Today is Ada Lovelace day, and along with thousand others I’ve pledged to write about my tech heroine even if this blog is about adventures and outdoors activities. Her name is Ada, as in Ada Lovelace of course. She is widely recognised as the world’s first computer programmer. Once you get to know her, you want to know more and you get addicted because she is really unique. Friend of mine introduced me to  Ada’s ‘poetical science’  as a way of thinking long ago, and when I started to struggle with getting together arguments about art and technology  in my paper, some years ago, I remembered ‘poetical science’ and Ada’s special way of seeing the world.  It helped me a lot to think like an integrator (as Ada was), and use my knowledge both creatively and critically.

Ada Lovelace was the daughter of the poet Lord Byron and a great friend of Charles Babbage. She wrote a system of symbol-manipulating rules for Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, and she is crediting as having foreseen that computing devices and computer would do far more than just being a mechanical calculator. She suggested that the engine might one day compose music, see and make pictures, and even to be a benefit to business.  She was really great and adventuruos in her own way, and sometimes I am thinking that it’s really pitty to have that letter “i” in my name, otherwise I would  be Ada. Anyways, Happy Ada Lovelace Day, folkZ.

PS: Here is a great interview with Ada Lovelace made by Suw Charman-Anderson at the Science Museum: