[SIGCIS-Members] A response to a SIGCIS Command Line panel session presentation on PLATO

[brian at platohistory.org]

Thanks for sharing your comments. My comments are embedded below.

> On May 22, 2017, at 8:06 PM, Christopher Leslie <chris.leslie at nyu.edu> wrote:
> 
> Dear Brian, 
> 
> I am perplexed by your lengthy attack on Joy Rankin's presentation. The author of a book, you castigate a scholar's 20-minute presentation. Most incredibly. Yyu criticize her for being ignorant of history, but at the same time, you do not consider your ignorance of gender studies to be a problem. This is the exact problem with privilege that SIGCIS and other groups are contending with. 

I do consider my ignorance of gender studies to be a problem, and I pointed out to readers right up front that I don’t know much about the field. However, I did not write this article on the basis of gender studies. I wrote it because of numerous historical errors about PLATO, something I know a thing or two about.

> 
> It's no longer a secret that there were a lot of women in computing. From Jennifer Light to Hidden Figures, we are sure that women were there. Recently, Marie Hicks has given us a solid study of how the women were filtered out through procedure and system. It is not that computing was from the start hostile to women, but it does seem as if as it developed it became so. This is in line with what other feminist historians of science have noticed (cf. Schiebinger's comment about the number of female astronomers). An analysis of this process is sorely needed. 

I agree with everything you say here. 

> 
> By the way, only a man could say that an attack on a woman was not important because others spoke up to protest. You might be interested in the rich and growing literature on microagreessions and how they impact diversity in STEM. Given the pervasive interest in enhancing diversity in computing and STEM more generally, I am uncertain why you feel PLATO or other projects have something to lose by contending with the experience of women in the field. 

Are you suggesting I am the “man” who somewhere said “an attack on a woman was not important…”? If you are asserting that, could you kindly point out where in the article I say that? Because that is not something I intended to say at all, and I have no recollection of saying anything of the sort. 

Also I am uncertain how you arrived at the idea that I might “feel PLATO or other projects have something to lose by contending with the experience of women in the field.” Where do you believe I said that in the article? In fact I believe PLATO has much to gain by studying the experience of women in the field. I went and actually asked a number of such women, people who actually used PLATO, and were present at the lab. They all felt this SIGCIS presentation’s facts about PLATO were full of errors. Why would it be okay to let such errors slide? 

> 
> I applaud Rankin and others for their solid work in this difficult area. Their findings are not, as you suggest, anomalous misreadings of history. Contending with the pervasive and persistent sexism (and other isms) in STEM will be the challenge of the current generation of scholars. I feel lucky to be at NYU, where such conversations are at least entertained without polemical attacks. Your screed, though, shows how far the profession has to go. 

Did you read the entire article? Because I cite facts galore to address numerous misreadings of PLATO’s history.  And again, my focus is on the history of PLATO and pervasive misreadings of it. My mission is to set the record straight when the record is miscommunicated to audiences and no-one even questions whether what they’ve just been told is true or not. My mission is not to downplay nor ignore the interesting new insights being brought to the field of the history of computing by new researchers and scholars looking at pervasive and persistent sexism in STEM. I welcome such work, I applaud it, and I say so numerous times in my article. But I do believe a historian needs to get the underlying history right.

- Brian

> 
> Chris Leslie 
> 
> 
> 
> On Mon, May 22, 2017 at 8:03 PM, Brian Dear <brian at platohistory.org <mailto:brian at platohistory.org>> wrote:
> The link below is my in-depth response to a presentation given by Dr. Joy Rankin entitled “Performing Gender on PLATO” at the recent SIGCIS Command Line conference held at the Computer History Museum this past March.
> 
>      https://medium.com/@brianstorms/performing-history-on-plato-4c501b8f2068 <https://medium.com/@brianstorms/performing-history-on-plato-4c501b8f2068>
> 
> Many assertions were made in that presentation that concerned me greatly and I felt it necessary to not only write up a detailed response based on my own decades’ worth of research into the history of the PLATO system and its community, but also I sought out and included comments from former PLATO people who were named in Dr. Rankin’s talk, about the presentation and the claims made therein. Every single PLATO person I contacted shared the same concerns.
> 
> I welcome thoughts from fellow SIGCIS members.
> 
> - Brian
> 
> Brian Dear
> PLATO History Project
> Santa Fe, NM
> brian at platohistory.org <mailto:brian at platohistory.org>
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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> 
> -- 
> Christopher S. Leslie, Ph.D.
> Co-Director and Lecturer, Science and Technology Studies
> Faculty Fellow in Residence for Othmer Hall and Clark Street
> Chair, IFIP History of Computing Working Group 9.7
> 
> NYU Tandon School of Engineering 
> 5 MetroTech Center, LC 131
> Brooklyn, NY 11201
> (646) 997-3130

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