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Author Claire L. Evans Loves the Internet (And, Libraries, Too!)
About Blog Post
Feb 16, 2022
by SCLSNJ
Author and musician Claire L. Evans, in her story “Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet” wrote, “An irony: even as computer memory multiplies, our ability to hold on to personal memories remains a matter of will, bounded by the skull and expanded only by our capacity to tell stories.”
Evans, in her newest story, has strived to expand all of our “personal memories” through her capacity to tell an important, but previously untold tale.
“My interest in writing these stories was not so much about parading specific women around as splendid exceptions - the way Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper have already been talked about for some time - but as avatars through which we can try to understand the lived experience of networked computing as a technology,” said Evans.
Evans continued, “I don’t think the alternative to ‘great man’ history is ‘great woman’ history; for me, it’s something more complex, more nuanced. It’s the process of getting a more complete sense of what it was like [in those labs and companies] at formative periods of transition and development. It’s about seeing more, and one way of doing that is simply by trying to see those moments through the eyes of a different group of people. All that being said - women working on the very first computers during the Second World War invented computer programming!”
Evans felt invested in researching and writing this story because of a personal connection she had to the field of computer science.
“I grew up around computers; my father worked for Intel,” said Evans. “Computers, and later the internet, were a big part of my development as a person, and also as a writer. Writing the book was a way of coming to terms with the fact that the internet had changed enormously since I was a kid, and felt more hostile to women than ever before. In trying to understand its history, I read many books, and they all told more or less the same story about men in their garages starting technology companies. I felt that there must be more to it. Fortunately for me, there was.”
As a newer author, Evans had advice to share with fledgling authors. Exciting to note, Evans will share even more writing advice as well as a deeper dive into her new book at a virtual presentation for the Somerset County Library System of New Jersey (SCLSNJ) on March 14 at 7 p.m.
“Most writers I know struggle with motivation, and unfortunately, there’s no easy solution for that one,” said Evans. “The only way to get your writing done is to do your writing. I find it helps to read really great writing before you sit down to write yourself. It opens your mind to the possibilities of language, and the joy of it. Beyond that, you don’t always have to ‘write what you know,’ but you do have to write about what you want to know. Writing is a great way of learning about a subject, if you’re passionate about that subject. Motivate yourself by learning about something you love, and the writing will come more easily.”
But, Evans’ most important writing resource is, of course, the Library and the dedicated staff working in the buildings daily.
“Books are a way for people to reach one another across cultures and generations, and libraries make that profound human experience accessible to all,” said Evans. “I couldn’t have written ‘Broad Band’ without the resources provided by my local public library, or the librarians working there.”
If you loved “Broad Band,” here are more books to explore:
- "Ada's Algorithm: How Lord Byron's Daughter Ada Lovelace Launched the Digital Age" by James Essinger
- "Alpha Girls: The Women Upstarts Who Took on Silicon Valley's Male Culture and Made the Deals of a Lifetime" by Julian Guthrie
- "Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys' Club of Silicon Valley" by Emily Chang
- "Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race" by Margot Lee Shetterly
- "Rise of the Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled Us, from Missiles to the Moon to Mars" by Nathalia Holt