I'm trying to dedicate this month to read books by women to celebrate Women's History Month. I started with Broad Band last week. The book was about women who contributed to the digital technology that we enjoy today. It was a wonderful book to the point that I finished it only in 2 days. Good book like that is easy to read.
Among them are figures who you may heard before like Ada Lovelace, who was known for her work on the Analytical Engine, and Grace Hopper, who was one of the pioneers on computer programming. There are also Radia Periman who invented the spanning-tree protocol (STP) and Brenda Laurel who was a video game designer and a pioneer of virtual reality technology.
But for me, Elizabeth J. Feinler or Jake, was the one who inspire me the most. She played a huge role on the development of the Network Information Center (NIC) for the ARPANET project. Quoting the book, "she wasn't a computer scientist in academic sense, but she undrestood how to make sense of complex systems, and her practical contributions to the Internet all relate to building an organizational structure to give the system the best possible chance at holding together amid rapid and unstructured growth."
Fast forward today, I'm ashamed to read my timeline full of people blaming each other's opinion. We may think that we don't have any role on advancing any technology. But when we realize that technology is part of most of our lives today, we should know that every interaction counts. We may not invented anything, but we should always practice kindness. Treat anyone in the virtual world like how you want you want to be treated in the real world. That's the least we can do.