Robin Turner

Can we please stop using "your mom" in tech discourse, as in "This is an app your mom can use" or "Linux won't make the desktop until your mom can use it"? Do you really think being female and old enough to have children who read tech forums makes you incompetent? Whenever I hear "your mom", I think first of my mom (well, mum, because I'm British), who is 85 and has been using computers since about 1985. She's no geek, but she can usually work out how to use a new piece of software. Then I think of my colleague Reyyan, who is also someone's mom, and in fact someone's grandma. She's also head of the Computer Education department, an active member of WIC, an expert on information ethics and a pretty competent programmer. So presumably, when you say "your mom", I guess you mean yo mamma.