[SIGCIS-Members] So, about these "unicorns"...

Lee Vinsel lee.vinsel at gmail.com
Wed Apr 8 05:16:40 PDT 2015


Tom et al,

I don't have much to add, except that I found this Medium piece in my inbox
barely a minute before seeing your email chain.

https://medium.com/backchannel/here-are-the-secrets-of-unicorn-companies-c8951b99215b

Lee

On Wed, Apr 8, 2015 at 2:51 AM, christina dunbar-hester <
c.dunbarhester at gmail.com> wrote:

> Seconding what Andrew said--it's floating around IT related to gender and
> has been for at least a few years.  See:
> http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Unicorn_Law
> (dated 2009)
>
> It also has a sexual slang meaning, but I will let people look that up on
> their own.  Also related to women and the qualities of being mythic, rare.
> Given the overlap between polyamory and certain tech circles... your
> guesses are as good as mine, but I would not be surprised if it has Bay
> Area all over it.
>
> **
> Christina Dunbar-Hester
> Author of *Low Power to the People*
> <http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/low-power-people>, MIT Press
>
> On Tue, Apr 7, 2015 at 10:31 PM, Andrew Meade McGee <amm5ae at virginia.edu>
> wrote:
>
>> Dear Tom,
>>
>> It's an interesting observation, and I hope you are able to more
>> definitively trace it. I too had noticed an uptick in the usage this
>> spring. Ben Zimmer did a short article on the phrase in the *Wall Street
>> Journal* on March 20th ("How ‘Unicorns’ Became Silicon Valley
>> Companies") but there are no conclusions or potential origins beyond what
>> you already noted.
>>
>> You're right to note the shift in meaning -- unicorns in this context are
>> not mythological, but something exceedingly uncommon. No implication that
>> actually locating a unicorn is futile, akin to Sir Pellinore's quest.
>>
>> For what it's worth, I noticed a tendency to employ that particular word
>> in 2014 media accounts of female engineers and tech executives describing
>> their encounters with sexism in a male-dominated Silicon Valley.
>> Interestingly enough, I distinctly recall women engineers describing their
>> statuses in startups as "unicorns." The term seems to be floating around
>> the IT industry in a few different contexts.
>>
>> --Andrew
>>
>> -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
>> Andrew Meade McGee
>> Corcoran Department of History
>> University of Virginia
>> PO Box 400180 - Nau Hall
>> Charlottesville, VA 22904
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Apr 8, 2015 at 12:23 AM, Thomas Haigh <thaigh at computer.org>
>> wrote:
>> >
>> > Dear SIGCIS,
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > To raise a question that may or may not turn out to have an explanation
>> within our domain of expertise, I’ve been struck recently by frequent
>> references to “unicorns” in the business press. This crystalized over
>> breakfast last week when I noticed an article “Stockholm: The Unicorn
>> Factory” in my usually reserved Financial Times.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > Apparently the consensus definition of a “unicorn” in this context is a
>> newish company worth more than $1 billion. Stockholm has more per capita
>> than anywhere but Silicon Valley. A total output of five sounds more like
>> an atelier than a factory, and unicorns probably come from unicorn farms
>> rather than assembly lines, but that’s not really the point.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > The point is: unicorns are not just vanishingly rare. They’re mythical.
>> Until recently, if someone told me I was pursuing a unicorn I’d have
>> assumed they meant I was wasting my time. So where does the metaphor come
>> from? Something that’s very rare but very valuable might be worth pursuing.
>> Something that is flat-out imaginary seems a bad goal for investment
>> dollars or public policy.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > Is this something to do with the popularity of fantasy literature in
>> the tech field? Did it start as some kind of joke and get out of hand? A
>> quick Google search suggests that it was popularized with
>> http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/02/welcome-to-the-unicorn-club/, which
>> offers no particular justification for the term beyond “to us, it means
>> something extremely rare, and magical.”
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > Tom
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
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>
>
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-- 
Assistant Professor
Program on Science and Technology Studies
College of Arts and Letters
Stevens Institute of Technology
Hoboken, NJ 07030
leevinsel.com
Twitter: @STS_News
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