Tuesday, February 09, 2010

Join Ada Lovelace Day 2010

Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to celebrate the achievements of women in technology and science. On March 24th the participants post about cool women.

I participated last year [MKD] and received an e-mail reminder to join this year too. I plan to cover another geek girl this time, but in preparation, here's what I wrote then:
Ада ЛавлејсAugusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (1815-1852) is the world's first programmer, who worked with Charles Babbage--the creator of the Analytical Engine, the first modern computer--during the steampunk era.

She was also a daughter of Lord Byron and invested her soul and body in the aristocratic-intellectual world of "sex & drugs & rock & roll" of her time, which then had the form of "sex & drugs & romanticism."

In order to support this international awareness raising action about the important role of women in the technological progress, sign the pledge ;-) [last year's version, closed now - the smiley is due to particular choice of translated word, which has pompous, even religious overtones in Macedonian] and publish a post about one of your techno-heroines.

This is very important for the women of the world, especially little girls, who are overwhelmed with non-proportional presence of male authority figures in all areas of social life. In Macedonia this pressure is omnipresent, from primary schools (just look at the proportion of male and female faces in the textbooks, for instance on literature) to politics [MKD].