Knowledge does not organize itself
Over the last few weeks, I’ve been spending plenty of time on planes traveling to various conferences. My flight time gave me the space to reflect on the catchphrase “Organizing knowledge is geeky but sexy” which was used at the recent IKO Conference in Singapore.
This phrase stuck in my head and got me thinking about the role of women in STEM.
In today’s current society women involved in STEM fields are becoming more celebrated and as the number of women in this field increases, the negative stigma that used to predominate has dissipated.
In the past, not that long ago actually, women weren’t viewed as capable of being smart. Those that did work in science, technology, engineering or mathematics were shunned and considered as being unattractive — even if many of them were happily married with children. If I had been born a few years earlier, I would have been one of those women!
Now thanks to changing perspectives, popular media, and the groundwork of the women that came before me being a geeky woman are often seen as very sexy.
Thanks to the movie Hidden Figures; the world has become aware of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson.
Just in case, you haven’t heard the story… these women worked as human “computers” crunching numbers and double-checking calculations at NASA during the 1950s through to the 1980s. Katherine Johnson’s mathematical genius was crucial for computing the trajectories of Alan Shephard’s 1961 flight and for John Glenn’s 1962 trip around the globe. Dorothy Vaughan was an advocate for the African-American women working as human “computers” at NASA, the first black supervisor (this was while NASA was still called NACA), and became an expert FORTRAN programmer. Whereas Mary Jackson became NASA’s first African-American female engineer.
Women in STEM have been a driving force behind technological advancement for decades. Going back to the 1800s there was Ada Lovelace, the inventor of programming.
Historically you can point to most advances in technology, especially computer programming, and you’ll find a woman who helped contribute. Hedy Lamarr should be proof enough that a woman can be gorgeous and intelligent, the actress also followed scientific pursuits and during World War II presented to the US Navy along with composer George Antheil technology for spread spectrum and frequency hopping designed to guide torpedoes — this technology is now incorporated into wifi, Bluetooth, and Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) technology.
Even search engine technology wouldn’t exist without Karen Spärck Jones’ natural language processing discoveries. And these are just a few examples of fantastic women who have brought technology forward to the level it is at today!
I am humbled to be recognized as a woman in technology who is making a small difference to help organize knowledge through Search Explained.

