When I give a talk on why diversity is important, I sometimes talk about IBM. I do not know how many of you remember back when you could tell an IBM salesman just by the way he looked. First thing you notice is the clothes the man was wearing, if it was a blue suit that was one indication. If he was wearing a thin blue tie with a white shirt that was the next give away and lastly if he had a flat top haircut then he was an IBM salesman. Everyone who worked for IBM back in the 60s and 70s looked that way; it was part of the corporate dress code.
Back in the late 60s an engineer who was working on a “super computer” project for IBM had this great idea. Up until then computers did one calculation after another, a+b=c and then a+d=e and then b+f=g and so forth. This engineer’s idea was each of the calculations involved different variables so why can’t we do them all at the same time. That idea is the basis of the modern computers.
One day this young engineer went to his boss and told him that he was going to become a woman, she was fired. She moved out west and went to work at Memorex Corporation, at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), and at the Defense Advanced Research Project's Agency (DARPA). Later she wrote “Introduction to VLSI Systems”, which she co-authored with a professor from Caltech. The book went on to become a standard textbook for all computer engineering students, I read her book and I had no idea of her history. She eventually retired as the Associate Dean of Engineering and professor emerita at the University of Michigan. All of this happened because IBM fired her for wanting to transition. (You can read her story here and here.)
IBM also lost out in the PC revolution because of their lake of diversity and the company almost went out of business as a result. Back in the late 70s two hippies came up with an idea for a computer, the big corporation like IBM dismissed their idea as a toy. They were Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs. IBM was mainframes, large central computers using dumb terminals. It wasn’t until the major corporations were on the brink of financial disaster that they embraced the PC. It is one of the reasons that we have a divide between Mac based systems and Windows based systems, Apples were being used by artists, innovators and creative people while the PC were being used in businesses.
America was founded on diversity; genetic diversity. For the first time in history people were marrying someone who was not from within 10 miles of their home town. My father’s parents were born in Italy and they were from neighboring towns, but my mother was part Swiss, Germany and English (There is a family legend that we are related to Benedict Arnold). The marriage of couples who originally came from opposite sides of the world created a diverse gene pool that I believe is one of the things that made this country so great.
Another benefit from people from all over the world coming to settle here is that we have a blending of cultures. When I was in grad school over the holidays many of the student government organizations shared their celebration of their holidays. I attended Hanukah, Three Kings and Kwanza holiday celebrations. I loved to hear the story behind their holidays and to see how they celebrated the holidays and it helped me understand their cultures.
So why is diversity important? I believe it is because we all have a different way of looking at a problem. We all approach problems differently, an Asian might look at a problem one way and a European might look at the problem another way. A gay man might see something that a straight man might not see and vise-a-versa, the straight man might see something that a gay man overlooked just because we look at the world through different colored glasses.
Back in the late 60s an engineer who was working on a “super computer” project for IBM had this great idea. Up until then computers did one calculation after another, a+b=c and then a+d=e and then b+f=g and so forth. This engineer’s idea was each of the calculations involved different variables so why can’t we do them all at the same time. That idea is the basis of the modern computers.
One day this young engineer went to his boss and told him that he was going to become a woman, she was fired. She moved out west and went to work at Memorex Corporation, at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), and at the Defense Advanced Research Project's Agency (DARPA). Later she wrote “Introduction to VLSI Systems”, which she co-authored with a professor from Caltech. The book went on to become a standard textbook for all computer engineering students, I read her book and I had no idea of her history. She eventually retired as the Associate Dean of Engineering and professor emerita at the University of Michigan. All of this happened because IBM fired her for wanting to transition. (You can read her story here and here.)
IBM also lost out in the PC revolution because of their lake of diversity and the company almost went out of business as a result. Back in the late 70s two hippies came up with an idea for a computer, the big corporation like IBM dismissed their idea as a toy. They were Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs. IBM was mainframes, large central computers using dumb terminals. It wasn’t until the major corporations were on the brink of financial disaster that they embraced the PC. It is one of the reasons that we have a divide between Mac based systems and Windows based systems, Apples were being used by artists, innovators and creative people while the PC were being used in businesses.
America was founded on diversity; genetic diversity. For the first time in history people were marrying someone who was not from within 10 miles of their home town. My father’s parents were born in Italy and they were from neighboring towns, but my mother was part Swiss, Germany and English (There is a family legend that we are related to Benedict Arnold). The marriage of couples who originally came from opposite sides of the world created a diverse gene pool that I believe is one of the things that made this country so great.
Another benefit from people from all over the world coming to settle here is that we have a blending of cultures. When I was in grad school over the holidays many of the student government organizations shared their celebration of their holidays. I attended Hanukah, Three Kings and Kwanza holiday celebrations. I loved to hear the story behind their holidays and to see how they celebrated the holidays and it helped me understand their cultures.
So why is diversity important? I believe it is because we all have a different way of looking at a problem. We all approach problems differently, an Asian might look at a problem one way and a European might look at the problem another way. A gay man might see something that a straight man might not see and vise-a-versa, the straight man might see something that a gay man overlooked just because we look at the world through different colored glasses.
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