Science & Technology

Tech Week: 'Good' IT People, Women Quit Engineering, Tom Hanks App

By Allie Caren

Published August 16, 2014 at 4:32 AM CDT

According to NPR's Laura Sydell, IT people need to be half technologist, half psychologist.

Did you miss this week's tech headlines? No problem! Here is a roundup of technology stories from NPR and beyond.

ICYMI

What Makes A Good IT Person: According to NPR's Laura Sydell, our go-to tech saviors need to be half technologist, half psychologist.

"Getting machines to work is an essential part of the job, but so is making the customer feel better," Laura says. "And tech geeks are famous for not being very good at that."

(Look how angry some people get at their computers. Like, really angry.)

Women Are Ditching Engineering: Close to 40 percent of women with engineering degrees either leave the profession or never enter the field. NPR's Nicholas St. Fleur reports on a new study that found the workplace culture is largely to blame.

The study, presented at the annual American Psychological Association convention in Washington, D.C., found that while women comprised more than 20 percent of engineering school graduates during the past two decades, only 11 percent of practicing engineers are women.

Big Conversation

Highlights From The Net Neutrality Comments: Remember those 1.1 million net neutrality comments that flooded the Federal Communications Commission website earlier this summer? NPR's Elise Hu writes that "the interest in open-Internet topics doesn't spread out evenly across the United States."

In case you wondered, the most over-represented spot of the country was Washington, D.C. The most under-represented? Puerto Rico.

Snowden's Wired Magazine Interview: In his recent interview with Wired, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden says that "a 2012 incident that took Syria's Internet offline was caused by a National Security Agency blunder," according to The Guardian.

Curiosities

The Verge: Tom Hanks just released a typewriter app for iPad

Actor Tom Hanks gives us the "Hanx Writer" — a new-age typewriter app for iPads. He says it's his "little gift to the future luddite hipsters of the world." T.Hanks, Tom!

The Guardian: Dolby Atmos: Hollywood's 3D sound now ready for home cinemas

You might already have a 3-D TV at home to watch your favorite shows and movies — why not add 3-d sound to the mix? Three-dimensional sound has been used in many new Hollywood films.

Time Magazine: The Wide, Confusing World of Car Infotainment Systems

Deciphering the differences between in-car gadgets, and how they sync with technology you might already own.