Grace Hopper Documentary Edges on Successful Crowdfunding 65
mikejuk (1801200) writes "Born With Curiosity is a proposed biopic about computer pioneer Grace Hopper. With a week to go before it closes on June 7, a crowdfunding campaign on Indigogo has so far raised 94% of its $45,000 target. Although there have been a couple of books devoted to Grace Hopper and she recently was the subject of a Google Doodle, her story hasn't made it to celluloid, which is something that Melissa Pierce finds anomalous, stating on the Born With Curiosity Indigogo page: 'Steve Jobs had 8 films made about him, with another in pre-production! Without Grace Hopper, Steve might have been a door to door calculator salesman! Even with that fact,there isn't one documentary about Grace and her legacy. It's time to change that.'"
jesus, I knew someone would play the gender card (Score:5, Insightful)
" her story hasn't made it to celluloid, which is something that Melissa Pierce finds anomalous, stating on the Born With Curiosity Indigogo page: 'Steve Jobs had 8 films made about him, with another in pre-production! Without Grace Hopper, Steve might have been a door to door calculator salesman! Most of history has been written by and about men. Our aim is to bring to life the untold and lost stories of women."
Uh, her story has been told in the media, quite a bit. She was, for example, featured by 60 minutes. She's mentioned in nearly every CS textbook; I've seen her name pop up in movies and anime. Damn near any techie worth their salt has heard of Hopper. Any CS grad certainly has. She has a ship named after her; she was exempted from retirement guidelines, constantly promoted, to become one of the oldest and longest serving officers. She spent something like a decade, hired by DEC, to go around and lecture. She's in Arlington National Cemetery.
Comparing her to Jobs's pop culture fame is idiotic. On one hand, the head of a major consumer electronics company who was a consummate showman and redefined PERSONAL computing, versus someone who worked on mainframes during+after WW2 on languages most of the population has never heard of, and died more than two decades ago, well before personal computers could be found in most homes? When she passed in 1992, I was one of a handful of kids in my town who had a personal computer in the house, and I lived in a pretty well-off suburb of a tech corridor.
Re:jesus, I knew someone would play the gender car (Score:2, Insightful)
Didn't you know... women cannot communicate with the world on equal terms. Everything has to be couched in victimhood and oppression.
In other words Grace Hopper suddenly becomes part of the battle against male oppression... even though her story is actually proof that capable women had success and achievement without a lot of feminist whining and tantrum throwing.
Re:jesus, I knew someone would play the gender car (Score:3, Insightful)
Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, PhD. [ http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/tap/Files/hopper-story.html ] is an iconic figure in the history of computing and computer science. How anyone could not be aware of her achievements baffles me. Yep, comparing Grace Hopper to Steve Jobs is tantamount to heresy for anyone earning a degree in mathematics, computer science, or engineering.