'Men Invented the Internet,' New York Times flatly declares
Categories: Tech Thumbnail image for DigitalTremorsHeader.jpg
It was the thud heard 'round the world: The opening sentence of
a story about sexism in Silicon Valley anchoring the front page
of the New York Times' Sunday business section. "Men Invented
the Internet," declared David Streitfeld, and it was impossible
not to do a double-take, even if you didn't know much about the
real history of the Internet's origins. It couldn't possibly be
true, could it? No, it couldn't.  What was largely missed amid
all the complaining, however, is that the rest of the article's
setup was similarly based on a bunch of clumsily rendered and
anachronistic stereotypes about the Valley. After his startling
declaration, Streitfeld told us that the Internet-inventing men
were: "Men with pocket protectors. Men who idolized Mr. Spock
and cried when Steve Jobs died. Nerds. Geeks. Give them their
due. Without men, we would never know what our friends were
doing five minute