A Few Notes and a Review of 12 Bytes

12 Bytes is a collection of essays by Jeanette Winterson

The first is quite enjoyable if you’re mild to highly fascinated with the evolution in computer sciences. It highlights historic roles women have played, the nature of gender constructs and its affect on skill and remuneration.

There are references to real people in history dealing with social restraint and innovation. I won’t give away too many details in order to encourage reading.

It left me thinking about the quality of the environment I work in. I am already appreciative and have a healthy pattern of growing appreciative of the tools at our disposal and how it facilitates (once properly learned) our work but, as a human, as a woman, as person of color, as a lesbian, I need to know that the way the learning takes place and the tool is ultimately used doesn’t set out to  enable my displacement or support my marginalization and repression.

This is not always a clear-cut, quick decision to make. The nature of my work has historically involved a bit of a faith system to do no harm because everyone is learning simultaneously. A degree of neutrality is encouraged in education in order to not obscure a voice or line of thinking that would otherwise be accredited and may do good.

This is a bit removed from the content of the book but I got to thinking what students and QA managers do when an idea is geographically out of place in AI education. I hope the people in charge have ethical handling in mind.

This is the end of my note-taking on the first chapter of Winterson’s book 12 Bytes.

Notes on the second chapter in the next blog post.