Gaslight & Steam

Today is Ada Lovelace Day, an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology. Ada Lovelace was notable for the legacy she left and the inspiration she provided. New generations of women have, in turn, inspired others to enter fields of science and technology, each having an effect that increases over time. Of these, computer scientist Anita Borg stands out as an amazing person who worked tirelessly to provide inspiration and opportunities for other women in computers and technology.

Among her many accomplishments, Dr. Borg founded the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, an annual conference that embodies the ideals of Ada Lovelace Day, as well as those of its founder. Be sure to check out the work they do, not to mention the outstanding women recognized by the Anita Borg Institute, the organization that bears her name because of the work she did.

As a current computer science major, I’m glad to see the ACM in a joint effort to help organize Computer Science Education Week (CSEdWeek), which started December 7th. The week was chosen specifically in honor of Rear Admiral Dr. Grace Murray Hopper, also known as “Amazing Grace”, or “a little old lady who talks to computers,” who was born on December 9, 1906. She was a computer science pioneer and her work, spanning computer languages, compiler verification, software development concepts, and much more, has served to inspire a generation of computer scientists.

With the recent heatwave in Seattle, we discovered that one of the joys of working in a LEED-certified building is that there are controls on how long the air-conditioning can be run (or rather, I suppose, the usage of energy to run the building). That means it wouldn’t kick on until after the sun had already come up, making for some warm mornings in any areas with east-facing windows. For me, I always thought LEED Certification was one of those one-time things, not an ongoing set of practices. Obviously, that would defeat the whole point of sustainability, though the biggest issue seems to be planning intelligently for the future for the life of the building along with developing practices to that purpose. It’s not just as simple as following a checklist.

Beyond LEED-certified buildings, my company has taken other steps to be more environmentally-friendly. It’s not an easy thing to accomplish and an Environmental Design and Construction magazine report pointed out that not only is it hard to do, it’s also hard to measure:

“The hope is that people are not intentionally misrepresenting themselves; they just don’t understand how challenging it is to be “green.” The important lesson we wanted people to take away from our presentation was that you have to ask questions — lots of questions.”

“Determining whether Group Health was doing a good job wasn’t as easy to decide as those involved thought it would be. The questions to be reviewed turned out to be more difficult than anticipated; in many cases, figuring out the answers wasn’t simple.”

Other companies struggle to implement green policies too. Over at Timberland, they’ve introduced a number of measures to make their business more environmentally friendly including only buying leather that doesn’t deplete the Amazon biome and painting their roof white. But it’s not as easy as it might seem, particularly when it comes to banning bottled water.

In the Bootmaker’s blog (formerly, the Earthkeeper’s Blog), Jeff Swartz, the President & CEO of Timberland, noted, “It’s really exhilarating to want to run a more sustainable business… but to actually do it is really freaking hard.”