EmmaMulqueeny Fifa 14 Ultimate Team Coins co-founder of the Coding for Kidscommunity, lynchpin of Young Rewired Stateand all-round good egg, has suggested that the best way to address the gender imbalance is to start kids playing withtechnology before the girls have had a chance to notice thatthey're not supposed to be interested. This would mean buildingcoding into the primary school curriculum for kids of nine andabove, instead of waiting for secondary school as they do now. Bythen they'll know enough maths to get it but not be beset with allthe problems of puberty and self consciousness. This approach wouldalso address a wider problem -- equipping digital citizens with abasic understanding of how all this stuff that makes our world goround works.
For me it's impossible to separate the future of developers fromthe future of business. In the last ten to fifteen years we've seenbusinesses started by developers disrupt the provision ofinformation, the distribution of news, the way we shop, the way weconsume music and the way we connect with friends. Developers arethe new entrepreneurs building platforms for the future and thisdisconnect between girls and technology appears to cut them offfrom future power and wealth.
Perhaps the greater risk though is that by bypassing a hugereservoir of ideas and brilliance, we'll underachieve as a society,operating in a single mode characterised by status and competition,rather than benefiting from diversity and the more consensual,networked approach.