Broad Band by Claire L. Evans

I picked this up because it's this month's IndieWeb Book Club pick. Wouldn't have found it otherwise, and that's exactly why book clubs matter. If you've got a place on the internet, why don't you join us in reading? Or, even choose a book for a future month?

Review

The internet history they've sold is a lie of omission. Men in garages, alpha nerds, brogrammers: the mythology is so loud it's easy to miss everyone else.

I'm not having it. And I'm glad the author isn't either.

This feminist tech history restores credit where it's owed: to the women who built our beloved internet. She profiles folks like Grace Hopper, who democratized computing by defending machine-independent programming languages, and Elizabeth "Jake" Feinler, who kept the early internet running single-handedly.

And culture would have you believe contributions like this are mere footnotes?

The research that went into this is rigorous and must've been overwhelming, but you'd never know it, reading it. Her journalist's instinct for the human story just shines.

This is for the web wanderers, the IndieWeb believers, the people who think the internet was supposed to be something better.

A corrective, a love letter, and a necessary reminder: women were always here.

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