Participant Info
- First Name
- Marie (Mar)
- Last Name
- Hicks
- Country
- United States
- State
- IL Illinois
- mhicks1@iit.edu
- Affiliation
- Illinois Institute of Technology
- Website URL
- www.marhicks.com
- Keywords
- history of technology, computing, gender, labor, women, sexism, STEM, Britain, economics
- Availability
- Media Contact
- Additional Contact Information
- PhD
- PhD
Personal Info
- Photo
- About Me
I’m a historian of technology, gender, and modern Europe. I research how gender and sexuality change what we think we know about technological progress and the global “computer revolution.” My new book is Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge In Computing published by MIT Press in January 2017. It won the 2018 PROSE Award for History of Science, Technology, and Medicine, and is now available in paperback, audiobook, and e-book.
Programmed Inequality investigates why the proportion of women declined as electronic computing matured, and how this labor situation had grave effects on the technological aspirations of that waning superpower. It shows what lessons this holds for other nations, especially the United States, and how history can help us make sense of the present and the future by focusing not just on technological success stories, but also stories of technological failure.
I have also written about the history of computer dating, the long prehistory of transphobic algorithmic bias, and the ways in which sexism and racism have been encoded into our technological infrastructure. For more of my writing, see my website.
- Recent Publications
Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge In Computing (MIT Press, 2017)
“A Feature, Not a Bug” Technology’s Stories (December 2017)
“The Mother of All Swipes,” LOGIC Magazine (June 2017)
“Computer Love: Replicating Social Order Through Early Computer Dating Systems,” Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, & Technology (Fall 2016)
“Against Meritocracy in the History of Computing,” CORE: The Magazine of the Computer History Museum (Summer 2016)
- Media Coverage
- http://marhicks.com/press.html
- Social Media
- @histoftech
- Country Focus
- Britain and USA
- Expertise by Geography
- England, North America, United Kingdom, United States, Western Europe
- Expertise by Chronology
- 19th century, Modern, 20th century, 21st century
- Expertise by Topic
- Capitalism, Colonialism, Computational, Economic History, Gender, Government, Higher Ed, Military, Pedagogy, Politics, Public History, Science, Sexuality, Technology, Women
