• Broad Band

  • The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet
  • By: Claire L. Evans
  • Narrated by: Claire L. Evans
  • Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars (172 ratings)

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Broad Band  By  cover art

Broad Band

By: Claire L. Evans
Narrated by: Claire L. Evans
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Publisher's summary

The history of technology you probably know is one of men and machines, garages and riches, alpha nerds and brogrammers. But the little-known fact is that female visionaries have always been at the vanguard of technology and innovation - they've just been erased from the story. Until now.

Women are not ancillary to the history of technology; they turn up at the very beginning of every important wave. But they've often been hidden in plain sight, their inventions and contributions touching our lives in ways we don't even realize.

Vice reporter and YACHT lead singer Claire L. Evans finally gives these unsung female heroes their due with her insightful social history of the Broad Band, the women who made the Internet what it is today. Learn from Ada Lovelace, the tortured, imaginative daughter of Lord Byron, who wove numbers into the first program for a mechanical computer in 1842. Seek inspiration from Grace Hopper, the tenacious mathematician who democratized computing by leading the charge for machine-independent programming languages after World War II. Meet Elizabeth "Jake" Feinler, the one-woman Google who kept the earliest version of the Internet online, and Stacy Horn, who ran one of the first-ever social networks on a shoestring out of her New York City apartment in the 1980s. Evans shows us how these women built and colored the technologies we can't imagine life without.

Join the ranks of the pioneers who defied social convention and the longest odds to become database poets, information-wranglers, hypertext dreamers, and glass ceiling-shattering dot com-era entrepreneurs. This inspiring call to action is a revelation: women have embraced technology from the start. It shines a light on the bright minds whom history forgot, and shows us how they will continue to shape our world in ways we can no longer ignore.

Welcome to the Broad Band. You're next.

©2018 Claire L. Evans (P)2018 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"An insightful, intelligent observer...Evans proves a companionable guide for a tour through cyberspace...[and] provide[s] much needed perspective." (New York Times)

Broad Band is a celebration of the women whose minds gave birth to the motherboard and its brethren.... an engaging series of biographical essays on lesser known mathematicians, innovators and cyberpunks." (Wall Street Journal)

"A jaunty new history of women in computing." (Wired)

What listeners say about Broad Band

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Inspiring

This is an interesting book about the history of women coders, engineers, mathematicians, entrepreneurs as well as visionaries who helped create and shape the internet. Evans even discusses Ada Lovelace, the mathematician daughter of Lord Byron.

The book is well written and researched. Evans is a journalist so the writing style is that of a journalist. Evans reviews the stories of women scientists such as the famous Grace Hopper, who worked on Harvard Mark One, to more recent women such as Stanford University scientist Elizabeth Feinler. She also includes programmer Brenda Laurel, a gamer entrepreneur. I found the story about Radia Perlman most interesting. Perlman invented a protocol for moving information to the way computers are networked. I had no idea so many women have achieved so much with so little recognition. I highly recommend this book.

The book is nine hours. The author narrated the book.

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6 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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  • Jb
  • 03-12-18

Great book, though not as good as author thinks

If you could sum up Broad Band in three words, what would they be?

Good historical review

What was the most compelling aspect of this narrative?

Great to hear all the stories of how things started.

Any additional comments?

My only issue with this book is that it sounded like the author thought she was a great writer, and the wording and tonality detracted sometimes from the story/history. Given that, it was a fabulous book, and since I am 68 and a child of Silicon Valley history, it was wonderful to hear the women's side of the story. I heard an interview with her on NPR and bought the book, and it seemed like it was going to be another Hidden Figures movie, which I would have liked. But it is stories about the incredible women who did various parts of computer and Internet discovery over the last 50 years, which I did like! But, as I say, sometimes the author gets too involved in how well she thinks she can elocute.

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4 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

important chapter in history of computers

this is another book that brings home the point that you have to read many books by many authors and many kinds of authors to get any sense of the story of the history of computers and computer science. highly recommend it.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Buy the book instead

The writing and the stories were well done and fun. It was obvious that the author put in a lot of research hours, looking for impactful women to draw out of obscurity. I enjoyed learning more about the women who set the foundation for the internet we have today. This is certainly a must-read for anyone in tech and a fact-filled reflection of the minds and hard work it took to have the internet we have today.

However, the narration by the author herself is unfortunately lackluster--while she's a talented singer, that did not translate to being an effective narrator. The lack of training/experience distracted from the actual story itself. I recommend buying the book instead because of the narration but also because I had an urge to highlight or dog ear parts of it that I wanted to go back to.

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    2 out of 5 stars
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  • KB
  • 06-26-19

Way too much detail!

I had to read this for book club at work and hated every minute of it. While I commend Claire L. Evans for pulling many forgotten women out of the depths of obscurity, she goes into way too much unnecessary detail. A lot could have been cut out and it would have been just as effective.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

I lived this time period in IT but never knew..

I started in the IT field in 1984. I experienced the evolution of the technology from my corporate jobs as the tools I used evolved and improved. Much of the overall history was familiar to me but the exact roles women played in the evolution was hidden from my view. I very much enjoyed listening to this book on audible and learning about the contributions of specific women. Claire did a great job of combining the technology with the contributions in an easy to listen to and understand narrative.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

A MUST Read for Women of the Computer Age...

A MUST Read for Women of the Computer Age... and their daughters... and their mothers. If you liked "Hidden Figures", you'll love this!

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  • Overall
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Amazing Story, Amazing Story Telling

I absolutely love how well Claire L. Evans told the story of the women behind the technology industry. I've listened to this book twice because not only are the women's stories so compelling and inspiring but because Evans' prose is so poetic, insightful, and compelling. This is a must listen to and read book for anyone interested in technology, women in technology, and women’s contributions to technology and STEM.

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    5 out of 5 stars

Similar to Hidden Figures

The womens' contributions inspired me to see beyond cultural stereotypes.
I also enjoyed relating to the nuance in each story. None were "perfect" & that left room for something to be built upon by future contributors.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

A decent primer of women in computer history

If you were like me, you grew up in a very wonderful and exciting world of computers and innovation. It was the golden age when people like Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were building computers in their garages before Apple became a trillion-dollar brand. Even before this, we had computers that filled entire rooms, used vacuum tubes and punch cards for programming and they often broke down after only a few minutes of operation. These early computers were used by the government mostly to compute weapons trajectories during the war. Often, we remember or have read in history books of the men who were paramount in making computers what they are today. But, have ever wondered what role, if any, women played in this information revolution? If so, “Broad Band” which is subtitled “The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet” may be just the book you are looking for. The book covers a swath of computing history from the time of Babbage to the mid-90s when the Internet really began to take off. The book is both written and narrated by Claire L. Evans and she packs a bunch of information into just over nine hours of audio. Although it is not a deep historic dive, the book does a good job of giving the listener a primer where they can do additional research if they desire.

Many of the people the author covers in this book may sound like familiar names to those growing up during this period, but we often cannot connect their roles or efforts to a given technology or innovation. These spots of prominence were often reserved in historic records for their male counterparts. In this book, the author does a good job of showing the many women who impacted the industry. People like Ada Lovelace, Grace Hooper, Elizabeth Feinler and Stacy Horn to name a few. The author does a fine job of showing how the efforts of these women changed history and made the Internet what it is today. What would I have liked to see included in this book? First off, I would have like to have had a deeper dive into the efforts of the female staff working on the bombe computer system used to crack the German Enigma cypher. The author did a better job covering the Manhattan project and the role of women, but I would have enjoyed more depth and detail as this was a very pivotal time in history. A little less on the female specific chat groups and forms, yet I did like her focus on the role of early day BBSs (Bulletin Board Systems) which were pre-Internet communication systems. I liked the detailed section around networking standards (RFCs) and the role women had in creating and maintaining WHOIS, Hypertext, and the ability to link to other files or locations; which we all take for granted today. Each of these were revolutionary and innovative and women had a key role in their development.

I will say that at times, the book’s underlying agenda is pealed back and revealed. It is not always in your face, but this is very clearly seen in the last chapter where the author speaks of cyber feminist. I know the book is about the role of women in the industry, but at times I felt that the author had to dig deep to find a gem she could use in this book. I grew up during this golden age and I can admit that men were the ones we often read about in books and magazines when females often had a superior role in some way. I was looking for something that would educate me without feeling that I needed to be converted to a given worldview. Teach and educate me but let the facts of history speck for themselves. In full disclosure, I may see things quite differently if I were a female writing this review.

The book’s narration was performed by the author herself. In most cases, I do not think an author is a good fit to read their own work; and I can say this is the case with this book as well. I would have liked to have had a more experienced author narrate the book. At times I felt emphasis was placed at points it was not necessary or clearly pressed the author’s agenda where she felt a point needed to be made. This is not to say that the book’s narration was bad; it was not. Overall it was professionally produced, and the audio quality was good. It was more that the author seemed too close to her material to read it in a way that felt natural.

For parents and younger readers, note that the book does contain some subject matter that may not be appropriate for younger readers. There are places where vulgar language is used; mostly when quoting others. There are also a few topics which discuss or are associated with sex or sexuality. If any of this is offensive to you, I would recommend you skip this one.

In summary, the audiobook did a decent job of showing where, how, and why women were instrumental to building and maintaining computers and the Internet. I would have liked to have had more history and even how many of these females functioned alongside their male counterparts to achieve success. It is a good primer and for someone who wants to study the subject in more depth, the author provides some good steeping stones to start form. To me, it did not feel it was as much a historic piece, but a work that was written towards a specific agenda. Would I read it again? Was it worth my time? Yes, and yes. It was a well thought out work and apart for a few areas covered, I enjoyed it very much.

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