3. I can tell that the article “The problem with diversity in computing” has a good flow to it. The reason for this is the excellent transitions that Ian uses from paragraph to paragraph. His ability and the transition sentences he forms prevents his article from sounding choppy. For example, He speaks about Charles Isbell who is the director of the constellations program at Georgia tech. Isbell claims that we should be more interested in integration of individuals as opposed to just diversity. Ian places the following quote at the end of the paragraph.
“Diversity is just membership,” Isbell said. “Integration is influence, power, and partnership.”
This allows Ian to start his next paragraph by responding to Isbell’s assertations by stating that integration is much harder than diversity. He adds in another quote from Isbell stating that in order to reach integration in industry new folks need to be capable and confident and older folks need to be willing. This sets him up for the following paragraph where he speaks about the willingness of tech industry giants such as Google.
- I was intrigued by Bryans work about language diversity. One of the facts that I found most interesting is that when most people think of diversity they often think of race, religion, and gender. Nonnative accents are generally not the first thing that comes to mind. However, nonnative accent discrimination is a serious problem and should be discussed so that we can strive to find a solution. I really liked the TED talk that Bryan included by Lera Boroditsky in which she discusses how language affects our thinking. Some of the parts that I found most interesting was how some cultures such as a specific tribe in Australia base their entire language off of the directions north, south, east, and west. This helps them to stay very oriented which is opposite to our culture. Another thing I found interesting is how a language such as English places blame on someone who makes an accident ( such as breaking a vase). We say “John broke the vase”. In other cultures such as Spanish speaking cultures it is much more common to say “The vase broke” when speaking of an accident.
This topic that Bryan chose has really opened my eyes to new issues of organizational culture. It has formed the basis of my unit 2 research and my unit 3 research paper.