DRAFT! Work in progress!
Update, July 9: my brother Greg of The Happy Accident had some great feedback on this draft: he didn’t know until the last paragraphs why he was reading it. Until then, it seemed like an attack on Alex — which wasn’t at all my intention.  Why we do drafts, chapter 1023 and counting; thanks, Greg, for the feedback.  Apologies to all for any offense or misimpression. I revised the final version of the post substantially.
Alex Iskold’s Free: It Works, It Cries, It Bites on ReadWriteWeb is a roundup of reactions to Chris Anderson’s new book FREE — as well as his own opinion that free can be dangerous. Â Alex does a nice job summarizing opinions from Malcolm, Seth, Mike, Fred, Mark, and Brad … hey, wait a second, I’m noticing a pattern here …
Alex replied to me on Twitter, asking for links to posts by women and saying he’d be happy to add them. Janet Maislin’s Absolutely, Positively Free … if You Think You Can Afford It from the New York Times was near the top of Google’s main page so I sent him the link — and also suggested that he try reaching out to women. After thanking me, he told me that he thought it was better not to reach out.
Responses like this don’t even surprise me at this point. 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?
A big problem with not reaching out is that it tends to confirm your own blind spots. For example, in environments where you’re listening primarily to guys, you’re a lot less likely to hear women’s perspectives.  Virtually all the commenters on Alex’ ReadWriteWeb post are male;* so is just about everybody who replies to or retweets him on Twitter. And if the guys you’re talking with and listening to are the kind of guys who don’t talk a lot with women — like Chris Anderson, apparently, at least based on his blog and Twitter feed** — then you get what network theorists would describe as a clique of male nodes with preferential attachment to other male nodes.
Guys talking to guys who talk about guys.
It’s not like this is new behavior . Shelley Powers described it vividly four years ago in Guys don’t link. Plenty of others have documented it too.*** So you’d think I’d be used to it by now. Oh well. However …
From the perspective of an entrepeneur planning a startup with an explicit diversity focus, it’s a great opportunity for what I like to call a pink swan: taking advantage of a collective blind spot to create a high-impact event beyond the realm of most people’s expectations.****Â For example, discovering an overlooked business model that’s perfectly matched to our product.
Who knows for sure, but it’s distinctly possible that there are a lot of variations of “free” business models that all the guys talking to each other on the subject haven’t even begun to explore. There could be some really interesting opportunities here.
So stay tuned for my upcoming post: #diversitywin: something pithy here.
jon
PS: In the meantime, if any women — or anybody else whose perspectives aren’t getting heard in the discussions of “free” business models — have any insights, please feel free to share!
jon | 08-Jul-09 at 4:51 pm | Permalink
* more accurately, present themselves as male via their names and preferred gender on Facebook. Putting my research hat on, here are the details: 6 guys (Christian, Steven, Dan, william, Ian (“him”), Anton, Jules, Eric (“him”), Alex, David, Hamilton, Vada (“him”), Juha (“him”), Linus, Marcello, Steve. Five exceptions: Leah, Martha, atomi, Arisey (a company), and Fun Facts (an aggregator)). So depending on how you count ambiguous cases, it’s probably at least 75% male. And the ratio is even higher if you count by words — many guys post multiple times, and the average length of their posts is much higher than the non-guy-posts.
** 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.
Alex Iskold | 09-Jul-09 at 3:00 pm | Permalink
With all due respect, I disagree. It is not my job to reach out. My job is to summarize the debate that I found, sorry I missed NYTimes article.
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
Eve E | 10-Jul-09 at 3:34 pm | Permalink
With all due respect Alex,
The point is that you are obviously not connected to a diverse network. So the “debate that YOU” found is not necessarily reflective of the broader debate going on in the world about your topic. Reaching out is what anyone interested in creating effective, interesting, and comprehensive summaries would do. Talk about blind spot. yikes.
We had a VP or two at Microsoft too. That doesn’t mean all the guys could sit back and consider their bases covered. Eve
jon | 14-Jul-09 at 11:06 am | Permalink
From Twitter, after I sent Eric the link to Alex’ comment:
jon | 10-Jul-09 at 1:02 am | Permalink
Thanks for the reply, Alex. Looks like we see things differently. If women don’t blog and link as you demand, then you won’t get their perspectives. Building a diverse team at your company is a great thing; it may or may not be enough to make up for the lack of diversity of your own conversations.
jon
jon | 10-Jul-09 at 7:19 pm | Permalink
There’s been a bunch of conversation on Twitter as well. I excerpted a chunk of it here. Here’s another excerpt, a conversation between Alex and Allyson Kapin (aka @WomenWhoTech); the most recent tweets are at the top.
Harry Waisbren | 11-Jul-09 at 1:18 pm | Permalink
This is an important issue Jon, and making ground on it is a big part of why I’m so excited to be taking part in the #p2 effort!
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 | 12-Jul-09 at 10:41 am | Permalink
jon | 12-Jul-09 at 10:42 am | Permalink
Thanks for the comment, Harry! Kay Steiger’s The “new†new left is white, male is a great example of this kind of behavior in the progressive blogosphere,, and there are a lot more references on the Diversity Online page on the #p2 wiki and the comments of Gender, race, age, and power in online discussions, chapter n. And you make a great point: being conscious of this tendency and writing your posts to counter it and have a more diverse set of links is a form of activism.
jon | 12-Jul-09 at 10:59 am | Permalink
A Twitter discussion between Harry and Shoq — most recent tweet at the top:
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.
jon | 12-Jul-09 at 11:13 am | Permalink
Shoq,
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
myrnatheminx | 12-Jul-09 at 9:51 pm | Permalink
Perhaps Shoq doesnt follow most of the women who discuss the issue
jon | 14-Jul-09 at 11:14 am | Permalink
Thinking more about the parallels between the technology world and the progressive political world …
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 🙂
jon | 18-Jul-09 at 9:14 am | Permalink
I checked out the index and acknolwedgements chapter of Free. Over 95% of the names in the index are male; the exceptions I found are Linn Ball, Sheryl Crowe, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, Sarah Lacy, Meg Ryan, and Oprah Winfrey, each mentioned on only one page. Other than his wife Anne, and the pulibicity team at Wired (led by Alexandra Constantinople and Maya Draisin), everybody Chris acknowledges is male. Looks like the Twitter feed and blog were accurate: Chris really doesn’t like to talk about women.
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
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.