya’s living room. Oguya was 15.

“So he’d bring it over, we’d use it, and then he would go back with it,” Oguya says. “So in the times when I didn’t have a computer, there were books that he left. Books about what is a computer, parts of a computer, what is a ROM, what is a RAM. It’s really basic.”

When she got to a university, she majored in IT. She had an idea for a mobile phone app that would help farmers like her parents.

One of the striking things about Kenya is that even impoverished farmers have cellphones. For decades, Kenya was too poor to lay copper telephone wire in the ground, so the vast majority of Kenyans use cellphones as their primary phone.

Now, all those Kenyan cellphone users are set to take advantage of an increasingly mobile world. Oguya’s app would allow farmers to check the crop prices with text messaging, skipping the middleman.

“Yeah, corrupt middleman,” Oguya says. “Let’s say skipping the corrupt middleman.”

But Oguya was one of only 10 women in her department of 80 — about the same ratio you’d find in a computer science class at Stanford. Her teachers doubted her ability to actually program this app she’d thought up.

“In my culture, it’s like men can only communicate with men. And I was like, ‘OK.’ Then if I could share this passion, like try and explain to the person, this is what I want to do? It’s only a woman who could understand me better,” Oguya says.

It wasn’t until her third year that she met a computer researcher at the same university, Jessica Colaco, who says she bumped into Oguya in the hallway. “I remember when I met her in the corridor, Susan was really shy. She was like, ‘Excuse me, are you Jessica Colaco?’ ” she says.

“So she invited me and was like, ‘Come meet other women who also have a passion like you, but they want to relate to other women who don’t know that this exists,’ ” Oguya says.

Oguya started spending some Saturday mornings with Colaco and other women, snipping code and poring through hacker cookbooks. These informal gatherings became the Akirachix.

Oguya graduated and turned her mobile phone idea into a company called M-Farm. At 25 years old, she now has a staff of 18. And 7,000 African farmers use her app.

Solving Local Problems

One floor up from Oguya’s office is a kind of oasis of geekdom — a gathering space for Nairobi’s tech community called the iHub. It feels like any sort of hacker space in Silicon Valley or New York, with comfy couches, fast Wi-Fi and cappuccinos served by a barista named Miss Rose.

But the techies you meet here aren’t trying to come up with the next Facebook or another app to share your photos. They’re solving local problems.

There’s one app that brings math and reading help by cellphone to village schools.

There’s an app that lets Kenyans who don’t have computers do their online shopping by cellphone.

There’s a micro-insurance product that measures the rainfall at cellphone towers and automatically distributes money to farmers in drought.

These are all applications started by women. Akirachix’s Owigar says they’re sending a message to the next wave of girl geeks. “We need them to see that we are doing it and we enjoy it. You know, you don’t find many African women looking for the spotlight. Most of them tend to hide their awesomeness,” Owigar says.

The best time to carve a spot for women in geek culture, she says, is when there isn’t much geek culture yet.

bad. freakin’. ass.

Photo

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 22:30:08 -0500

mayhap: My grandparents in Marin, California in the late 40s.

Thu, 01 Nov 2012 01:33:12 -0400

mayhap:

My grandparents in Marin, California in the late 40s.

thatqueergirlandhersunflowers: Perfect morning is perfect....

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 10:54:19 -0400

thatqueergirlandhersunflowers:

Perfect morning is perfect. Bookstore/coffee shop, awesome cheap book find, friend N, no Institute, and nothing to do for a week except what feels fun.

autistickitten: Thought you might be interested

Sun, 12 Aug 2012 00:37:39 -0400

autistickitten:

Thought you might be interested

triciawang: @kenyatta helped make Doctor Who the first British...

Mon, 30 Jul 2012 22:34:21 -0400

triciawang:

@kenyatta helped make Doctor Who the first British tv show on the cover of Entertainment Weekly. BBC is lucky to have your brains. (Taken with Instagram)

teachingliteracy: indiebookclub: Geek Girls Unite by Leslie...

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 18:17:10 -0400

teachingliteracy:

indiebookclub:

Geek Girls Unite by Leslie Simon is exactly what it states on the cover: “How fangirls, bookworms, indie chicks, and other misfits are taking over the world” This is something I can one hundred percent agree with. While I don’t, and most girls shouldn’t define themselves under strict guidelines when it comes to what interests them, can identify with more than one type of girl described in this book. Simon describes seven types of “geeks”: Fangirl geek, literary geek, film geek, music geek, funny-girl geek, domestic goddess geek, and miscellaneous geek. It’s definitely worth the read, you learn about more than just what there is to these types of girls, you get insight into good films to check out, good comics to read, amazing songs to listen to, and more.

Oh, and p.s. there’s a ton of cute illustrations in this book!

I would also recommend other books written by Leslie Simon.

Written by Alexandra Hannon (Indiebookclub)

darziel: This is what autism looks like. My name is Daniel, and...

Wed, 04 Jul 2012 18:35:02 -0400

darziel:

This is what autism looks like.

My name is Daniel, and I’m 24 years old. I wasn’t diagnosed with autism early in life, there was talk other developmental problems. Because of this I wasn’t really given the help I needed growing up. (A diagnosis would’ve been guarantee of that either though!) I was also bullied and picked on a lot, and people made fun of my coping mechanisms. Combined with other things, some days I’m a terrible misanthrope about society and culture.

Sometimes I miss social cues. I don’t always understand others. I get trapped in my own world. I’m clumsy. I love my partners, but I don’t know how to care for them the way allistics do. Sometimes I think they deserve someone better than me.

I’m also sensitive, and good with animals. I love making my friends laugh and showing them things they’ll like. I’m observant and I pick up on a lot of things that others miss or don’t think to look for. I love video games, even if I find them overstimulating sometimes. I enjoy learning new things, and finding out new information.

I haven’t been able to hold down a job for any length of time. I’m not a “savant” in the sense that I have something I’m extra good at. I don’t know where I’m going in the future, but right now I get the assistance I need from the government. Sometimes I feel guilty about this.

Despite everything, I wouldn’t change who I am. I meant that. I genuinely like myself, autism included. I haven’t been able to say that for years, and part of being able to do that now is realizing the following:

I’m not broken. I’m not less of a person. I’m not wrong. I am different, but that is okay.

My name is Daniel, I have autism, and the only reason I suffer from it is because of society that expects to meet standards I never will.

leavethecoffin-open: This is what Autism looks like. I’m...

Wed, 04 Jul 2012 17:39:36 -0400

leavethecoffin-open:

This is what Autism looks like.

I’m optimistic, funny, and I guess I’m smart. I’m no different from a person who isn’t within the Spectrum. I am a writer of a few short stories, a huge fan of manga, graphic novels and comedy films.

I was diagnosed as a young child (I’m gonna say younger than 5). I had a huge obsession with dinosaurs, carrying paintbrushes and pencils around almost all the time. I was given an in-class helper during primary school, who was absolutely wonderful and didn’t treat me like this hopeless sad-sack case who was ‘special’. When I left for high school, things had gotten extremely difficult. People made fun of me for so many different things, being ‘that weird kid’ in particular.

I’m now surrounded by an absolutely amazing group of friends, who like me for being that weird kid. When so many people - including one of my in-class helpers in high school - told me I should do things which ‘aren’t to challenging’, I ignored them. I’m now about to start the second year of my Sociology and Criminology degree.

I’m not a lost cause. I’m not an example to be made.

I’m a human being.

Autistic Kitten: personal/asd

Tue, 03 Jul 2012 21:47:46 -0400

Autistic Kitten: personal/asd:

churchofindustry:

i’m 46 years old. it has only been over the past year that anyone ever suggested i might have aspergers/autism. i have been in and out of the public mental health system since i was 20 years old. i have seen a lot of “professionals” and none of them ever mentioned asd. my…

"When you read a great book, you don’t escape from life, you plunge deeper into it. There may be a..."

Sat, 30 Jun 2012 23:58:21 -0400

“When you read a great book, you don’t escape from life, you plunge deeper into it. There may be a superficial escape – into different countries, mores, speech patterns – but what you are essentially doing is furthering your understanding of life’s subtleties, paradoxes, joys, pains and truths. Reading and life are not separate but symbiotic.”

- Julian Barnes (via artistsdontwearpants)

mayhap: Wow. The whole thing. zizekianrevolution: Astra...

Sat, 30 Jun 2012 02:48:37 -0400

mayhap:

Wow. The whole thing.
zizekianrevolution:

Astra Taylor on the Unschooled life

School acclimates children to boredom so that as adults they can work long hours at jobs they will more than likely to describe as uneventful, mind-numbing, soul-destroying in other words as boring. But school also inculcates children into boredom as an attitude, a habit, a way of being in the world, boredom is more than a consequence of bad curriculum or poor teaching style its actually an ethos one that lingers on into adult life.

theatlantic: Freakonomics Teaches Us the Right Way to Bribe...

Tue, 19 Jun 2012 22:33:45 -0400

theatlantic:

Freakonomics Teaches Us the Right Way to Bribe Kids

A brand new study by Steven D. Levitt (of Freakonomics fame), John A. List, Susanne Neckermann, and Sally Sadoff finds that Chicago students in low-performing schools did better on tests when they were promised money or trophies for their good grades. But it wasn’t as simple as writing a bunch of checks and and waiting for the A’s to pour in. How much money and how you present the rewards makes all the differences.

Without instant money and rewards, many students in these Chicago schools had put forth “low effort on the standardized tests that we study,” the authors write. Why didn’t the students care about good grades? It’s all about the timing of our rewards.

Read more. [Image: Reuters]

arielnietzsche: I also got “How to read Lacan” by Zizek from the library, and all I am seeing is a...

Sat, 16 Jun 2012 01:49:42 -0400

arielnietzsche:

I also got “How to read Lacan” by Zizek from the library, and all I am seeing is a comparison to Shakespeare’s Hamlet to Iraq to how Lacan is actually Georg Lukács and how Richard II is actually Leibniz. It also talks about Hirsi Ali and how she’s actually an Islamic fundamentalist and I don’t know if I am daydreaming anymore or I should sleep and study.

autistickitten: xxreaperchildxx reblogged your post: When I was tested for Autism, I was asked a...

Thu, 14 Jun 2012 17:44:09 -0400

autistickitten:

xxreaperchildxx reblogged your post: When I was tested for Autism, I was asked a lot of different questions, and normally I hate self-tests, but these questions were essentially the same things I was asked. I don’t mean that people who get high scores on this test DEFINITELY have an ASD, but it is a good place to start:

I just took this test and I got 40 omg

If it makes you feel any better, I got a 48.

"Russians called these last years of Brezhnev the years of stagnation. And I sort of wonder whether..."

Wed, 13 Jun 2012 13:06:39 -0400

“Russians called these last years of Brezhnev the years of stagnation. And I sort of wonder whether we are at the same stage now—our own years of stagnation, with an elite desperately trying to shore up a technocratic, economic system with an increasing number of contradictions, while no one can imagine an alternative. In response to that inability to see anything else, everything, including a lot of modern culture—music, TV, and avant-garde art—is being used to shore up the present, reconfigure the past to somehow give a foundation to the present that can’t imagine another kind of future. No one can see their way past the sort of financial version of the free market, and the culture reflects that. I do think we’re in the years of stagnation.”

- Hans Ulrich Obrist in conversation with Adam Curtis (via helge)

ilovecharts: Yeah, Geeks!

Wed, 13 Jun 2012 12:51:06 -0400

ilovecharts:

Yeah, Geeks!

BBC - Podcasts - My Own Shakespeare

Wed, 13 Jun 2012 12:50:45 -0400

BBC - Podcasts - My Own Shakespeare:

shakespearean:

My Own Shakespeare invites public figures to talk about the piece of Shakespeare that inspires them most.The short programmes will be broadcast across Radio 3 and Radio 4 in May 2012 and be available to download afterwards.