Mar Hicks
Elson 191
Biography
Hicks does research on the history of computing, labor, technology, and queer science and technology studies. Their work studies how collective understandings of progress are defined by competing discourses of social value and economic productivity, and how technologies often hide regressive ideals while espousing "revolutionary" or "disruptive" goals. Their research investigates everything from how power and AI intersect, to the long history of transphobic algorithmic bias, to the connections between gender and technological change.
Hicks’s current work focuses on how gender and sexuality bring hidden technological dynamics to light, and how the experiences of women and LGBTQIA people change the core narratives of the history of computing in unexpected ways. They are currently working on a book about the gendered nature of digital infrastructure and the intersections between queerness and resistance in the history of digital computing. Hicks's multiple award-winning first book, Programmed Inequality (MIT Press, 2017), looks at how the British lost their early lead in computing by discarding women computer workers, and what this cautionary tale can tell us about current issues in high tech. Hicks is also co-editor of the book Your Computer Is On Fire (MIT Press, 2021), a volume of essays about how we can begin to fix our broken high tech infrastructures.
Before joining UVA, Hicks was Associate Professor of History of Technology at Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, and was a fellow at the National Humanities Center in 2018-2019. Hicks holds a Ph.D. and M.A. from Duke University in History, and a B.A. in History from Harvard. More information about their work can be found at: marhicks.com.
Publications
Your Computer is On Fire, a co-edited collection, MIT Press (2021)
"Hacking the Cis-tem"IEEE Annals of the History of Computing (March 2019)
"When Winning Is Losing: Why the Nation that Invented the Computer Lost Its Lead"IEEE Computer (October 2018)
Programmed Inequality: How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing MIT Press (2017)
"Computer Love: Replicating Social Order Through Early Computer Dating Systems,"Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, & Technology (Fall 2016, issue 10)
“De-Brogramming the History of Computing,”IEEE Annals of the History of Computing (January-March 2013)
"Only the Clothes Changed: Women Operators in British Computing and Advertising, 1950-1970,"IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 32, no. 2 (October-December 2010)
Internet and Popular Press Publications
Variety
'The Book of Queer' to Premiere on Discovery+ in June
April 27, 2022
MIT Technology Review
It's Okay to Opt Out of the Crypto Revolution
April 21, 2022
Wired
Women in Tech Have Been Pulling a 'Second Shift' for Decades
February 8, 2022
strategy+business
The Right Time to Yell "Fire!"
Best Business Books 2021
November 8, 2021
Vice
Ethical AI Trained on Reddit Posts Said Genocide Is Okay If It Makes People Happy
Motherboard - Tech by Vice
November 3, 2021
Wired
Facebook's Fall From Grace Looks a Lot Like Ford's
October 14, 2021
University of Edinburgh
Your Computer Is On Fire: A Discussion with Authors Mar Hicks and Kavita Philip
Centre for Data Culture & Society
September 22, 2021
MIT Technology Review
The Voices of Women in Tech Are Still Being Erased
August 3, 2021
Public Books
No Cure: Review of Your Computer Is On Fire
June 2, 2021
Oxford University
Your Computer Is On Fire: Book Launch with the Editors
Oxford Internet Institute
June 1, 2021
New Scientist
Your Computer Is On Fire review: Wake up to tech's inequalities
April 7, 2021
Los Angeles Review of Books
Chasing White Supremacy into Tech's Lairs
April 4, 2021
Engadget
The bias behind AI assistants' failure to understand accents (Excerpt from Your Computer Is On Fire)
April 3, 2021
How Britain Killed its Computing Industry w/ Mar Hicks
Tech Won't Save Us
Mar 18, 2021
VentureBeat
Your Computer Is On Fire Draws on Tech History to Critique AI and the Cloud
March 11, 2021
The Radical AI Podcast
Your Computer Is On Fire with Mar Hicks and Kavita Philip
March 10, 2021
Britain's Sexist Campaign to Sell Computers
The Reader
February 12, 2021
Computational Technologies
Media, Technology & Culture
February 5, 2021
CBC
Google Union Organizers Could Face Retaliatory Action, Legal Expert Says
Day 6
January 8, 2021
Where Regulation Has Failed, Could a Workers’ Union Hold Google to Account?
Tech Monitor
January 7, 2021
Listed on the 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics List
(includes nonbinary people)
Women in AI Ethics
December 5, 2020
IEEE
2019 Best Paper Award
IEEE Annals of the History of Computing
IEEE Computer Society Publications Board
December 1, 2020
PRX
Queen of Code (1943) w/ Mar Hicks
This Day in Esoteric Political History
November 22, 2020
Wealthsimple
The Code That Controls Your Money
Money & The World
November 10, 2020
Fast Company
You Watched 'The Social Dilemma.' Read These Eleven Books Next
September 30, 2020
moz://a
Reading List: The Social Dilemma
The Mozilla Foundation
September 29, 2020
Built to Last: Don't Blame COBOL. Blame Austerity.
LOGIC #11
August 31, 2020
University Professors Share Their Thoughts On Colleges Reopening
All Things Considered
August 21, 2020
The Verge
University Staff Are Worried Their Recorded Lectures Will Be Used Against Them
August 20, 2020
Co-Opting AI: GENDER
Institute of Public Knowledge, New York University
May 14, 2020
NBC News
A 'perfect storm' for chaos: Unemployment system's failures were a long time coming
May 12, 2020
The Verge
The Problem with COBOL
April 28, 2020
Massive Science
Can You Help Identify Unnamed Women Scientists of the Past?
April 16, 2020
MIT Technology Review
What Past Disasters Can Teach Us About How to Deal With COVID-19
April 15, 2020
2018 Award Winner Interviews
The Society for the History of Technology
March 19, 2020
The New York Times
The Great Google Revolt
March 18, 2020
Time
How Pets Are Taking Their Thrones as the Stars of the Work-From-Home Paradigm Right Now
March 13, 2020
BBC News Service
Global stocks plunge as coronavirus fears spread
World Business Report
March 12, 2020
KCBS Radio
Discussing the Kickstarter Union
February 19, 2020
Information & Culture
A History of Women in British Telecommunications: Introducing a Special Issue
Information & Culture - University of Texas Press
February 1, 2020
HuffPo
National Archives Blurred Out Anti-Trump Messages In Women's March Photo
The Huffington Post
January 18, 2020
IEEE Spectrum
The Hidden Figures Behind Bletchley Park's Code-Breaking Colossus
December 31, 2019
2019 Herbert Baxter Adams Prize
American Historical Association
December 1, 2019
Slate
The Lines of Code That Changed Everything
Slate: Future Tense
October 14, 2019
The Washington Post
How a debate about punching Nazis sparked the fight to create tech's first name-brand union
October 10, 2019
OneZero
Here's How Amazon Alexa Will Recognize When You're Frustrated
September 27, 2019
Mar Hicks, "The Meta-Narrative of the Machine: Computing and Social Inequalities in Great Britain"
National Humanities Center Podcast
August 26, 2019
Slate & The Economist
A Bug in the System: What can Ada Lovelace's mistake from 1843 tell us about modern-day biases in software algorithms?
The Secret History of the Future Podcast
August 15, 2019
HuffPo
Why Thousands Of Amazon Workers Are Striking On Prime Day
The Huffington Post
July 16, 2019
The New York Times
Employee Activism Is Alive in Tech. It Stops Short of Organizing Unions.
July 8, 2019
El País
El sexismo oculto en la voz de Alexa
June 27, 2019
The Guardian
Our gender is not for others to decide. A bill for trans people to self-identify is a good start
June 19, 2019
Smithsonian Magazine
The Gendered History of Human Computers
June, 2019
Inverse
The Enduring, Intoxicating Appeal of the "Secret Crush"
May 28, 2019
TechCrunch
Gender, race and social change in Tech
TechCrunch : Extra Crunch
May 22, 2019
Quanta Magazine
The Hidden Heroines of Chaos
May 20, 2019
Slate
Early Libertarian Dreams of a Free Internet Didn’t Work Out as Planned
Slate: If Then
May 8, 2019
Big Picture
Technology's Gender and Sexuality Blindspot
Big Picture, The View From Lewis College
Spring, 2019
BBC Radio
A Job for the Boys
BBC Radio 4
April 1, 2019
What Makes a History "Hidden"?
The MIT Press Blog
March 29, 2019
Episode 37: The History of Gender in Computing with Historian Mar Hicks
She Who Persisted, the Nasty Podcast
March 20, 2019
6AM Book Club
Programmed Inequality by Mar Hicks
March 18, 2019
The New York Times
The Secret History of Women in Coding
The New York Times Magazine
February 13, 2019
Programmed Inequality: A 2018 Bestseller at the MIT Press Bookstore
MIT Press
February 1, 2019
Review of Programmed Inequality
Jonnie Penn on H-Net
February 1, 2019
Wired
Finding Lena, The Patron Saint of JPEGs
wired.com
January 31, 2019
La computadora tiene cara de mujer
(The Computer Has a Women's Face)
infobae
January 22, 2019
Review: Programmed Inequality
H / Soz / Kult
January 16, 2019
Wired
Mackenzie Bezos and the Myth of the Lone Genius Founder
wired.com
January 11, 2019
Review of Programmed Inequality
Aurelio Cianciotta on Neural.it
January 11, 2019
Programmed Inequality
2018 winner of the Business Archives Council's Wadsworth Prize
November 15, 2018
The Verge
The Long History Behind the Google Walkout
November 9, 2018
Harvard Kennedy School
Before Algorithms: A History of Bias and Oppression in Computing (video)
digital HKS
November 8, 2018
Programmed Inequality
2018 winner of the North American Conference on British Studies (NACBS) Stansky Book Prize
October 25, 2018
Stayin' Alive in Technology
Mar Hicks: "We Belong"
Stayin' Alive in Technology Podcast
October 18, 2018
The Guardian
From the Birth of Computing to Amazon: Why Tech’s Gender Problem is Nothing New
October 12, 2018
Programmed Inequality
2018 winner of the Society for the History of Technology's Sally Hacker Book Prize
October 11, 2018
Forbes
Was Der Code Verrät
Forbes (German)
October 10, 2018
Debates on Artificial Intelligence: Arts vs. Technology?
Interview with GDI Researcher Zhan Li
Artificial intelligence, equality and social justice
September 24, 2018
How To Kill Your Tech Industry
LOGIC #5
September 18, 2018
Fixing Tech's Built-In Bias
American Scientist
September 1, 2018
A Convenient Excuse: Tech's Discrimination Problem
The H-Net Book Channel
June 1, 2018
BBC History Extra
The changing role of women in British computing
May 2018
University of Pennsylvania
Three-dozen summer reading recommendations from faculty and staff
Penn Today
May 24, 2018
The Times Literary Supplement
Storm Clouds
May 15, 2018
IEEE Annals of the History of Computing
Oral History of Dame Stephanie Shirley
May 8, 2018
Science, Technology and Human Values
Girls Who Coded: Gender in Twentieth Century U.K. and U.S. Computing Review
May 7, 2018
2018-2019 Fellows
National Humanities Center
April 27, 2018
House of Lords
AI in the UK: ready, willing and able?
Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence
April 16, 2018
Programmed Inequality with Mar Hicks
The Women in Tech Show
April 16, 2018
The Brookings Institute
Black and Hispanic underrepresentation in tech: It's time to change the equation
March 28, 2018
BBC
How Women Got Squeezed out of Tech
(my remarks begin at the 9 minute mark)
BBC World Service Business Daily
March 8, 2018
Silicon Republic
The Storytellers: 12 women shining a spotlight on women in STEM
March 7, 2018
E&T
Book review: Programmed Inequality by Mar Hicks
Engineering and Technology
February 13, 2018
Computer Dating: Women Tech Innovators
Professor Buzzkill
February 13, 2018
American Publishers Awards
Programmed Inequality
2018 winner of the
PROSE Award for History of Science, Technology & Medicine
February 8, 2018
Trailblazers Podcast
"Be Mine"
(History of computer dating goes from 8:50 - 15:22)
Trailblazers with Walter Isaacson
February 6, 2018
Mar Hicks on Programmed Inequality in conversation with documentarian Melissa Pierce
The Seminary Co-op : Open Stacks
February 4, 2018
Forbes
Elizebeth Smith Friedman: 'The Woman Who Smashed Codes'
January 6, 2018
Longreads.com
Best of 2017: Science, Technology, and Business Writing (For the article "The Mother of All Swipes")
Longreads
December 27, 2017
Episode 4: Technology and Women's Labor
Lady Science Podcast
December 12, 2017
The Wall Street Journal
The First Women in Tech Didn’t Leave—Men Pushed Them Out
December 10, 2017
IEEE Spectrum
The Numbers of Women in Tech Rise and Fall, But Sexual Harassment is Ever Present
View From the Valley
December 8, 2017
Computer History Museum
Programmed Inequality
CHM Live
December 6, 2017
Woman Crush Wednesday: Stephanie Shirley
Professor Buzzkill
November 1, 2017
Brand Eins
Stereotypen befallen uns alle (Stereotypes Affect Us All)
Frauen/Männer (Women/Men)
November 11, 2017
Programmed Inequality: Women and British Computing
Professor Buzzkill
October 11, 2017
Grace Hopper Celebration
Why Discrimination Against Women Destroyed the British Computing Industry and Why We Should Care
October 5, 2017
Women once powered the tech industry. Can they do it again?
ScienceNode
October 2, 2017
Reprogramming History
University of Wisconsin-Madison
September 12, 2017
CounterSpin Radio
Women in Tech
CounterSpin on FAIR
August 25, 2017
Chicago Magazine
Why Women Programmers Were the Foundation of the Computing Age, and Where They Went
August 17, 2017
The Verge
"Science Doesn't Explain Tech's Diversity Problem - History Does"
August 16, 2017
BBC Radio 4
Global news and analysis
The World This Weekend
August 13, 2017
Wisconsin Public Radio
Sexism In Tech Industry
(starts at 22:20)
Central Time
August 11, 2017
The Guardian
How the Tech industry wrote women out of history
August 10, 2017
The Conversation
What the Google gender ‘manifesto’ really says about Silicon Valley
August 10, 2017
The Washington Post
Op Ed
Memo to the Google memo writer: Women were foundational to the field of computing
August 9, 2017
The Guardian
Sorry, Google memo man: women were in tech long before you
August 9, 2017
BBC Radio 4
Interviewed by Jenni Murray
BBC 4: Woman's Hour
July 6, 2017
Chicago Policy Review
Gender, Pop Culture, and Politics in Technology: Lessons from the Past
June 28, 2017
"Programmed Inequality"
These Vibes Are Too Cosmic
June 27, 2017
Oxford University
Structural Inequality and Technological Consequences:
The Case of British Computing
Oxford Internet Institute
June 1, 2017
The Mother of All Swipes
LOGIC Magazine
June 1, 2017
Databite No. 97: Why Should We Care About the Failure of The British Computing Industry?
Data & Society
April 19, 2017
Australian National Radio
Late Night Live: The History of Women Codebreakers
Australian Broadcasting Company
April 18, 2017
The Chronicle
Reading List for a New World Order
The Chronicle of Higher Education
April 9, 2017
Times Higher Education
Book of the Week: Programmed Inequality
April 6, 2017
"What Happens When Women Are Pushed Out Of The Tech Industry?"
WUNC: The State of Things
April 5, 2017
WGN Radio 720
"Women’s Role in Global Technological History"
WGN Radio: The Opening Bell
April 5, 2017
Interview: Programmed Inequality - How Britain Discarded Women Technologists and Lost Its Edge in Computing
New Books Network
March 28, 2017
Mar Hicks & Programmed Inequality
New Book Network: Gender Studies Podcast
March 28, 2017
The MIT Press
"The Hidden Figures of the British Computer Industry"
The MIT Press Blog
February 27, 2017
The Guardian
Movie Review of Hidden Figures
February 13, 2017
Hidden Histories of Computing Reading List
The Seminary Co-Op Critical Reads
February 5, 2017
ChicagoInno
"How Tech's Gender Gap Influences a Country's Computing Power"
ChicagoInno.com
February 3, 2017
"Womyn Historical Figures with Mar Hicks"
WIIT's Womyn Power Hour
hosted by Gabbi Henderson and Jenny Pitcher
(See their page)
February 1, 2017
ChicagoInno
"This Illinois Tech Class Puts Women Back in Computing History"
ChicagoInno.com
December 22, 2016
BuzzFeed
"We Asked The Experts To Predict The Future Of UK Politics After Brexit"
BuzzFeed News
July 2, 2016
WBEZ Chicago
"The Design of the Wrigley Scoreboard: Revolutionary, Retro or Both?"
WBEZ: Curious City
September 11, 2015
The Guardian
"Oxford University went co-ed 40 years ago. And look how far we've come"
June 21, 2014
BBC
"How the Computer Changed the Office Forever"
BBC News
August 1, 2013
Computer History Museum
"Brograms and the Power of Vaporware"
Computer History Museum Blog
March 27, 2013
Courses Taught
History and Historiography
New Course: Illinois Institute of Technology, Spring 2020
Diversity in the History of Technology
New course: Illinois Institute of Technology, Fall 2019
Women in Computing History (Current Syllabus)
First taught at Illinois Institute of Technology: Fall 2016, Spring 2021, and Fall 2022, also taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Fall 2017
Digital Labor
Illinois Institute of Technology: Spring 2017 & Fall 2015—part of the Digital Humanities requirement
Disasters
Illinois Institute of Technology: Spring 2020, Fall 2016, 2015, 2013 and 2012, and University of Wisconsin-Madison: Spring 2018
Filming the Past
Illinois Institute of Technology: Spring 2016, and 2014
Science and Technology Studies Seminar
Illinois Institute of Technology: Spring 2017 & Spring 2013
History of Computing
Illinois Institute of Technology: Fall 2011
Gender and Technological Change
Illinois Institute of Technology: Spring 2012
History of Technology
North Carolina State University, 2008-2011
20th Century European History
Duke University: Spring 2008
Politics & Sexuality in the Modern West
Duke University: Fall 2008, 2006
Ethical Dimensions of Progress
North Carolina State University: Fall 2008
Science, Technology, and Human Values
North Carolina State University: Fall 2007, Fall 2004