As we look ahead to the future of tech, marketing, and diversity in STEM fields, it’s important to take a glance back. History can tell us a lot about who we are now, but most importantly it can illustrate ways that we can get from where we are to where we want to be. One of my personal inspirations is the incomparable Ada Lovelace. Ada is often called the first programmer, but she was so much more than that — and I suggest that her most important role was as the first tech marketer. Modern leaders, innovators, and storytellers in tech can learn a lot from her and her story.
“The Enchantress of Numbers”
Clik here to view.
Ada Lovelace
Born Augusta Ada Byron in 1815, Ada’s parents were a famous poet and a devout scientist — virtually fating her to have a remarkable life. Her father, George Gordon Byron (or more commonly, Lord Byron), was only married to her mother for a year before they separated when Ada was just a month old. Ada’s mother, Anne Isabella Noel Byron, was a devoted lifelong student of math and science. Afraid that Ada would inherit her father’s extreme emotions and wild behavior, Anne kept her daughter on a strict regimen of math and science. Art and poetry were forbidden.
From this strict upbringing, Ada grew up to be an educated woman with a brilliant mathematical mind that was evident to everyone around her. When she was 18, she was introduced to a renowned mathematician and inventor, Charles Babbage, who was immediately impressed by her. Despite her mother’s attempts to quell her imagination, Ada was still filled with ideas about the future of science. Later Charles would call her “The Enchantress of Numbers,” observing that she threw “her magical spell around the most abstract of Sciences and has grasped it with a force which few masculine intellects could have exerted over it.”
Marketing the Engine of Change
Charles showed Ada his Difference Engine, a counting machine he’d been hired to design by the British government. Ada was fascinated by the machine and continued to write letters back and forth with Charles for the next nine years; during this time, Babbage updated his Difference Engine into a more general-purpose computer he called the Analytical Engine. After the Italian engineer Luigi Menabrea wrote a long paper about the Analytical Engine, Charles convinced Ada to translate it into English and improve it with a few footnotes. However, the final English translation was nearly three times as long, and illustrated a sort of insight into the possibilities of the technology that had eluded even the inventor.
It may have been Babbage who did the engineering and Menabrea who first described it, but it was Ada who was able to take a description of a machine and contextualize it, articulate the human story behind it, and envision what it might mean for the future. Ada put the pieces together and put a human face on computing technology — she was the first tech marketer, and in this regard she was a visionary.
A Testament to the Power of Diversity
Ada was able to do this in an era in which the idea of women in STEM was virtually unthinkable. To give some context, in the same time and place when Ada was articulating the human face of technology, the Brontë sisters had to write their novels under men’s names in order to get published. Ada’s story is but one of countless illustrations of just how important it is to bring diversity to STEM. You never know where the next revolutionary idea is going to come from.
Many historians have pointed out that Ada didn’t add much to the way counting machines were built, and that she probably didn’t write any of the punch card programs the machines ran. As a brilliant mathematician, it’s likely she had the skill set to do so; however, her true skill was that of a visionary and as a connector of the dots between the hard sciences and the humanities.
Bringing Poetry into STEM
Clik here to view.
Ada Lovelace
Whenever I meet with young STEM students, my advice for them is just the opposite of Ada’s mother’s guidance — I encourage them to expand their studies by taking classes in poetry, literature, and other forms of creativity that are vastly different from mathematics. Although the literary arts may seem unrelated on the surface, they get you to think differently. Fostering the creative side of your brain can help you look at problems in new ways.
Even more, a proficiency in language empowers you to communicate your insights effectively to others, which is a critical skill. Ada’s ability to connect the dots between the technological innovation and the possibilities it held was invaluable. A century later, the personal computer first appeared as a consumer product in the 1969 Neiman Marcus holiday fantasy gift catalogue as a $10,000 recipe storage machine. Today, look at all that has been possible because of the personal computer. Creative possibility thinking and skilled communication are skills to acquire in STEM fields to be sure.
Requiem for a Radical
Ada Lovelace died tragically young; she passed away only months after her 36th birthday. We don’t know what else she might have given the world — but the amount she did give was extraordinary. She was a revolutionary woman, demonstrating a keen insight into the role that storytelling would play in the coming eras of technological advancement. Those of us in tech, marketing, and leadership each owe a nod of our hats to the Enchantress of Numbers!
The post The Enchantress of Numbers: Remembering Ada Lovelace, the Mother of Tech Marketing appeared first on Intel Software and Services.