The Internet of Women: 1996 But No One Would Listen

Ada cartoon
Ada Lovelace, Computing Pioneer

Women were always going to thrive on the Internet.  Connecting, enabling connections among others, sharing information and more importantly, support and wisdom — these are some of the reasons we belonged online from the beginning.  I knew it as soon as I saw my first browser, Mosaic (later Netscape) in the early 90s.

After early obscurity, women have become more and more visible and successful online, not only creating content but entire media operations. Numbered among them were the pioneering iVillage and BlogHer and agencies like Clever Girls, Blogalicious, Women and Work,  Sway Group, and The Motherhood.  There are plenty more.

When I saw this story today about the emerging Internet of Women, led by Cisco’s Monique J. Morrow, I’ll admit I got a little sad. I had tried to write a handbook (Internet Bootcamp) for women online in 1996.   A friend hooked me up with a celebrity agent I could have never enlisted on my own, and my proposal went to some serious publishers.  The response – and I wish I still had the precise language, was that the writing was “engaging” but women would never buy such a book.  I just pulled it to take a look and am posting it here.  See what you think.   If nothing else it will evoke memories of modems past.

Here is Morrow’s basic message: (We agree, right?)

From connected homes and cars to monitoring our health through smart devices, a woman’s view point in this new age of digitization has never been more critical.

I invite you to follow our publication, the Internet of Women and be part of this movement.

Published by

Cynthia Samuels

Cynthia Samuels is a long-time blogger, writer, producer and Managing Editor. She has an extensive background online, on television and in print, with particular experience developing content for women, parents and families. For the past nine years, that experience has been largely with bloggers, twitter and other social media, most recently at Care2's Causes Channels, which serve 20 million members (13 million when she joined) and cover 16 subject areas. In her three years at Care2 monthly page views grew tenfold, from 450,000 to 4 million. She has been part a member of BlogHer since 2006 years and has spoken at several BlogHer conferences. Among her many other speaking appearances is Politics Online, Fem 2.0 Conference and several other Internet gatherings. She’s also run blogger outreach for clients ranging from EchoDitto to To the Contrary. Earlier, she spent nearly four years with iVillage, the leading Internet site for women; her assignments included the design and supervision of the hugely popular Education Central, a sub-site of Parent Soup that was a soup-to-nuts parent toolkit on K-12 education, designed to support parents as advocates and supporters of their school-age kids. She also served as the iVillage partner for America Links Up, a major corporate Internet safety initiative for parents, ran Click! – the computer channel - and had a long stint as iVillage's Washington editor. In addition, she has developed parent content for Jim Henson Interactive and served as Children’s Book Editor for both Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.com. Before moving online, she had a long and distinguished career as a broadcast journalist, as senior national editor of National Public Radio, political and planning producer of NBC's Today Show (whose audience is 75% women) where she worked for nine years (and was also the primary producer on issues relating to child care, education, learning disabilities and child development), and as the first executive producer of Channel One, a daily news broadcast seen in 12,000 U.S. high schools. She has published a children’s book: It’s A Free Country, a Young Person’s Guide to Politics and Elections (Atheneum, 1988) and numerous children’s book reviews in the New York Times Book Review and Washington Post Book World. A creator of online content since 1994, Samuels is a partner at The Cobblestone Team, LLC, is married to a doctor and recent law school graduate and has two grown sons who make video games, two amazing daughters-in-law and three adorable grandsons.