comScore
  1. Mediaite
  2. Gossip Cop
  3. Geekosystem
  4. Styleite
  5. SportsGrid
  6. The Mary Sue
  7. The Jane Dough
  8. The Braiser

Power Grid

10 Women Who Secretly Control the Internet

by Jamie Frevele | 10:19 am, March 2nd, 2011


Limor Fried (Adafruit)

Limor Fried (Adafruit)

Limor Fried is a rare breed — a successful, maybe even prolific, female electrical engineer. Her biography on her site, LadyAda (Fried’s hacker handle after Ada Lovelace, the first programmer), modestly proclaims that she “creates things, some of which are beautiful and interesting.” What she is capable of, however, is what puts her on this list: her ability to hack into consumer electronics. Among her most successful projects are the “Minty Boost,” which is a battery pack for the iPhone that fits in an Altoids tin (hence the name), and a cell phone jammer, which she invented to block phone signals around her that were causing interference, but ultimately turned out to be illegal. But her greatest achievement was motivating the crack of the Kinect by offering, through her company Adafruit, a cash prize for the first person to create an open-source driver for Microsoft’s powerful gaming peripheral. Rather than sue (which they originally threatened to do), Microsoft instead embraced Kinect hacking, opening up its policy. Now, that’s power.


Previous Previous
Next Next
6 of 11

TAGS: | |


  • Anonymous

    Ariana Huffington absent? Color me confused!

  • Big Eddie

    Chicks can work computers ?

  • Equal Opportunity

    There are lots of women doing lots of great things in the world. Men don’t say “top 10 men who secretly control the internet”. Confused why people of any gender, ethnicity, or lifestyle would do this. We are all humans and I don’t see the world coming together if we continue to segregate what people are accomplishing by putting them into their own “groups”. If there are injustices in the world, lets talk about that instead of continuing to segregate one another.

  • FriedRice

    Yeah, another lame attempt at harvesting user clicks. Put all the material on ONE page, or forget about it.

  • FriedRice

    Yeah, another lame attempt at harvesting user clicks. Put all the material on ONE page, or forget about it.

  • Anonymous

    A lady knight? I love it!

  • Ardiva

    yep ;-)

  • anon

    all puppets to be controled by corrupt mans.

  • Anonymous
  • http://twitter.com/dunsany dunsany

    No infosec geek girls? Or grey/blackhats? They truly run the Internet.

  • ZombieHunter

    Just want to say, I’m a Virginian, and some of us did know about girls on the net, and facepalm when people say otherwise.

  • http://twitter.com/pounddollarsign Michael Corey

    Apparently not. There were only two real techs on the list, one of whom was an electrical engineer who didn’t have anything to do with the internet. The rest were managers. We’ve known for a while that chicks can boss people around.

  • Equal Opportunity

    What privilege is being denied? Not sure I understand. It would have been funny if it pertained to my statement.

  • http://twitter.com/bifrosty2k Evil Bifrost

    This is absolutely stupid, there’s only ONE woman who actually works on the internet in this whole bit. The rest of them are either hucksters or developers who just use the internet.
    Where is Ren Provo? Where is Stacey Hughes? Where is Abha Ahuja?

  • Anonymous

    Duh, hello? Of course there are women on the internet – and, BTW, the internet isn’t actually controlled by any one entity or particular gender, contrary to the belief among spammers. So there are girls on the net, big freaking deal. And this passes for a story? Sheesh. Note to Geekolinks, please, get over the gender stuff already.

  • Anonymous

    No Marissa Mayer?

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_MOJ44SAZFUHGHQDITRJJJCGCLQ Riggs

    Women are evil…but something amazing.

  • Anonymous

    I’d explain it, but it’s not my job to educate you.

  • http://twitter.com/lisat2 Lisa Thorell

    What women benefit from the success of TheMarySue, LLC website?

  • VampireZombeh

    Wow.. Really? I’m sixteen and I get the reference.

  • VampireZombeh

    “Eight-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon wrote a letter to the editor of New York’s Sun, and the quick response was printed as an unsigned editorial Sept. 21, 1897.”- Newseum
    The second paragraph begins with the iconic phrase, “Yes, Virginia. There is a Santa Claus.”

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=708477949 Janae Smith

    I thought of Ms Huffington too, but then realized it says “secretly” in the title. :)

  • Nimmeh

    …and all of which have a face fit for radio, or in this case internet radio.

  • http://twitter.com/krdr Dragan Krstic

    It is one of most misogynist titles ever. No, most of this woman doesn’t “control” internet. No, there’s nothing special about being a female in IT. If there’s a group of women that secretly controls Internet, I doubt there would be round number of them and that they would be keen to reveal their identities.

  • Cainchild

    Shouldn’t you be having dinner with Ambrams or slicing of the genitals of a 5 year old boy?

  • Cainchild

    Shouldn’t you be having dinner with Ambrams or slicing of the genitals of a 5 year old boy?

  • http://twitter.com/devlind Devlin Dunsmore

    Where the hell is Marissa Mayer? She’s only THE primary operations head behind the largest search engine in the world. How does Heather Horde or even Carol Bartz on this list and Marissa is not?

  • Anonymous

    Oo, a penis troll! We sure haven’t seen these before!

  • Anonymous

    Since when is yahoo still relevant?

  • guest

    Perhaps the title for this post should be 10 white women who secretly control the internet.

  • San

    Right, because the internet is just bits and apps – no overwhelming social influence or media distribution or education programs here! Only code users can influence the internet! Lolz!

  • http://www.whatifbooksetc.com Sylvia Sybil

    Male privilege = “I don’t see a problem, therefore there isn’t one”. Morwen’s right that it’s not our job to educate you on basic facts, but I’m feeling nice so I’ll link you to Feminism 101. http://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/2007/03/11/faq-what-is-male-privilege/

  • Anonymous

    Cool, limor fried got on here! I don’t really see how she’s in control of the internet, but she’s certainly pretty awesome.

  • Guest

    Um, Marissa Mayer?

  • http://twitter.com/pounddollarsign Michael Corey

    OOo! I woman who makes a statement with nothing to back it up! I haven’t seen one of those before. Seriously, evaluate the comment or GTFO.

  • http://blog.anthere.org Anthere

    Took me two weeks to stumble upon that page :) That’s very sweet of you (though I never controlled anything… Wikipedia is beyond control… that’s why it’s cool). You made my day :)

X