Since being laid off from Twitter, a lot of folks have suggested I write a book. It makes sense given my career and experiences, not just Twitter, but in applied responsible AI.
What they don’t know is I’ve been fiddling with a proposal for years and have backed off from four different agencies because of the deeply ingrained stereotypes that exist of what books are expected of someone like me 1/
First, what is “someone like me”? Hyper educated, liberal, woman, minority, child of immigrants, worked in tech, held a management position.
Let’s break down the feedback I hear. First, it’s “accessibility” - people love smart women as long as they don’t sound smart. People love minorities in power as long as we don’t sound too authoritative.
I get feedback that introducing new concepts and using words like “sociotechnical” is not accessible if I’m not writing an academic book (I’m not) 2/
I make it clear in my proposal that the book I’ll spend my time on is more akin to the impact of Kahneman or Gladwell or Dawkins or Harari (even if I don’t nec like all of them as humans). This is where the “hyper educated” part becomes a liability. I don’t have it in me to write a cute pop tech book.
I guarantee you if people don’t understand a word in their proposals they assume the problem isn’t the author.
3/
Next is “not enough of me.” I understand that I am old and boring and don’t have a constant need to share my lived experience as evidence.
I also notice a trend of trauma voyeurism where women and POC are expected to lay their worst experiences bare for public consumption and evaluation. No fucking thank you.
Of course, where I worked and what I did is interesting as an anecdote or demonstration of first hand expertise. But that’s not what they want is it?
4/
Rumman Chowdhury
Virginia Heffernan