De-Brogramming the History of Computing [Think Piece]

In April 2012, the term brogrammer became part of the national consciousness thanks to a frenzy of media scrutiny kicked off by a Mother Jones article. The piece was meant to sound an alarm about the state of the American high tech culture. In this and other such instances, however, the coverage resulted in an unexpected, violent backlash from the male-dominated gaming and IT communities. The author argues that rather than disregarding these occurrences as fringe incidents, such episodes can show us something about mainstream computing culture. Specifically, refocusing attention on the differences among the less powerful, even the relatively anonymous, can help historians of computing add to the texture and variety of the past. Critically, it will also help avoid assumptions about gender in different national and sociotechnical contexts.