A Female PhD Student in Computing Re-Wrote That Horrible “Barbie Computer Engineer” Book and Made It Awesome

OK, now you can be a computer engineer, Barbie.

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Yesterday, we told you about a new Barbie book called I Can Be A Computer Engineer, which—while it sounded so promising—actually taught girls that they need a man’s help in order to code games, or even just use a computer without breaking it, really. But fear not—awesome women to the rescue!

Casey Fiesler, a PhD student in Human-Centered Computing at Georgia Tech, was not down with the content in this latest Barbie offering, so she decided to fix it herself (which she did using a computer without giving it a virus I believe). She’s writing her dissertation on copyright and online remix communities, and what she loves about the remix community is the theme of “If you don’t like the narrative, change it!”

So Fiesler went ahead and re-wrote the entire book with a much more positive message. You can download the whole thing for free right here, but here’s an idea of what you’ll find inside:

Screen Shot 2014-11-19 at 12.24.34 PM

remix1

remix2

Barbie, Remixed is under a creative commons license, so continue to remix and share across the internet! Or you can create your very own version in no time with the Feminist Hacker Barbie website’s page generator.

C’mon, Barbie. You used to be an astronaut rock star. You should know better.

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Author
Sam Maggs
Sam Maggs is a writer and televisioner, currently hailing from the Kingdom of the North (Toronto). Her first book, THE FANGIRL'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY will be out soon from Quirk Books. Sam’s parents saw Star Wars: A New Hope 24 times when it first came out, so none of this is really her fault.