Share on TelegramBarbie™ I Can Be A Computer Engineer The Remix! Now With Less Sexism!
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Author: Casey Fiesler
Added by: eric
Added Date: 2014-11-21
Language: eng
Subjects: Sexism, Barbie™, transformative work
Collections: folkscanomy miscellaneous, folkscanomy, additional collections
Pages Count: 15
PPI Count: 300
PDF Count: 1
Total Size: 20.76 MB
PDF Size: 15.49 MB
Extensions: djvu, gif, pdf, gz, torrent, zip
License: Unknown License
Downloads: 436
Views: 486
Total Files: 13
Media Type: texts
Total Files: 5
Description
(from Casey Fiesler's Blog)
I am a PhD student in a computing department, so I guess it’s not surprising that my social media feeds have been full of outrage over Barbie’s “computer engineering” skills. The blog post that originally went viral appears to be sporadically down due to heavy traffic, but The Daily Dot also has a good summary of the problematic book titled Barbie: I Can Be a Computer Engineer. The problematic part is that, as far as I can tell, the steps for becoming a computer engineer if you’re Barbie are:
- Design a videogame.
- Get a boy to code it for you.
- Accidentally infect your computer with a virus.
- Get a boy to fix it for you.
- Take all the credit for these things yourself.
I happen to study remix, so one of my first thoughts upon seeing this was: someone is obviously going to remix this. I figured, why wait? I also have at my disposal my roommate Miranda Parker, a student of Mark Guzdial, who studies computing education and broadening participation in STEM. So with her input, I rewrote the book with a slightly different spin. (I also kept her as a “computer engineer” even though she’s really more of a computer scientist, software developer, etc.) I hope you like this new narrative better, too!
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