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this is hard to say, tbh.

first: by alluding to Ive, you insert a gender component. i don't want to make this about gender - which is what happened itt. as mentioned, i think the difference in focus is because of geo-cultural reasons. another piece of evidence for this hypothesis comes from the following: over here, the EU also gets a lot of praise for providing the main chunk of the funding for the project. a quick check tells me that this detail is often omitted in US articles about the project. also, a note on myself: i work in a field where the majority of people are female. so is my boss. her work is great and i love working here. at the same time, i am aware that the bar to get here was higher for my female colleagues than it is for men. also, i see the glass ceiling having an effect on the careers of my sisters and my female friends. and i am painfully aware of the struggles that my mum and other women of her generation had/have to go through. so i consider myself a feminist, in the sense that i believe that we should have full equality and that we do not have it yet.

second: think iphone, i think jobs. so what "Jony Ive: The Man Behind The iPhone" would imply to me is that Ive is _the one person_ that had the biggest impact on the development of the iphone. i don't know enough about Ive to evaluate this. but here's the thing: if it turned out that another person contributed as much if not more than Ive, then i'd say: hey, it's nice that the article introduces Ive and gives him some credit, but let's not exaggerate and let's not forget about the other people who have also greatly contributed to the project.

edit: to clarify: i find it hard to say, because it's somewhat hypothetical. i truly hope for myself that i would react the same way / that gender has no impact on my thought process.



> first: by alluding to Ive, you insert a gender component

Personally, I want to say the gender component actually happened right about here:

>> Her story is trully inspiring! She seems like a really likable person

We have interesting ways and subtext when we talk about people that show our biases. Actually beyond that the entire article isn't anything about asking Katie questions or how she came about her algorithm. It's more about her fast rising popularity. It's an article that says a woman did something without saying that. I'm not judging if that's offensive or merely a reflection on how we relay news given our society.


The title of the article reveals a lot about the biases at play here. "Katie Bouman, the computer scientist behind..." - keyword 'the'. She isn't 'the' computer scientist behind it, she is 'a' computer scientist behind it. If it were merely a case of putting an interesting person with likable facial features at the heart of the story the news articles' titles and descriptions could actually be accurate. In actuality we have misplaced attribution caused by the biases of the news media. Whether they're political or not, its easy to see through them and it adds an unnecessary off-note to the otherwise interesting scientific achievement.

EDIT: it looks like the title of the article has either changed or SEO causes some to see different titles than others. Regardless my initial comment should still be valid.


The fact that you are making it about her appearance instead of her scientific achievement is you, my dude, not the article and not the media. She is first author, she came up with the algorithm, she did this thing, and all your attempts to belittle that just prove Joanna Russ’ absolute correctness.


Actually her appearance is relevant to the discussion at hand, within the context of this specific thread. There is no belittling going on here.




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