The people he credits as shaping his intellectual thinking are former Wired editor Kevin Kelly, Mike Masnick of Techdirt (the same Mike that Alex quoted and linked to defending Chris from Malcolm’s attach), Hal Varian, and George Gilder, who “remains a huge influence on my thinking”.

Why yes, now that you mention it, this is the same George Gilder who Susan Faludi described in Backlash as “America’s #1 anti-feminist”. Emily White’s Techno-tyrants from Seattle Weekly has a brief summary of Gilder’s views on gender, including

In a book called Sexual Suicide, Gilder argued that women’s liberation would lead to the end of the human race. If women achieved economic equality, a “social breakdown” would result. “Women control not the economy of the marketplace but the economy of Eros,” Gilder wrote. “A marginal bias in favor of men in the labor force will best promote econmic and social order.”…

His views on women haven’t changed, either. “You know there is actual difference between male and female brains,” he told me from his study, his wife downstairs clattering dishes. Asked why there are so few women in the tech world, George said, “Well, there are women. They are just mostly in personnel and marketing. They do better there.”

Of course Gilder has other claims to fame as well, for example his classic 1999 quote “I don’t think internet valuations are crazy”. Oops. And where did he say that? In an interview by Kevin Kelly in Wired’s special issue on “Ultra-prosperity”. Small world In the interview, Gilder adds “The gap between rich and poor is not widening.” Yeah. Right.

When Tracy Viselli and I started up the #p2 hashtag, we highlighted the opportunities for engaging with women, people of color, and many other groups that are significantly under-represented and under-recognized in the big blogs of the progressive blogosphere. And gee, guess what, that’s exactly what happened. From the beginning, we were talking with people from #rebelleft and #fem2 and Social Media Women of Color etc. etc. Cognitive evolution and revolution has several other examples, including the birth of the #diversityfail/#diversitywin hashtags.

In the tech space: the “big blogs” are overwhelmingly white- and male-dominated. As Alex’ quote above illustrates, they don’t see it as their responsibility to seek out other perspectives. Startups and VCs and the mainstream media follow the big blogs for news — see NY Times technology editor Damon Darlin’s Naked Lunch comments here. So the collective blind spot is reinforced.

Sounds like a job for Twitter

Just because it’s your experience on Twitter doesn’t mean it’s everbody else’s. For example, MarkosM’s, JoeTrippi, and DavidSirota’s twitter profiles exhibit the same “guys talking to guys about guys” phenomenon with the tech clique I talked about above. The Men follow men study in May showed that men were more likely to follow men than they were to follow women; since the two genders tweet at roughly the same rate, this means guys are talking to guys more than they’re talking about women. So if you can’t see the #diversityfail on Twitter, try looking harder.

And as to your confusion, there are plenty of women who discus bias and under-representation on Twitter. If you’ve only heard about it from me and other guys so far, try listening harder.

jon

For those of you joining the story in midstream, there was a fierce power struggle on the #p2 Twitter hashtag back in April, with Shoq proposing that #p2 should drop diversity as a goal in what most people saw as a power struggle pitting him against me and #p2 hashtag co-founder Tracy Viselli. (#p2 and prioritizing diversity has my views on why this was so vital.). At the April 30 tweeting #p2 decided to keep its diversity focus and expand its charter to also be an umbrella tag. It was more complicated than that, complete with a lot of hashtag drama (there’s details on the #p2 wiki if you care) and me publically calling Shoq on sexist comments several times. In other words we have a history here.

I thought this point was particularly important:

“Shireen Mitchell (aka @digitalsista) of Social Media Women of Color describes this as a “your problem not ours” attitude: we can’t find them, so it’s not our fault. Intelligent women with plenty to say on this subject are out there, and easy to find if you make the effort. If you don’t bother, who else is responsible?”

This is entirely true, and it is something that I am very appreciative of you helping me realize about myself. Sadly, searching out for diverse opinions–particularly women–is not nearly emphasized enough in our culture. The information revolution of the internet should represent a culmination of the efforts for the silenced to be heard, and although we have made incredible ground in this regard, there is still very far to go.

When it comes down to it, it’s a question of priority. We see this in the progressive blogosphere especially, where linking to women and minorities is not privileged nearly enough. Such links should be considered activism in and of themselves as it’s helping a more diverse group of people join the public sphere in a more meaningful manner.

More varied opinions and distinctive voices in a democracy helps us all. Here’s hoping we can increasingly promote the importance of this as well as create better tools that will help speed this effort along!

jon

In terms of reaching out, thats what links are for. If you want to join the conversation, blog and link and people will link back.

And as the last point, VP of Engineering in my startup is a woman, so I think I am pretty covered on that front.

Alex

** as I write this, the people @chris1a has mentioned most recently on Twitter are @alexiskold, Mark Cuban, @ajkeen, @om, @mathewi, @SteveCase , @dirkliedtke, @Casablanca, Marc Andreessen, @andrewbusey, Brad Feld (@bfeld), John Gapper, Seth Ditchik (aka @wanderingeditor), @jeffjarvis, Andrew Sullivan, @anildash, @jason_pontin, @jayrosen_nyu and so on. [This includes retweets, replies, and references by name.] His blog is almost as extreme.>You can see similar patterns in many of the guys Alex and Chris talks to as well.

*** including me, extensively, for example n comment threads of Gender, race, and power in online discussions and Collaborative empowerment on Twitter.

**** in contrast to Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s unpredictable Black Swan. In a “rich get richer” system a black swan will generally reinforce existing dominance structures in the matrix of oppressions. The intentionality of a pink swan leaves open the possibilities for more significant transformation.