Very Large Scale Integration with the dust of the earth
June 11, 2024 11:31 AM Subscribe
Lynn Conway, pioneering computer scientist and trans activist, passed away on June 9.
Every aspect of computing is deeply dependent on Conway's work; DIS, which she invented while at IBM, is one of the crucial foundations of modern computer architecture, and her innovations (with Mead) to the methodology of VLSI paved the way for the entirety of modern IC design.
So when you look at your phone or your computer today, say a quiet "thank you".
Also Lynn Conway's Retrospective in which she talks about her own experiences. CW: discrimination.
There's some problem with the web server. It's safe to click to go through the security warnings, or try these archive links instead: bio sketch, retrospective.
DIS is a new term to me. The bio says "she invented a powerful method for issuing multiple out-of-order instructions per machine cycle in supercomputers": is this what we call pipelining? Intel's hyperthreading? Some of each?
posted by Nelson at 11:35 AM on June 11 [7 favorites]
There's some problem with the web server. It's safe to click to go through the security warnings, or try these archive links instead: bio sketch, retrospective.
DIS is a new term to me. The bio says "she invented a powerful method for issuing multiple out-of-order instructions per machine cycle in supercomputers": is this what we call pipelining? Intel's hyperthreading? Some of each?
posted by Nelson at 11:35 AM on June 11 [7 favorites]
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posted by Silvery Fish at 11:37 AM on June 11
posted by Silvery Fish at 11:37 AM on June 11
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posted by whatevernot at 11:43 AM on June 11
posted by whatevernot at 11:43 AM on June 11
There's some problem with the web server.
The certificate for that site expired 3 days ago. Which, morbidly, seems fitting.
Many of my coworkers interacted with Lynn and her loss is keenly felt.
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posted by hanov3r at 11:48 AM on June 11 [2 favorites]
The certificate for that site expired 3 days ago. Which, morbidly, seems fitting.
Many of my coworkers interacted with Lynn and her loss is keenly felt.
.
posted by hanov3r at 11:48 AM on June 11 [2 favorites]
It looks like her IBM contributions are at http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/ACS/Archive/ACSarchive.html. With at least one heartbreaking footnote.
posted by SunSnork at 11:49 AM on June 11 [4 favorites]
posted by SunSnork at 11:49 AM on June 11 [4 favorites]
DIS is a new term to me. The bio says "she invented a powerful method for issuing multiple out-of-order instructions per machine cycle in supercomputers": is this what we call pipelining? Intel's hyperthreading? Some of each?
This is called superscalar in modern parlance. This is different from multiple cores!
Imagine you have two sequential instructions in a single program:
R1=R2+R3
R4=R5+R6
So “add contents of register 2 and 3, and put the result in register 1”, and “add contents of register
5 and 6, and put the result in register 4”.
Normally you’d do these two instructions in sequence, and it would take 2xN cycles to do, where N is the number of cycles it takes such an instruction to complete.
But the second instruction doesn’t depend on the first one at all! There’s no reason the processor would have to wait for the first one to complete for the second one to start, if it had a second arithmetic logic unit around to use. If there was something in the chip which looked ahead on instructions and could figure out if it could do something in parallel to save time?
If this sounds complicated to pull off in practice… you are completely right! But it also works! You generally don’t get a full 2x speed up, because there isn’t always something you can do in parallel, but 1.4x is a frequently achieved result.
posted by notoriety public at 11:55 AM on June 11 [20 favorites]
This is called superscalar in modern parlance. This is different from multiple cores!
Imagine you have two sequential instructions in a single program:
R1=R2+R3
R4=R5+R6
So “add contents of register 2 and 3, and put the result in register 1”, and “add contents of register
5 and 6, and put the result in register 4”.
Normally you’d do these two instructions in sequence, and it would take 2xN cycles to do, where N is the number of cycles it takes such an instruction to complete.
But the second instruction doesn’t depend on the first one at all! There’s no reason the processor would have to wait for the first one to complete for the second one to start, if it had a second arithmetic logic unit around to use. If there was something in the chip which looked ahead on instructions and could figure out if it could do something in parallel to save time?
If this sounds complicated to pull off in practice… you are completely right! But it also works! You generally don’t get a full 2x speed up, because there isn’t always something you can do in parallel, but 1.4x is a frequently achieved result.
posted by notoriety public at 11:55 AM on June 11 [20 favorites]
is this what we call pipelining? Intel's hyperthreading? Some of each?
I’m not really a hardware guy but I think of superscalar architectures, out of order/speculative execution, pipelining and hyperthreading as a cluster of techniques that build on each other - once you have some capacity for parallel execution, it becomes desirable to leverage it as much as possible. The ACS architecture, which Conway worked on, was meant to be IBM’s answer to the CDC 6600, which featured some early examples of these techniques. ACS developed them further but was perhaps too ambitious for its own good and was killed by IBM in the way that such projects often are, with the innovative work trickling down into the product line and the people who worked on it going on to become major figures in the industry.
posted by atoxyl at 12:37 PM on June 11 [4 favorites]
I’m not really a hardware guy but I think of superscalar architectures, out of order/speculative execution, pipelining and hyperthreading as a cluster of techniques that build on each other - once you have some capacity for parallel execution, it becomes desirable to leverage it as much as possible. The ACS architecture, which Conway worked on, was meant to be IBM’s answer to the CDC 6600, which featured some early examples of these techniques. ACS developed them further but was perhaps too ambitious for its own good and was killed by IBM in the way that such projects often are, with the innovative work trickling down into the product line and the people who worked on it going on to become major figures in the industry.
posted by atoxyl at 12:37 PM on June 11 [4 favorites]
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posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 12:44 PM on June 11
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 12:44 PM on June 11
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posted by confluency at 12:51 PM on June 11
posted by confluency at 12:51 PM on June 11
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posted by Lawn Beaver at 1:04 PM on June 11
posted by Lawn Beaver at 1:04 PM on June 11
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What an amazing, phenomenal person. So much fascinating reading in the first link about her contributions to the world.
posted by evilmomlady at 1:14 PM on June 11 [4 favorites]
What an amazing, phenomenal person. So much fascinating reading in the first link about her contributions to the world.
posted by evilmomlady at 1:14 PM on June 11 [4 favorites]
Because of Turing, every computer is a little Gay.
Because of Conway, every computer is a little Trans.
And if you don’t like that, you can stop using all of them.
posted by nickggully at 1:15 PM on June 11 [43 favorites]
Because of Conway, every computer is a little Trans.
And if you don’t like that, you can stop using all of them.
posted by nickggully at 1:15 PM on June 11 [43 favorites]
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posted by the_dreamwriter at 1:19 PM on June 11
posted by the_dreamwriter at 1:19 PM on June 11
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posted by extramundane at 1:31 PM on June 11
posted by extramundane at 1:31 PM on June 11
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posted by wanderingmind at 2:37 PM on June 11
posted by wanderingmind at 2:37 PM on June 11
Just picked up a copy of Lines in the Sand, a short comic book about Conway’s invention of VLSI. Watching the talk she gave at it’s launch event now.
Any time I touch logic synthesis, I get to feel like a total badass. I write down my ideas and they’re transmuted into hardware. It’s easy to forget I work atop a tower of abstractions so high I can’t see the foundation. I get to be proud of what I build with my lego bricks because Lynn Conway had the kind of mind that built lego bricks from atoms.
posted by 1024 at 2:41 PM on June 11 [13 favorites]
Any time I touch logic synthesis, I get to feel like a total badass. I write down my ideas and they’re transmuted into hardware. It’s easy to forget I work atop a tower of abstractions so high I can’t see the foundation. I get to be proud of what I build with my lego bricks because Lynn Conway had the kind of mind that built lego bricks from atoms.
posted by 1024 at 2:41 PM on June 11 [13 favorites]
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posted by Lesser Spotted Potoroo at 2:56 PM on June 11
posted by Lesser Spotted Potoroo at 2:56 PM on June 11
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posted by LovelyAngel at 3:10 PM on June 11
posted by LovelyAngel at 3:10 PM on June 11
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I have a copy of her textbook Introduction to VLSI systems and had no idea of her other many accomplisments. I was in school well after it would have been current, but it's still a treasure to me.
posted by jy4m at 3:21 PM on June 11 [1 favorite]
I have a copy of her textbook Introduction to VLSI systems and had no idea of her other many accomplisments. I was in school well after it would have been current, but it's still a treasure to me.
posted by jy4m at 3:21 PM on June 11 [1 favorite]
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posted by JoeXIII007 at 3:21 PM on June 11
posted by JoeXIII007 at 3:21 PM on June 11
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posted by irrediated at 3:57 PM on June 11
posted by irrediated at 3:57 PM on June 11
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posted by Prophetess of Tech at 3:58 PM on June 11
posted by Prophetess of Tech at 3:58 PM on June 11
Just picked up a copy of Lines in the Sand, a short comic book about Conway’s invention of VLSI.
Thank you for the recommendation, I picked up a digital copy myself. However, I wouldn't have, if I'd read the description more closely and saw that the images for it are AI-generated. I just want to highlight this here for people who feel similarly iffy about that.
Anyway,
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posted by bigendian at 4:04 PM on June 11 [2 favorites]
Thank you for the recommendation, I picked up a digital copy myself. However, I wouldn't have, if I'd read the description more closely and saw that the images for it are AI-generated. I just want to highlight this here for people who feel similarly iffy about that.
Anyway,
.
posted by bigendian at 4:04 PM on June 11 [2 favorites]
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posted by BlackLeotardFront at 4:13 PM on June 11
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 4:13 PM on June 11
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posted by GenjiandProust at 4:37 PM on June 11
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:37 PM on June 11
Wow, what an amazing woman!
posted by mareli at 4:40 PM on June 11 [1 favorite]
posted by mareli at 4:40 PM on June 11 [1 favorite]
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posted by The Manwich Horror at 5:05 PM on June 11
posted by The Manwich Horror at 5:05 PM on June 11
I was in the industry and aware of Conway/Mead, but never knew this. Thanks for making her story more widely known.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 5:50 PM on June 11 [2 favorites]
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 5:50 PM on June 11 [2 favorites]
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posted by Alterscape at 6:06 PM on June 11
posted by Alterscape at 6:06 PM on June 11
Wow, the courage it must have taken to transition in 1968.
Rest in peace, Lynn Conway.
posted by mediareport at 6:51 PM on June 11 [3 favorites]
Rest in peace, Lynn Conway.
posted by mediareport at 6:51 PM on June 11 [3 favorites]
SRS was a very frightening experience given the surgical risks at the time. I had to go thru it all alone without any friends or visitors there with me. Fortunately all went well, the surgery was a success, the care in the clinic was wonderful, and I recovered without any complications. Three and a half weeks later I returned to the U.S., and calmly and hopefully took some time to do the things necessary to get ready to go find work...
It's so hard to explain all this to those who haven't experienced physical mis-gendering. Without reassignment, such a person isn't able to experience their full humanity, including their sexuality. It just doesn't work. Sex reassignment is NOT A CHOICE for such people. It is a life-enabling transformation that makes their physical sex consistent with their innate gender feelings. Without a consistent gender, one really doesn't have a life, much less liberty and a chance to pursue happiness.
posted by mediareport at 6:55 PM on June 11 [4 favorites]
It's so hard to explain all this to those who haven't experienced physical mis-gendering. Without reassignment, such a person isn't able to experience their full humanity, including their sexuality. It just doesn't work. Sex reassignment is NOT A CHOICE for such people. It is a life-enabling transformation that makes their physical sex consistent with their innate gender feelings. Without a consistent gender, one really doesn't have a life, much less liberty and a chance to pursue happiness.
posted by mediareport at 6:55 PM on June 11 [4 favorites]
Just two days after the 70th anniversary of the death of another computer pioneer, Alan Turing, who was hounded to death one way or another because of his sexuality.
posted by jamjam at 8:29 PM on June 11
posted by jamjam at 8:29 PM on June 11
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She showed up to speak at a retirement party for a work colleague of mine at Michigan just last summer, and seemed in good health and spirits. Everyone was very surprised and also very happy to see her. At the time, I knew little of her accomplishments, but soon discovered I'd been sharing space with a legend. What an amazing person. I'm very sad to hear this news.
posted by tempestuoso at 8:32 PM on June 11 [4 favorites]
She showed up to speak at a retirement party for a work colleague of mine at Michigan just last summer, and seemed in good health and spirits. Everyone was very surprised and also very happy to see her. At the time, I knew little of her accomplishments, but soon discovered I'd been sharing space with a legend. What an amazing person. I'm very sad to hear this news.
posted by tempestuoso at 8:32 PM on June 11 [4 favorites]
I don't know how to describe the importance of Lynn Conway's website to early trans me. It was already succumbing to link rot a bit in the early 2000s but I can still picture that "bios of trans people" page. Having transmasculine representation on that site was huge.
posted by hoyland at 9:09 PM on June 11 [8 favorites]
posted by hoyland at 9:09 PM on June 11 [8 favorites]
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posted by mixedmetaphors at 10:03 PM on June 11
posted by mixedmetaphors at 10:03 PM on June 11
(Thanks, all, for all the additional links and stories. I wanted to get this post up because i didn't want her death to go unmarked, and so i didn't do as much work on it as i might have liked.)
posted by adrienneleigh at 10:08 PM on June 11 [2 favorites]
posted by adrienneleigh at 10:08 PM on June 11 [2 favorites]
Thanks, adrienneleigh, for doing more work than I could have asked for. I hadn't seen this news anywhere else and I don't know where I might have; certainly not in as timely a matter. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to reflect on how much gratitude I owe Lynn Conway, and to be able to do so alongside others she impacted. I've learned a lot over the years, I've grown by leaps and bounds, and because of your timely post I've had a moment to appreciate how every jump I've ever made or might hope to make will be from the shoulders of a giant.
I did not know the extent of the adversity she overcame to bring us all her ideas. I did not know quite how fundamental some of those idea are, that many were not just "arcane complex rules that later people abstracted" so much as "the concept of abstracting arcanum and how to do so," I've been pretty blown away learning some of the specifics of VLSI, and how many of the core concepts of EDA came from her.
But I think the thing that's just kicking me in the feels is looking through the UMich site for THE M.I.T. 1978 VLSI SYSTEM DESIGN COURSE, and most particularly the resources aimed at other educators teaching Mead-Conway VLSI Design courses, specifically her Guidebook for the Instructor of VLSI System Design. This is the kicker for me:
The "Instructors' Guidebook" was based on the handouts, lecture notes and results from Lynn Conway's M.I.T.'78 VLSI design course, which had been tremendously successful at M.I.T. Being a bit shy at the time, Lynn had "overprepared" very detailed lecture notes for every lecture in the pioneering M.I.T. course. This turned out to be a great blessing in hindsight. As a result of the great success of the M.I.T. course, Lynn was bombarded with requests for information - and realized that her lecture notes could be highly exploited to help others offer similar courses. The key was exploiting her detailed lecture notes, notes that showed exactly what to cover to provide the essential knowledge needed to undertake VLSI design (but no more than that, thus avoiding a lot of existing material over-complicated things and prevented good top-down design by compartmenting chip design into many subspecialties).
She had been nervous and had over-prepared notes. She'd gone above and beyond, but then took that work and went above and beyond again, turning it into critical resources for other instructors teaching courses with the Mead-Conway textbook:
The widespread use in the universities of the "instructors' guidebook" and the "implementation guidebook", along with the Mead-Conway text, greatly boosted the launching of such courses and rapidly spread a common technical culture of VLSI design and implementation based on the Mead-Conway methods. The sudden spread of this technical culture among a new generation of university students (beginning in the fall of '79) then triggered a revolutionary breakout of entrepreneurial activity in the '80's, as many young entrepreneurs seized opportunities for making major innovations in chip design, CAD tools and related foundry services.
Beyond the core idea and concepts of VLSI, she built the tools for others to pass on her ideas. She engineered a revolution, using materials that would never had existed but for the fact that she was shy, and nervous, so she prepared more for every lecture than anyone expected her to – to the direct benefit of humanity.
I knew she was brilliant. I had no idea she was quite so humble and generous. I wish I could have met her. She strikes me as kind.
posted by 1024 at 11:42 PM on June 11 [16 favorites]
I did not know the extent of the adversity she overcame to bring us all her ideas. I did not know quite how fundamental some of those idea are, that many were not just "arcane complex rules that later people abstracted" so much as "the concept of abstracting arcanum and how to do so," I've been pretty blown away learning some of the specifics of VLSI, and how many of the core concepts of EDA came from her.
But I think the thing that's just kicking me in the feels is looking through the UMich site for THE M.I.T. 1978 VLSI SYSTEM DESIGN COURSE, and most particularly the resources aimed at other educators teaching Mead-Conway VLSI Design courses, specifically her Guidebook for the Instructor of VLSI System Design. This is the kicker for me:
The "Instructors' Guidebook" was based on the handouts, lecture notes and results from Lynn Conway's M.I.T.'78 VLSI design course, which had been tremendously successful at M.I.T. Being a bit shy at the time, Lynn had "overprepared" very detailed lecture notes for every lecture in the pioneering M.I.T. course. This turned out to be a great blessing in hindsight. As a result of the great success of the M.I.T. course, Lynn was bombarded with requests for information - and realized that her lecture notes could be highly exploited to help others offer similar courses. The key was exploiting her detailed lecture notes, notes that showed exactly what to cover to provide the essential knowledge needed to undertake VLSI design (but no more than that, thus avoiding a lot of existing material over-complicated things and prevented good top-down design by compartmenting chip design into many subspecialties).
She had been nervous and had over-prepared notes. She'd gone above and beyond, but then took that work and went above and beyond again, turning it into critical resources for other instructors teaching courses with the Mead-Conway textbook:
The widespread use in the universities of the "instructors' guidebook" and the "implementation guidebook", along with the Mead-Conway text, greatly boosted the launching of such courses and rapidly spread a common technical culture of VLSI design and implementation based on the Mead-Conway methods. The sudden spread of this technical culture among a new generation of university students (beginning in the fall of '79) then triggered a revolutionary breakout of entrepreneurial activity in the '80's, as many young entrepreneurs seized opportunities for making major innovations in chip design, CAD tools and related foundry services.
Beyond the core idea and concepts of VLSI, she built the tools for others to pass on her ideas. She engineered a revolution, using materials that would never had existed but for the fact that she was shy, and nervous, so she prepared more for every lecture than anyone expected her to – to the direct benefit of humanity.
I knew she was brilliant. I had no idea she was quite so humble and generous. I wish I could have met her. She strikes me as kind.
posted by 1024 at 11:42 PM on June 11 [16 favorites]
It took way too long to realize I was initally confusing Lynn Conway with John "Game of Life" Conway. What is it about Conways and influential computer science work?
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posted by Mr. Bad Example at 4:05 AM on June 12 [2 favorites]
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posted by Mr. Bad Example at 4:05 AM on June 12 [2 favorites]
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posted by schyler523 at 6:57 AM on June 12
posted by schyler523 at 6:57 AM on June 12
Being a bit shy at the time, Lynn had "overprepared" very detailed lecture notes
This is queer praxis.
posted by Nelson at 7:10 AM on June 12 [2 favorites]
This is queer praxis.
posted by Nelson at 7:10 AM on June 12 [2 favorites]
This is queer praxis.
I was composing a memail to adrienneleigh, but your comment here Nelson made me think that perhaps others could benefit from what I wanted to say, so I’m gonna post it publicly (with a few modifications).
i didn't want her death to go unmarked, and so i didn't do as much work on it as i might have liked
While it was this comment which immediately spurred me to post, what I don’t think I conveyed was that the examples I gave were very much a coded message to you directly, adrienneleigh.
The news of Lynn Conway’s death and learning more about her trials and tribulations has hit me hard. I’ve been trying to find ways I can honor her life. I’m not happy to learn that the comic I bought has AI generated art, but I still plan to purchase more copies to display prominently in the common areas of every workplace I can from now on, in the slim hope that the kind of person who could benefit from reading it might stumble upon a copy and experience recognition, perhaps feel kinship or maybe even know that they are seen and loved.
One of my most important professional responsibilities is hiring. There are few things that do more to impact an organization’s culture, the experience of everyone inside it, and its ability to meet goals – it’s high stakes. My job is to pick out diamonds; not from the rough, but from a pile of other diamonds.
In all my years, it has been almost universally true that the people I most want on my team, the people who are the most capable and doing more than anyone else, they are always wracked with guilt or maybe shame that they aren’t doing enough. The people I know with true expertise know their limitations keenly, qualify everything they say, and rarely, if ever, enjoy the easy confidence of ignorance or mediocrity. Doctors hope to learn enough to have a chance of potential treatments, chiropractors confidently judo-chop away your IBS. Likewise, the people who are working the hardest, who contribute the absolute most out of all their peers, for them, whatever they do is never enough. It is a fundamentally different stance from the masses who barely lift a finger and then pat themselves on the back for a job well done. While this particular form of self-doubt is not a guarantee of greatness, but it is a pretty damn strong tell.
When I read your message, I made some assumptions about your internal world. I imagined you reading through this thread, and seeing how important Lynn Conway was to so many people, and feeling worse and worse and worse that you hadn’t done enough to honor such an amazing woman. That is heartbreakingly sweet, but it is also ass-backwards. None of this discussion would have been happening without you. Every single person in this thread is benefitting from what you posted. And while the thread progressed and you saw the the growing gap between what you did and what could have done, there are others who would have seen the comments and the outpouring here and felt better and better and better about what they did do.
So in the hopes of honoring Lynn Conway’s life as best I can, I want you to know, adrienneleigh, that I see a bit of what I admire about her in you. You took the actions. You did the thing. No one else did. After all the appreciation and outpouring here, when you wrote that you felt you hadn’t done enough work as you might have liked, I immediately thought of Conway before she was teaching, as she was preparing a ground-breaking course that would quite literally change the world as we know it, and feeling like it couldn’t possibly be enough, she would need to do 10x what her peers did to be even close to enough, so she poured herself into creating extensive support material for every one of her lectures. Her work there turned into the operational resources that took a cool idea and made it a revolution. I have a strong feeling that when Lynn Conway stepped into her first classroom, she may have been feeling less prepared and less qualified than the other professors, even with the recognition she’d gotten for her ideas, even with all the extra work and preparation she’d done for that moment, efforts I expect few of her peers enacted. But it is pretty damn clear that she was the smartest, most capable person in that building the whole time, from the moment she walked in. She literally changed the world. I don’t know the names of anyone she worked with in that building except for the few times they might pop up in a picture with her and I read the text beneath it, after which I promptly forget them.
To your point, Nelson, I have noticed this tendency to be doubly true from queer friends of all stripes, triply so for trans people in my life. Whenever I find someone like this (queer or otherwise), a big part of my duty from then on is to get them to see how spectacular they are. It takes time and tons of reinforcement, but now and again I hope I’ve been able to help some of them see themselves as I see them.
We don’t know each other, adrienneleigh. All I know of you is a thin slice of who you might be through what you’ve shown on this site. I’m sure you don’t need some stranger on the internet telling you you’re enough, but I do want to say that in my professional experience spending years scouring the globe for the best talent that exits, well, I can’t say anything for certain, but I suspect you too are spectacular.
So thank you, adrienneleigh.
Thank you, Lynn Conway
And thank you, anyone who might be reading this and feeling even a hit of recognition. There are people out there who don’t see you. But there are also people who do. You are seen. You are valued. You are loved. And you’re doing more than anyone else around you.
I’ll close here with one of my favorite poems I read as a child. It’s by Shel Silverstein, and it’s been a well of strength I return to throughout the years.
Woulda-Coulda-Shoulda
All the Woulda-Coulda-Shouldas
Layin' in the sun,
Talkin' 'bout the things
They woulda coulda shoulda done...
But those Woulda-Coulda-Shouldas
All ran away and hid
From one little Did.
posted by 1024 at 11:15 AM on June 12 [15 favorites]
I was composing a memail to adrienneleigh, but your comment here Nelson made me think that perhaps others could benefit from what I wanted to say, so I’m gonna post it publicly (with a few modifications).
i didn't want her death to go unmarked, and so i didn't do as much work on it as i might have liked
While it was this comment which immediately spurred me to post, what I don’t think I conveyed was that the examples I gave were very much a coded message to you directly, adrienneleigh.
The news of Lynn Conway’s death and learning more about her trials and tribulations has hit me hard. I’ve been trying to find ways I can honor her life. I’m not happy to learn that the comic I bought has AI generated art, but I still plan to purchase more copies to display prominently in the common areas of every workplace I can from now on, in the slim hope that the kind of person who could benefit from reading it might stumble upon a copy and experience recognition, perhaps feel kinship or maybe even know that they are seen and loved.
One of my most important professional responsibilities is hiring. There are few things that do more to impact an organization’s culture, the experience of everyone inside it, and its ability to meet goals – it’s high stakes. My job is to pick out diamonds; not from the rough, but from a pile of other diamonds.
In all my years, it has been almost universally true that the people I most want on my team, the people who are the most capable and doing more than anyone else, they are always wracked with guilt or maybe shame that they aren’t doing enough. The people I know with true expertise know their limitations keenly, qualify everything they say, and rarely, if ever, enjoy the easy confidence of ignorance or mediocrity. Doctors hope to learn enough to have a chance of potential treatments, chiropractors confidently judo-chop away your IBS. Likewise, the people who are working the hardest, who contribute the absolute most out of all their peers, for them, whatever they do is never enough. It is a fundamentally different stance from the masses who barely lift a finger and then pat themselves on the back for a job well done. While this particular form of self-doubt is not a guarantee of greatness, but it is a pretty damn strong tell.
When I read your message, I made some assumptions about your internal world. I imagined you reading through this thread, and seeing how important Lynn Conway was to so many people, and feeling worse and worse and worse that you hadn’t done enough to honor such an amazing woman. That is heartbreakingly sweet, but it is also ass-backwards. None of this discussion would have been happening without you. Every single person in this thread is benefitting from what you posted. And while the thread progressed and you saw the the growing gap between what you did and what could have done, there are others who would have seen the comments and the outpouring here and felt better and better and better about what they did do.
So in the hopes of honoring Lynn Conway’s life as best I can, I want you to know, adrienneleigh, that I see a bit of what I admire about her in you. You took the actions. You did the thing. No one else did. After all the appreciation and outpouring here, when you wrote that you felt you hadn’t done enough work as you might have liked, I immediately thought of Conway before she was teaching, as she was preparing a ground-breaking course that would quite literally change the world as we know it, and feeling like it couldn’t possibly be enough, she would need to do 10x what her peers did to be even close to enough, so she poured herself into creating extensive support material for every one of her lectures. Her work there turned into the operational resources that took a cool idea and made it a revolution. I have a strong feeling that when Lynn Conway stepped into her first classroom, she may have been feeling less prepared and less qualified than the other professors, even with the recognition she’d gotten for her ideas, even with all the extra work and preparation she’d done for that moment, efforts I expect few of her peers enacted. But it is pretty damn clear that she was the smartest, most capable person in that building the whole time, from the moment she walked in. She literally changed the world. I don’t know the names of anyone she worked with in that building except for the few times they might pop up in a picture with her and I read the text beneath it, after which I promptly forget them.
To your point, Nelson, I have noticed this tendency to be doubly true from queer friends of all stripes, triply so for trans people in my life. Whenever I find someone like this (queer or otherwise), a big part of my duty from then on is to get them to see how spectacular they are. It takes time and tons of reinforcement, but now and again I hope I’ve been able to help some of them see themselves as I see them.
We don’t know each other, adrienneleigh. All I know of you is a thin slice of who you might be through what you’ve shown on this site. I’m sure you don’t need some stranger on the internet telling you you’re enough, but I do want to say that in my professional experience spending years scouring the globe for the best talent that exits, well, I can’t say anything for certain, but I suspect you too are spectacular.
So thank you, adrienneleigh.
Thank you, Lynn Conway
And thank you, anyone who might be reading this and feeling even a hit of recognition. There are people out there who don’t see you. But there are also people who do. You are seen. You are valued. You are loved. And you’re doing more than anyone else around you.
I’ll close here with one of my favorite poems I read as a child. It’s by Shel Silverstein, and it’s been a well of strength I return to throughout the years.
Woulda-Coulda-Shoulda
All the Woulda-Coulda-Shouldas
Layin' in the sun,
Talkin' 'bout the things
They woulda coulda shoulda done...
But those Woulda-Coulda-Shouldas
All ran away and hid
From one little Did.
posted by 1024 at 11:15 AM on June 12 [15 favorites]
What is it about Conways and influential computer science work?
Probably unknown to CS people, but math people have to deal with the fact there are two John Conways.
posted by hoyland at 12:37 PM on June 12 [2 favorites]
Probably unknown to CS people, but math people have to deal with the fact there are two John Conways.
posted by hoyland at 12:37 PM on June 12 [2 favorites]
i didn't want her death to go unmarked
For those of us of a certain age who are self taught chip designers (not everyone can go to a fancy US University) her books are what got us though, I've just retired, but they're not leaving my bookshelf
posted by mbo at 4:11 PM on June 12 [4 favorites]
For those of us of a certain age who are self taught chip designers (not everyone can go to a fancy US University) her books are what got us though, I've just retired, but they're not leaving my bookshelf
posted by mbo at 4:11 PM on June 12 [4 favorites]
.
posted by Faint of Butt at 7:19 PM on June 12
posted by Faint of Butt at 7:19 PM on June 12
I don't know how to describe the importance of Lynn Conway's website to early trans me. It was already succumbing to link rot a bit in the early 2000s but I can still picture that "bios of trans people" page.
Yes! I went through her list of successful trans men a gazillion times as a teenager, over and over. I still think of that website regularly and looking at it now I feel like I almost know it by heart.
posted by Bektashi at 2:18 PM on June 13 [1 favorite]
Yes! I went through her list of successful trans men a gazillion times as a teenager, over and over. I still think of that website regularly and looking at it now I feel like I almost know it by heart.
posted by Bektashi at 2:18 PM on June 13 [1 favorite]
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posted by Phssthpok at 11:35 AM on June 11