[SGVLUG] What Bill's been vamping lately...

[Miguel Hernandez]

On Tue, Feb 26, 2008 at 4:35 PM, Sean O'Donnell <sean at seanodonnell.com>
wrote:

> However, all of this does stem back to the public education system, and
> lack of scientific/technological focus, regardless. Take a look at Los
> Alamos National Lab... 60%+ Foreign Nationals, working on highly
> classified and sensitive projects... *shrug*


Very good points, Sean.  There´s another factor that, sadly, contributes to
this as well. It´s the fact that this society tells our young girls that
they can´t go into technology, math or science. They can ONLY wear pink as
babies & can only becomes teachers, nurses or homecare workers (or any other
type of ¨nurturing" field). It´s pretty sad to me that we compartmentalize
our youth by only giving them a few options. Tell a little girl that she can
become a CIO, Mathematician or Astronaut & she probably will become one!!!

I liken it to what I call the ¨MS brainwashing effect.¨ If you give a child,
say, in the inner city a top-of-the-line machine w/no OS, what´s the 1st
thing that this non-technical child will say? S/he will say ¨I need to buy
Windows to make this computer work.¨ You KNOW the MS Marketing team has done
a good job when this is the case. However, if you give the child the
*option* to choose between any OS, say Windows, OSX or Linux, they´ll feel
empowered by the fact that they have options & they might not even pick MS!
It´s the same thing w/our lack of tech professionals, too many potential
candidates were told they couldn´t do or be that.

Giving people options & the power of suggestion are powerful things to give
someone! :)
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