Unconscious Bias

 I Don't Know Why (I Just Do)

I don't know why I love you like I do
I don't why, but I do
I don't know why you thrill me like you do
I don't know why, but you do.

Shouldn’t you want to know why?

Unconscious biases can be long lasting and may be …doh…. unconscious, something of which you aren’t even aware. Case in point. I attended Brown University where the Computer Science Building was funded by one of its alumni, Thomas Watson, Jr, a former CEO and son of the founder of IBM.

In the 1980s, IBM was introducing Personal Computers, PCs. They used a subcontractor to work on its operating system and that subcontractor had a competing version of the BASIC computer language, which ran on those PCs. That version of BASIC was obviously not to be taken as seriously as IBM's since that competing version of BASIC went by the name GW (Golly Whiz) BASIC. So clearly there was no serious reason to invest in that subcontractor when they had their Initial Public Offering. That subcontractor was, at time, a little firm called Microsoft. Being biased in favor of IBM did not work out so well for me.

When search engines were being developed, Scientific American did a review of two competing, innovative search engines. One was IBM's CLEVER. The name of the other search engine is the punch line. Needless to say, I was much more impressed with IBM’s search engine and saw no reason to invest in its no-name, fly-by-night competitor. The name of that competing Search Engine... GOOGLE. Another case of where being biased in favor of IBM led me to back the wrong horse.

As to how long-lasting unconscious bias can be, my father’s parents saw two of their children die in the Spanish Flu Pandemic, before my father was even born. My father had an abiding fear of public spaces, anything shared, that I am fairly sure that he learned from his parents, but he never acknowledged why. When I reflect on my response to the COVID pandemic, which was influenced by my own upbringing by my father, I had to reflect on this incident that happened before my father was even born.

A coincidence. The firm at which I worked since 1998, had its HQ less than a mile from where my Uncle and Aunt died and were buried. I do not know, but suspect, that their deaths were why my grandparents moved from Cambridge, MA to Providence, RI where both my father and I were born.