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points by brudgers 1 day ago | 0 comments

Yes, and because typists and secretaries were predominately women, it was not as uncommon as one might imagine for male executives to eschew personal computers based on their perception of gender roles.

I like to call it “keyboard cooties.”

[–] senderista 1 day ago

There's a great anecdote about that in the book _Dealers of Lightning_, where the Xerox execs were indifferent to a demo of the Star personal computer but their wives were ecstatic about it.

[–] kube-system 1 day ago

These things have a self-reinforcing feedback loop -- consider also for example, men learning to use "power tools" but not a sewing machine.

[–] marcus_holmes 1 day ago

I don't know why you're being downvoted, this is absolutely true.

I had a boss early in my career (around 1990) who considered typing effeminate and was mildly horrified at what the world was coming to with all us guys who were cheerfully using a keyboard. He had a secretary who did all his typing. This was ~5 years before email became common, but I'm sure he would have had all his emails printed so he could read them properly.