Are you Technical?
Two years ago, The New York Times published an article about the key figures in AI. It mentioned powerful men like Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, and even Bill Gates. Notably, there were no women. By excluding scholars like Fei-Fei Li, Margaret Mitchell, or Timnit Gebru, the Times implied that they (especially Black women) could not contribute notably to the technical world of AI.
The newspaper of record erased their contributions.
When I was younger, I hoped to avoid this kind of erasure by majoring in Electrical and Computer Engineering. Armed with the most technical major I could earn, I assumed I was done proving my technical competency. How naive I was.
My entire career has been spent answering and re-answering, “Are you technical?” I've never quite known how to answer this question beyond a hesitant yes. Often I'm not even sure what the question means.
Sometimes, it's a crude way of asking "how do you communicate with engineers?" Other times, it's asking whether you have familiarity with a specific technology. Or more insidiously, it's a more professional way of asking “Can Black women be credible technologists?” Most of the time, the person asking hasn’t thought deeply enough about the question for it to be meaningful.
After spending two decades trying to prove my technical prowess, I'm exhausted. I've learned how to code, built data science models, and managed developer tooling products. And yet, I don't feel technical enough. I wish to simply opt out of engaging with this question.
“The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing.” - Toni Morrison
"Are you technical?" is a distraction. It’s crazy-making. Instead of simply building technology, I’m forced to re-adjudicate something that has been proven time and again.
But this feeling is not unique to me or Black women or marginalized folks. The “technical enough” bar affects us all. If even a white male engineering director at a developer tools company worries about being “technical enough,” what does that standard even mean?
It is gatekeeping. This unattainable "technical" bar helps maintain a homogenous technology industry. And most damaging, it limits our conversations about technological futures. If you need to be technical to levy critiques against data collection or uses of AI, then most people can't be credibly critical of technology.
But technology is everywhere. To be living in the world today means everyone is engaging with technology. We all have standing to speak about it. Expertise that emerges from engaging critically with the technology is technical.
Let's redefine "technical" as someone who engages critically with technology.
Acknowledgement
This argument is based on the essay, "Why be a Photographer in a world where Everyone has Smartphones?" by virgil.alonso. The essay argues that to be a photographer simply means caring about art of photography rather than being about some technique or tool.
