You describe yourself as a
‘technology evangelist’. Why?
Because technology changed
my life. My mother died
when I was 12 and I left
school at 16. When I was 25,
I had a broken marriage and
was living in a women’s
refuge. Then, when my kids
went to school, I did a
computing degree. My
supervisor asked me if I
wanted to do a PhD. I said
I’d love to, but didn’t tell him
I had no idea what one was!And then?
Technology took me from
living on benefits on a
council estate to the career
that I have today as a
keynote speaker and
computer scientist. It worries
me that people are missing
out on opportunities because
they are scared of
technology. We can solve the
world’s biggest problems by
empowering disadvantaged
people with technological
skills.How do you get the message
out?
I set up an organisation
called #techmums that helps
women learn about social
media, online safety andcoding. We teach online and
in disadvantaged areas, and
recently ran #techmumsTV
in collaboration with
Facebook. More than
300,000 people watched it
and we had mothers telling
us it helped give them the
confidence to seek jobs
involving technology.Should parents be concerned
about social media?
I worry about parents
banning kids from social
media because they might
use it anyway, have
something go wrong and then
have no one to talk to. People
worry about social media
with good reason, but it can
also be useful. It helped us
save Bletchley Park.How?
By raising awareness. I
initially thought Bletchley
Park was maybe 50 old men
who wore tweed and did The
Times crossword and the
odd bit of codebreaking.
Then I learned that 10,000
people worked there and
more than half were women.
Their efforts shortened
World War Two by two years
and saved 22 million lives.
When I heard Bletchleycould close, I knew I had to
do something, so I turned to
Twitter. One day, Stephen
Fry retweeted me, and for a
short time I became the most
retweeted person in the
world! I don’t think we
would have saved Bletchley
Park without Twitter.Any career disasters you’ll
admit to?
My laptop died when I was
doing my PhD and I lost
loads of work. I didn’t
admit it to anyone because
I was horrified. It took me
three months to accept
what happened, then
another three to redo it. Ittaught me to back up my
research.Who would play you in a film of
your life?
Funny you should ask that. I
was recently contacted by a
film director who wants to
do just that! I’d have Emma
Watson for the young me
and Angelina Jolie for the
older me. They’re both very
#GirlPower. [email protected]Dr Sue Black is a computer
scientist at University College
London, and author of Saving
Bletchley Park.Computer scientist Dr Sue Black talks
about the transformative power of
technology and saving Bletchley Park
TEXT: HELEN PILCHER
Technology
“Technology took me from living
on benefits on a council estate,
to the career that I have today.”
In 2016, Sue was
awarded an OBE
(Order of the British
Empire) for services to
technology in the
Queen’s New Year’s
Honours list.