One Million Plus (non-black) Apps

Here's a disturbing headline from an article that was published in Information Week, (Eric Zeman,  September 19, 2011)

Android + iOS = 1 Million Apps

The article was published sixth months ago, so the total is probably substantially higher today. The headline disturbs me because I "know" that only a very, very small fraction of this million plus total were the products of black hands. How do I "know" this? Mostly by the ominous lack of "black buzz" -- I don't know anyone who knows anyone who knows a black anyone who's developed five of six mobile applications, an arbitrary cutoff, but good enough to separate "dabblers" from "developers" ... Nor have I read much in the press about app developers who were black ... Nor do I find any links when I google "black developer mobile apps" ...  nor did Soledad O'Brien find any black developers in Silicon Valley. (See "Black in America, the New Promised Land: Silicon Valley", CNN, October 2011)

Freedom to Be Underrepresented
But I didn't get to my three score and ten years without learning two things with absolute certainty a long time ago, but especially in the decades since the Civil Rights Revolution made overt discrimination illegal:

• First, there is no reason to believe that the proportion of blacks who have inborn aptitude to excel in any significant human activity is lower than the proportion of whites (or Asian Americans) who currently excel in that activity.
  
  
• Second, there is no such thing as a significant human activity that involves "no blacks."
  The correct statement is always, "Blacks are substantially underrepresented in this activity."
  
  This insight lets me "know" that there are a lot of black developers out there somewhere, scattered about, just not enough to create much of a buzz; but more unfortunately, not sufficiently connected to each other to form a community that perpetuates itself, as does the overwhelmingly white developer community in Silicon Valley.

Beyond Under-representation
The traditional challenge to educators of black students was to provide them with appropriate learning opportunities that would enable them to develop their inborn talents to their full potential. But another challenge must also be given prominence in today's hyper-connected society; that challenge is to help generate viable communities of creative practitioners whose members can draw upon each other's skill sets to accomplish achievements that are orders of magnitude greater than what they could accomplish on their own. The Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s was such a creative community, as was Motown in the '60s and '70s, as is the New York Hip Hop scene today. But Black America has yet to produce a creative community focused on high technology.

A High-Tech Incubator for Black Students
Howard University, my long-time employer, offers an array of courses in computer science and information technology, as do many other HBCUs, wherein our students can learn the concepts and procedures that are the foundations of whatever computer skill sets are currently in hottest demand, e.g., developing applications for smart phones, tablets, and other mobile platforms. What it didn't have was a broader community of talented business majors, law school students, communications majors, computer science and information technology majors, and other academic disciplines that could transcend the boundaries of their separate courses and departments, a community whose members could pool their diverse skills and perspectives in order to develop high tech goods and services that they could barely imagine if they working separately.

The lucrative market for mobile apps offers an unprecedented opportunity for all institutions having substantial black enrollments to create such interdisciplinary student communities because the tools required to produce mobile apps are so affordable, i.e., they range in price from cheap to free.

A few weeks ago, Howard University recruited eight students from law, business administration, and computer science to become the founding members of a high tech group (ultimately a community when enough additional students join) called "Howard-Apps-Dev" -- which is short for "The Howard University Applications Development Group." The University has also provided this group with a supportive "incubator" -- a few Macs and PCs reserved for the group's use in two of its computer labs, plus technical support from eight of the University's most astute computer systems experts and managers on its faculty and staff who have joined the group in an advisory capacity.

As stated on the Home Page of its blog (http://howard-apps-dev.blogspot.com),

"This incubator is located at Howard University but will operate as openly as possible in order to encourage black Americans everywhere to become developers of applications for mobile devices and other non-PC/non-Mac workstations ... educational apps, business apps, games, etc"

Howard-Apps-Dev will post all of its non-proprietary files on its public blog site in order to encourage black students everywhere to consider becoming developers of applications for mobile devices, active participants in what is rapidly becoming the largest and potentially most profitable software market in the history of information technology. When Ms. O’Brien’s documentary asked why there were so few black high tech entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, the best answer seemed to be prejudice. But if the Howard-Apps-Dev group is successful, and if its success inspires the launching of similar groups elsewhere, then five years from now if Ms. O'Brien asked her question again, the best answer might be “Because black high tech entrepreneurs are hanging out at Howard University ... and those that aren't at Howard are at some other HBCU ... or at some other minority serving institution ... or at some other college or university with a substantial black student enrollment ... because black Americans are closing the Digital Divide ... :-)

___________________
Related notes:

• Washington, Du Bois, and Silicon Valley
• Moses, Joshua, and Instagram
• Closing the Digital Divide -- Another Opportunity
• Closing the Digital Divide at HBCUs
• Why HBCUs Are Still Needed? -- Part III

Response to a Very Important Comment ... with a P.S.

Earlier this evening (3/22/12), Mr. Kalimah Priforce submitted the following comment to an earlier post on this blog, Fight or Flight (revised)

"Racism to Blame, Not Affinity Groups, for Lack of Minorities in Tech - http://bit.ly/GNZcaH"

When I tried to post a lengthy response to his comment, Murphy's Law suddenly suddenly went into effect.  No matter how I reformatted my comment, the IntenseDebate widget that I am using would not post the full comment. I will figure out what went wrong tomorrow, but right now I will post my response below because I consider Mr. Priforce's comment to be sufficiently important to warrant an immediate reply.

My response:

Dear Mr. Priforce,

I won't pretend to be "objective" about my daughter's book, so my response may contain more bias than I'm aware of. However, she does have data, as does anyone who  followed Silicon Valley's development for the last forty years, that the pipelines from the Valley back to Berkeley and Stanford have always been major conduits for white entrepreneurs, and more recently for Asian entrepreneurs. So she focused on those pipelines. Her next book, if she wrote one, might look at the sources of black talent from outside the Valley.

But aside from this difference of opinion, I was excited to read the article you cited because it reinforced my own hope that black wannabe high tech entrepreneurs would recognize the wisdom of the Indian professor who advised the entrepreneurs in Soledad O'Brien's documentary that prejudice was so strong in the Valley that they might well consider using white sales reps from Berkeley or Stanford. The article you referenced also underscored the existence of strong prejudice. He also told them that the only help they would get would be from themselves -- which is a point that you also agree with. And he noted the dangerous sense of "entitlement" to special treatment that is shared by too many black Americans, but clearly not by the members of your group of entrepreneurs.

I am excited to learn about your group's existence and would like to link it to a group of applications developers that I am helping to organize here at Howard University. We will be holding our first meeting tomorrow afternoon (Friday 23 March). I will call your article and the references that it contains to the attention of our group that includes students, faculty, staff, and senior administrators. Indeed, I hope we can call upon you for recommendations as to how we can get off to a fast, but productive start.

We would like to function as openly as possible so as to encourage other HBCUs and minority serving institutions to launch similar groups. Please check out new our blog at (3/24/12):

http://howard-apps-dev.blogspot.com/

And you might also check out two recent notes that I've posted on this blog (HBCU-Levers) that address the opportunities to make progress in closing the Digital Divide by encouraging more of our best and brightest to do what you and your colleagues are already doing.

Thank you again for posting your important comment. And I hope you will not offended by my fatherly pride in my daughter's work. No piece of scholarship can cover everything. That's why it usually takes a community of scholars with common interest in a major topic to cover all of the most important aspects of such a topic over a period of time.

Although Stanford and Berkeley can claim to be "innocent" with regards to the prejudice in the Valley, they and all other universities must accept responsibility for not helping their black and other minority students become better prepared to cope with prejudice, rather than back away under the shadows of "stereotype threat."  Beyond this, they must also do a better job of providing their black and minority students with the necessary technical skills to launch start-up operations and exposure to important technical and financial networks... And HBCUs are not exempt. That's why I'm helping to start our applications developers group here at Howard. To date, my beloved institution has not done much to help our student wannabe high tech entrepreneurs fulfill their dreams. But I'm going to do my best to help put an end to this neglect ... and my determination to do something has been heavily motivated by my daughter's findings ... :-)

Respectfully,
Roy L Beasley, PhD

Post Script (added on Friday 23 March 2012)
When I read Mr. Priforce's vehement assertion that racism, not self-segregation was keeping blacks out of Silicon Valley, I was puzzled. Having read every line in my daughter's book many, many, many times from her first drafts to the final published versions, I knew that her book never denied the existence of racism in the Valley. Her book focused on the students' reactions to their perceptions of racism. A few recognized that racism is still a fact of life in these United States of America, and refused to let racists limit their career aspirations. But others "opted out" -- changing their majors to fields that were "racialized" which is my daughter's term for fields that already have a substantial number of black practitioners. Indeed the title of my note on this blog was "Fight or Flight" -- which expressed my dismay that gifted and talented black students, certified members of our Talented Tenth, would not choose to hold their ground in the face of bigotry. Where would any of us be today if Charlayne Hunter Gault or Medgar Evers had "opted out" back in the 1960s?????

A few moments ago, I read one of the articles that Mr. Priforce cited in the article linked to his comment ... and I understood his misunderstanding. The article was a reporter's summary of an interview conducted by another reporter who quoted my daughter out of context. Having myself been misrepresented by reporters in major media from time to time when I was much younger and far more ambitious, I learned the hard way that one never talks to reporters without handing them a printed press release beforehand that summarized my opinions that I myself had prepared. I still bear the psychic scars from having my opinions grossly distorted by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Newsweek magazine before I learned the preemptive value of the printed press release. My daughter's views have been misrepresented a few times since her book was published ... and now I have every Daddy's most cherished compliment == > my adult daughter's admission that I was right!!! She understands how "wise" I was in urging her not to talk to reporters without receiving their solemn assurances that they had read her own one or two page summary of her findings ... :-)

Indeed, it is a cruel irony that Mr. Priforce should imply that my daughter was unaware of racism given the fact has she has just emerged triumphant from a harrowing confrontation with the most vicious kind of academic racism -- the stuff of the worst nightmares of the students in her book who opted out. I am proud to say that she stood her ground in the face of blatant and career threatening bigotry ... and she won. As my own Daddy taught me when I was a kid, winners never quit because quitters never win ... :-)

_______________
Related notes:

• Fight or Flight (revised)
• Closing the Digital Divide -- Another Opportunity

Closing the Digital Divide at HBCUs

Way back in the mid 1970s, I was an energetic, ambitious young professor at an HBCU. I had a capacity for envisioning sophisticated computer applications and a talent for cutting a lot of computer code real fast. One of the hottest buzzwords in the business press back then was the notion of a "paperless office" -- a super-efficient white collar workplace wherein all documents were digital. No typewriters. No copiers. No inter-office snail mail. No file cabinets. No paper.

So I decided to write an application on my university's mainframe that would be accessed by students via the dumb terminals located all over our campus, an application that would support a "paperless classroom." In today's terms, it was a combination of word processing and email. I would generate assignments from the dumb terminal in my office, post them on the mainframe, and notify my students via the email package. They would read the email, do the research required for the assignment, then compose their answers to the problem assignments on the dumb terminals and zap them back to me via the mainframe. The Chronicle of Higher Education wrote a story about my application in the late 1970s that included a "rock star" photo of yours truly and an assertion that this was the first such all digital classroom application in the country.

But what really added sizzle to my classes was my decision to organize my courses in a behavioral modification framework. At the beginning of each course, I informed my students that they should decide what grade they wanted to receive. As I recall, my system required that they earn at least 120 points to get an A, 100 points for a B, 80 points for a C, and 60 points for a D. Each assignment, test, and exam carried a point value. For example, our fall semester classes started in late August, so if a student wanted a B and earned 100 points by the Thanksgiving holiday, he or she didn't have to come to any more classes nor take the final exam. And being a "good guy" I gave my students extra assignments from time to time if they wanted to increase their point scores. But I was also a "bad guy" who would hit them with a 5 point penalty for each piece of paper they handed to me for whatever reason after the first two weeks of class -- no exceptions. And I was also a "to-the-bone-fair-play-Libra" guy so I awarded each student a 5 point apology for the "insult" for each piece of paper I inflicted on him or her, no matter how small -- no exceptions.

To this day I still get a big chuckle whenever I flash back on how quickly I was able to bring each class under "stimulus control." Even though I warned my students on the first day of class about the power of my behavioral mod point system, and even though each class would invariably scoff at the idea that such a crazy system would make them work harder, it was almost scary how hard they were working on each assignment by the middle of the semester and how they would jump up and down like baby chickens peeping at me to give them bonus point opportunities. And of course my bonuses became smaller with each passing week, while the amount of work required to earn a bonus point got larger and larger and larger. What was even funnier is that they all knew exactly what I was doing ... but boy did they want those bonus points!!! ... :-)

By the third time I offered my paperless course, I knew that my students were also getting another benefit, a benefit that was far greater than the subject matter they were learning. They were seeing how computer applications were really written. Time and again they spotted flaws in my application's design. Perhaps the assignment form didn't leave enough space for their responses or it didn't allow them to submit corrections. And time and again, my students suggested ways to improve my design and would have the pleasure of watching me change my design to suit their re-specifications. Of course part of their motivation for helping me improve my application was the fact that program defects impeded their capacity to earn more bonus points ... :-)

In other words, my students were learning that computer applications weren't divine revelations; that they sprang from human hands; that some of those hands were my black hands; and, on occasion, some of those hands were their own black hands.  The reader won't be surprised to learn that many of my students not only crossed the Digital Divide; they changed their career paths and became IT specialists. In other words, they were far more impressed by what I was doing with information technology than the subject matter they were learning in my IT-based course ... And, oh yes, their involvement with information technology was all the more intense because of my course's "diabolical" behavioral modification framework ... :-)

Of course, one black professor's experience at an HBCU doesn't "prove" anything ... except for the fact that my own experience is far from unique. The United Negro College Fund has long noted that HBCUs are more productive sources of blacks in STEM fields than non-HBCUs. How is this still possible given that the STEM resources at HBCUs usually aren't as good as those at non-HBCUs? What is the secret of the continuing success of HBCUs in this regard? To me the answer is obvious -- but we really should do whatever research is required to confirm this hypothesis:

Some of the black professors who teach STEM courses at HBCUs are still finding ways to engage their black students in intensive, creative collaborations.

_________________________
Related notes:

• One Million Plus (non-black) Apps
• Closing the Digital Divide -- Another Opportunity
• Why Are HBCUs Still Needed -- Part III
• Earnings Lost by Opting Out of STEM

Closing the Digital Divide -- Another Opportunity

The Persistence of the Digital Divide

The Digital Divide appears to morph, to shift its shape from time to time; but deep down it remains the same. Unfortunately, its changing skins-of-the-day have distracted attention from its underlying structure, i.e., the stronger communal networks that sustain increasing affluence on the "white" and "yellow" sides of the Divide vs. weaker networks associated with the shrinking shares of the nation's income and wealth on its "black" and "brown" sides. 

For example, fifteen years ago most people focused on visible gaps between the hardware and software found at HBCUs and non-HBCUs, on the HBCUs' lack of connectivity to the Internet, lack of computer labs, etc. Those particular gaps have largely vanished, but the Divide persists and in some ways is wider than ever. One of my younger colleagues succinctly summarized this paradox by saying, 

"The most powerful computer in the world is the one you already have access to, but aren't using to its full capacity."

In other words, the Divide between the haves and have-nots is amplified by the differences between the creative uses they make of whatever have.

Silcon Valley

An important recent manifestation of the Digital Divide is the lack of black hi-tech entrepreneurs, a gap that was examined in Soledad O'Brien's brilliant TV documentary "Black in America, the New Promised Land: Silicon Valley" -- the latest in her series on CNN that was broadcast last fall. Those of you who saw this documentary were probably inspired, like I was, by the grit and determination that the eight black entrepreneurs who were featured in its reality-TV format showed in confronting prejudice and other obstacles. They were not cowered by "stereotype threat"; they faced bigotry head-on.  Unfortunately, the one hour limitation of Ms. O'Brien's show prevented it from addressing the immediate causes of the problem ==> Why were there so few black hi-tech entepreneurs in Silicon Valley?

Some answers to this question have been provided by my younger daughter's book, Opting Out, Losing the Potential of America's Young Black Elite (Maya A. Beasley, University of Chicago Press, November 2011). Ironically, her book was published at about the same time as the first airing of Ms. Obrien's TV show last fall.

• Many hi-tech entrepreneurs have degrees in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) and two of the most important pipelines between academia and Silicon Valley originate at Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley. 
   
• My daughter's book is an exploration of why so few of the highly talented black students at these academic powerhouses obtained degrees in STEM fields. More specifically, she explored the impact of perceived prejudice within those fields that motivated so many members of this Talented Tenth to op out of STEM and switch into careers that were more "racialized" -- her term for fields that already contained substantial numbers of black professionals.

My daughter's book concludes with a number of cogent recommendations to Stanford, Berkeley, and all of the other non-HBCUs as to what they can do to reduce their black students' perceptions of prejudice where prejudice doesn't exist, to fortify their black students' resolve to confront prejudice where it does exist, and to increase the exposure of their black students to crucial information networks about career opportunities. However, readers of previous posts on this blog will not be surprised by my pessimism as to the prospects that her recommendations will be widely implemented. Left to their own devices, why should non-HBCUs be more successful in closing the gaps in STEM enrollments between their black and non-black students than they have been in closing the broader gaps in retention rates and six year graduation rates?

Killer Apps for Smart Phones and Tablets

A few weeks ago, one of my university's senior vice presidents sent me an email requesting that I provide technical support for one our student's IT initiatives. As it turns out, this second year law student had some interesting ideas about killer apps for smart phones and tablets, but had minimal STEM skills -- a deficiency that has not deterred lots of successful white entrepreneurs in the last ten years or so. That's when I had my "Eureka!" moment. And like most Eureka moments, this one involved a blinding perception of the obvious. 

MY HBCU educates students in STEM and students in non-STEM; but successful hi-tech entrepreneurs need access to technical skills plus marketing skills and legal skills and management skills, etc, etc, etc. So whereas my law student saw the "big picture" of a killer app that "only" needed technical skills to bring it to life, I now saw the "bigger, big picture" of a developer community within our university that would be composed of faculty, staff, students, and senior administrators who would pour their diverse skills into a creative cauldron wherein killer apps could be cooked to perfection ... :-)

Of course, this insight already has a name because it's been invented and reinvented many, many times before, and probably at my own university. It's usually called an "incubator" or an "accelerator." But this particular incubator has the good fortune to be conceived at a most fortuitous time when the creative, white hot center of the developer community is focused on the explosive demand for apps for smart phones, tablets, and other non-workstation devices:

• Apps whose developer tools can be obtained for cheap or for free from the Web;
• Apps whose prerequisite developer skills can be learned for cheap or free from the Web;
• Apps that can be developed on garden-variety workstations; and
• Apps that can be distributed for cheap or for free via an Internet cloud

So the only things that are missing are the main ingredients ==> the will to make the most creative use of whatever IT resources we have, and the will to organize ourselves into a community whose members cooperate so as to maximize each other's creative output.

It didn't take long to identify 10 charter members of our ad hoc developer group that will have its first face-to-face meeting next week; and yes, the charter members include faculty, staff, students, and senior administrators who share this vision of the "bigger, big picture" and high expectations about what we can achieve.

What Every Young (and not so young) Developer of Killer Apps for Smart Phones and Tablets Should Know

One of the first items on our agenda will be the identification of a "core curriculum" whose fundamentals must be mastered as quickly as possible by our community's techies. As of today (3/12/12), the very rough initial draft of this core has four levels. Because of the bifurcation of the markets between Apple and Google, we anticipate the need for two distinct components at each level:

• Introduction to the major operating systems ==> iOS and Android
• Languages ==> Fundamentals of Java (Android) and fundamentals ObjectiveC (iOS) ... plus JavaScript, HTML 5, and CSS for both platforms
• Minimal coding developer environments ==> for iOS and for Android
• Major Websites that provide useful prefabricated widgets ==>  for iOS apps and Android apps

HBCUs as Keepers of the Dream

Although I remain hopeful that non-HBCUs will make more progress in the next twenty years than in the last twenty in closing the Digital Divide between their black and non-black students, I am also, for reasons spelled out in my previous notes on this blog, more hopeful that far greater progress will be made if the efforts of non-HBCUs are guided, if not led by HBCUs. I am especially hopeful with regards to the capacity of HBCUs to move more black entrepreneurs to the producer side of the Divide by incubator initiatives, such as the one described in this note that I am helping to launch at my own long-time employer, Howard University.

We are not conceiving Howard's initiative as something bounded by its  brick and mortar walls because we know that our success will be greatly amplified to the extent to which we throw open opportunities for participation in our efforts via the Internet to wannabee black entrepreneurs among our own alumni and among the current members of other HBCU communities and among their alumni. We also intend to participate in the incubator efforts sponsored by  other organizations devoted to assisting minority entrepreneurs, e.g., other HBCUs, the NewMe Community, etc.

Your Comments and Suggestions

Howard's plans are still on the drawing boards, so we will probably gain more benefit from constructive comments and suggestions at this stage than at any time in the future. Therefore on behalf of my colleagues, I sincerely request your help in getting our initiative off to a good start.

Please use the "Comments" form at the bottom of this note to share any ideas or suggestions that you think might be useful to what we are trying to achieve, especially with regards to our "core curriculum". And I promise that as we get going, we will return these favors by offering our help to other HBCUs and to other organizations that launch similar programs for black hi-tech entrepreneurs.

P.S. Speaking of killer apps for smart phones, please click the following HBCU headline, "SPELMAN COLLEGE JUNIOR INVENTS A TOP-RANKED DOWNLOADABLE APPLICATION OFFERED BY APPLE'S APP STORE" (September 1, 2009)

Yes! We can!!!

__________________

Related notes:

• One Million Plus (non-black) Apps
• Why HBCUs Are Still Needed? -- Part III
• Affirmative Action Strategies -- 2
• Fight or Flight
• From HBCUs to BCUs