I was 3 when my maternal grandfather died, 40 years ago today. My only memory of Frank H.J. Figge is of him making me laugh. Thanks to M.J. Tooey, my community colleague at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, I learned that his “happy chuckle” was a hallmark, along with his “true research brain.” My mother, […]
family
Resilience
The following essay appeared in The Washington Post magazine in a column that asks: “So much is contained in such small things. What holds meaning for you?” I wrote it as a tribute to my father’s resilience, which I hope to pass down to my children: I was 24 and still called Susy when my […]
Learning to type (and not to typecast)
“…even the most money-hungry, wannabe apolitical technologist needs to understand the role that social power plays in technology adoption.” – Alexis Madrigal writing about Why the First Laptop Had Such a Hard Time Catching On (Hint: Sexism). Secretaries (women) knew how to use a keyboard, not executives (men), so the adoption of laptops was very […]
“I was born too soon” – my grandmother, upon seeing the Web for the first time
The 19th International AIDS Conference, held this week in Washington, DC, included a session entitled, “The State of New Media and HIV,” hosted by AIDS.gov. My role on the panel was a familiar one – to present the Pew Internet Project’s latest research about mobile, social technologies and their impact on health and health care. […]
Recent Comments