‘Grandma Got STEM’ Challenges the Stereotype of Technologically Hapless Old People
More: ‘Grandma Got STEM’ Challenges the Stereotype of Technologically Hapless Old People
Denigrating grandmothers for their supposed lack of technological prowess is bullshit because a) big fucking deal you can use a computer — your grandmother was probably old enough during the moon landing to roll her eyes when Neil Armstrong read his cheesy “one small step” line, and b) grandmothers are really crafty, so crafty, in fact, that they feign hearing problems so they can eavesdrop on younger people. Old age is just a giant con job aimed at exploiting youth’s fallacious sense of imperviousness. Old age is also usually your first tip-off that someone could be fairly accomplished at something, since they’ve likely spent a lifetime practicing, studying, and applying that something.
Keep that in mind as you peruse Grandma Got STEM, a blog devoted to grandmothers who have had enviable careers in science, technology, and math. The list of grandmothers includes women like Professor Mary Ellen Rudin, a mathematician with 100 publications on MathSciNet, 435 citations, and research papers written from 2002. She lives with her husband Walter (who is also a mathematician, so we have a big-time nerd alert with this family) in a Frank Lloyd Wright house.
Babushka has a degree in Math/ComputerSci from the days when we had to program on punch cards! Started out programming in FORTRAN on VAX/VMS. Our first home computer was a Trash 80, later upgraded to an IBM AT. Zedushka paid $500 for a 40MB hard drive in 1990! (He still beats himself up over that purchase)
We got an AOL account in 1994 and kept it for 2 weeks, then switched to Netcom. Got on that Internet thing and flamed people on Usenet!