HelloWorld and other fables
It recently dawned on me that I would not be known for my cookies, my ability to knit an afghan or the usual things that other grandmothers are remembered for. I am the one who tries to calm people the hell down on Facebook. The Good Lord said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be known as the Children of God.” Okay. I hope I’m up to the task.
The world we are leaving my grandchildren is in a mess. My one-fourth Kurdish grandchildren will hear stories about this last week one day in the future, along with the stories that Baba will tell them about their amazing ancestors. I have felt at a loss in facing these problems. I am not a politician or a lawyer or an activist. I can’t even crochet or bake cookies. The one place, the only place I can make a difference is in this nether world of the Internet.
“Hello World” is the first program most of us learn to produce when we start programming. Whether it’s in Basic, C++ or Python, this is where we begin, learning how to make the computer display words on a screen. This new blogging endeavor is my Hello, World for my grandchildren (and maybe my Hello World to an unseen audience as well). This is where I’m going to tell stories about the Internet and my many travels among its tribes and wildernesses. I could’ve called it something swanky like “cyber-anthropology” but no! Better that it should be a collection of stories. Hopefully, stories that will help people find their way in what has become a sometimes dark and dangerous place. I will be the social media grandma, sometimes wise and sometimes kooky — one part Granny Weatherwax, one part Granny Ogg.
And now for the first story.
How I came to study cyber-social behavior
I was introduced to the Internet as a teenager when my stepfather was working for CSC, building DARPAnet in the late 1970s. Mostly, I played “Zork” a load-testing game. I was fascinated with BASIC. I went to college and studied computer programming. I thought that would be my life — might’ve been except for the misogynistic and racist bullying of that Indian (Hindu) professor.
Three Muslim girls asked me, the only other female in the class, to tutor them. The professor refused to help them (or me, for that matter, but I had tutoring at home — and a computer clamshell hooked up to DARPAnet to play with! I truly did not need that professor or that class.) I was a smart gal from the South, newly migrated to the Big City, a bookish lass who had been called a queer in high school because of the IQ problem. Smart equaled queer in that part of Texas where I grew up. I was no stranger to being bullied.
One was from Pakistan, another from Malaysia and a third from Indonesia. The Pakistani and the Indonesian women wore distinctive types of traditional dress — and they suffered for that, too. The Malaysian woman was a bit older than us, on a military scholarship. I was from a Dallas suburban bedroom community, pretty much a hick from the sticks, just moved to northern Virginia with my mom and her new partner in life. We were all a bit isolated, pretty homesick, and yet…hopeful.
When they came to me for help, I understood the problem, but not them. I was curious about their lives, their perspectives, their personal histories. We were good friends, the way that young women, far from home, facing the same trials, become temporary sisters.
We decided to take other classes together — which is how I found anthropology. I was dimly aware of anthropology, courtesy of Margaret Mead’s columns in Redbook magazine, the only reading material available at my own grandmother’s vacation “lakehouse.” I spent many an afternoon in that aging, single wide mobile home on Lake Tawakoni that had been my family’s retreat during my childhood. Reading had always been my escape from boredom, and when my library books were done, Redbook whisked me away from the dull quiet of the lakehouse to exotic Samoa and Papua New Guinea.
I recall I chose the anthropology class for all of us, as something that satisfied a requirement, but looked interesting, maybe even fun — like Redbook, but with tests. For all of us, it proved to be a helpful, stimulating class. It was also easy. Dr. Richard Oldham, whom I privately called “All the Above” Oldham, preferred exams to be easy so that they didn’t get in the way of good discussions. Along the way, we were introduced to important ideas that helped us to cope: culture shock, for example, and cultural relativism.
Dr. Oldham’s class gave us a place to discuss cultural differences safely, probing one another’s experiences, as respectfully as we could, in the name of “class participation.” These women were not from wealthy families — this was community college. None of us had traveled widely. It was a fluke that we all landed in the same classroom; none of us more than three or four months away from our respective homes. We were innocents abroad, struggling to find our way — and anthropology helped us to have a language for exploring this new world.
Discussions of gender roles, socialization processes, and the organization of society for work, religion, and other topics we might not have had the courage to bring up could be had within the safety of the college classroom. The discussions on social class, gender and work were particularly memorable. The year was 1979, and my friends told me that they were studying computer science because it did not yet have a “gender.” It wasn’t clear whether programming was a “man’s job” or a “woman’s job” — at least not in their countries. A career in computer science meant financial security — even the possibility of more freedom from their parents (or future husband’s) control, without losing their religion, which was as central to their identity as my own. When I pointed out the contradiction, I was patiently taught about Islam, about how it was, in some sense, a “feminist” faith — in the sense that women have rights. Even the Prophet’s first wife was a businesswoman!
While I remained a bit skeptical, anthropology gave me the words I needed to describe what I was learning: worldview, culture, society, gender, socialization. These words helped me make sense of this new world of college, computer science and these new friends I had made.
Anthropology gave me the concept of “cultural relativism” and a respect for the “native’s point of view” that enabled me to better understand the stories that they told me about themselves, their worlds, their futures.
Anthropology also provided me with the theoretical frameworks for making sense of social change and technology. It also gave me the concepts and understanding I would need to make sense of this new social world we call “cyberspace.”
I do not know what became of my three friends. One returned to Malaysia, one managed to run away from home to marry her boyfriend against her parents’ wishes, and the last simply transferred to a different school. We said we would keep in touch but — we didn’t. Today we would’ve become Facebook friends, but it was 1979. It was a single year of my life that changed everything for me.
Eventually, at the end of that year, I would go home and announce to my mother that I was going to study anthropology and computer science because computers were going to change the world. My mother was pretty sure that I was crazy, and that this was impractical and impossible and that I was a foolish dreamer. We argued. It was loud. She was afraid I would put her in the poor house, with so much college. I didn’t have an answer for that — and we were still deep in the argument when my stepfather opened the front door and stepped into the middle of it.
He listened to both of us, red-faced and angry. And then he laughed. I will never forget how he told my mother that I was maybe on to something. “At this age, children should be passionate about something! Life is hard, they need to have a fire under them!” He shook his head, grinning, “She’s a smart girl. She’ll figure this out.”
From that day to this is forty years. Usenet, MIRC and IRC, MUDs, MUSHes, and MOOs, LiveJournal, MySpace, Reddit, and bots, trolls, and cyborgs, oh my, the Internet has been my primary field site, the digital people, “my people.” My friend, the late Terry Lyons, called me “the world’s oldest digital native.” (Maybe not the oldest — um, well, he might be right).
Have some cocoa. Sit down, my darlings. I’ll tell you some stories. Mind the cat.
