Dr Sue Black

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This is the BBC.

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Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Welcome to Desert Island Discs, where every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, the book and the luxury item that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away on a desert island.

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For rights' reasons, the music on these podcast versions is shorter than in the original broadcast. You can find over two thousand more editions to listen to and download on the Desert Island Disc's website.

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My castaway this week is the computer scientist and social entrepreneur Doctor Sue Black. She's done well really rather a lot. Here are some of the highlights. She was instrumental in saving Bletchley Park, ensuring Britain's World War Two code breaking site was preserved for the nation. Her hard work on encouraging women into the tech sector is impressive too.

Presenter1:11

She set up an industry initiative that's seen over ten thousand females skill up and learn to code. She's also the founder of an organization called Tech Mums, enabling women to get computer savvy to better understand what their kids are up to online.

Presenter1:25

And she's a member of the Government's Advisory Board for All Things Digital.

Presenter1:30

Given that maths is her abiding passion, I wonder what early odds she would have given herself on doing so well. She left home at sixteen, was married by the time she was twenty, and just five years later was living in a women's refuge with her three young kids. She says, I always say to people, If I can do it, so can you.

Presenter1:50

All I did was work out where I wanted to be and put one foot in front of the other until I got there. Welcome, Dr. Sue Black. Most of us, I think, can understand that very straightforward logic. Life so often gets in the way. Are you somebody with great dogged determination? I guess I must be. Yeah, looking back over my life now, I guess resilience, just keeping going seems to be a kind of fundamental part of my personality. You do a fair bit of, I think it would be fair to call it sort of if you can gently evangelise about something, you evangelise about the tech sector. You have this backstage ritual before you go on stage. It's the I'm completely awesome thing I read about. Is that true or is that just a rumour? I really wanted to share with an audience some of the things that I do. And I just heard that if you do a sort of superman pose or a superwoman pose, put your arms up in the air, you know, like this, which of course you can't see because it's not a good thing. No, but we know what you mean. Arms in the air, you know, and say positive things to yourself like I'm completely awesome. And when I was on stage actually last year in Orlando, I had an audience of 16,000 women in tech and I got them all to say I'm going to change the world.

Dr Sue Black2:30

And yes.

Dr Sue Black2:31

Is that true?

Speaker 22:45

No f

Dr Sue Black2:45

We know what you mean. Arms in the air, we guess it.

Dr Sue Black2:59

The women in tech.

Presenter3:03

Yeah, I'm keen on positive statements.

Presenter3:07

It's very, very, very pink. Why why pink?

Dr Sue Black3:07

It's very

Dr Sue Black3:09

Why

Presenter3:10

Well, actually, it's supposed to be red. Oh, okay. Sorry. It's definitely red. No, no, it's okay. Because I dye my hair every two weeks bright red. Well, my amazing hairdresser Jess does. But then over the two weeks it fades.

Dr Sue Black3:13

Sorry, it's definitely a good idea.

Dr Sue Black3:17

Yeah.

Presenter3:22

One week when I went to see her, she said, I found this colour, I think you're going to like it. And she brought it out and she's like, Shall we, shall we? And I was like, Yeah, let's do it. And it's been that colour ever since. Time for your music, Dr. Suplak. Tell us about this first one. What is it and why is it important to you? My first track is Castadiva from Bellini's Opera Norma, sung by Maria Callis. A very long time ago, not that long after I came out of the Women's Refuge. I was living in a council flat in Brixton with my three children, trying to work out what I was going to do with my life now as a single parent. And one of the CDs that I bought was Maria Callis' greatest hits. I must have heard her singing on something. I thought, oh my god, she's got an amazing voice. And because I wanted to know more about opera, I bought a book which was all about the best recordings of lots of famous operas and found that the best recording was £40 or £50, which in those days I was living on benefits I couldn't afford. And two, three years later, I was on holiday in Hungary with my kids and we just happened to walk past a record store. And I just thought, well, I'll just see if they've got that CD. And they had it. I was completely amazed. And it was, I think, £10. So I bought it. And it just reminds me of me and my kids not having much money but still being happy and enjoying life.

Presenter4:40

Who's thou the Lord?

Presenter4:48

Cross the name of the dream.

Presenter5:13

Yeah.

Presenter5:16

Wish this okre, wish this okram drew.

Presenter5:41

Castadiva from the Bellini opera Norma, sung there by Maria Callas, with the orchestra and chorus of Del Teatro Alascala de Milano, conducted by Tullio Serafine.

Presenter5:52

Dr. Sue Black, I read that currently only around about 17%, is that right, of employees in the UK tech sector are females. What's the problem?

Dr Sue Black6:00

Yeah.

Presenter6:02

Well, there's not just one. You know, so people say to me quite often, have things changed in the last 20 years? And if we go by the stats, then no, they haven't changed at all, which is very depressing. But there's been a massive sea change in opinion. The business world, the media are really interested in this as an issue now. No, but you've been at it for 20 years. For 20 years. So tell me about the response that you have met. So when I set up BCS Women, quite a lot of people were very much against me setting up a group which was only for women, which I really wanted it to be. I'd gone to academic conferences and being a computer scientist, they were probably like 90% male and 10% female. And I didn't really realize that was an issue until I went to a women in science conference in Brussels in 1998, which was, I don't know, about 100 women. And I just had the most amazing time ever. My PhD supervisor had said to me, You've got to go and talk to people at conferences because it's not only what you know, it's who you know. So just go out there and network. And for me, I was very shy. That's like the worst thing you could ask me to do. And I went into this conference. It was very buzzy. And I didn't even have to pick out people to talk to because everyone was talking to each other. And I guess that's because I was in the majority. And so that kind of changed my life, really.

Dr Sue Black6:22

No, but you've been a

Dr Sue Black6:24

So yeah.

Presenter7:15

Tell me about your next choice, Doctor Sue Black. My next choice is Feeling Myself by Nicki Minaj, featuring Beyonce. I just absolutely love. Nikki Minaj and Beyoncé, because I really feel, oh god, I'm getting emotional. All right, take a minute, take your time.

Dr Sue Black7:29

Yeah.

Presenter7:30

Yeah.

Presenter7:32

Because they they they're just so empowered and they help all of us to feel empowered too. I love their messaging. They're just very strong, independent women who are just encouraging everyone, all other women, to be strong and independent too, and I love that message.

Speaker 37:50

Feeling myself, I'm feeling myself, I'm feeling my, feeling my, feeling myself. I'm feeling myself, I'm feeling my, feeling myself, I'm feeling myself, I'm feeling myself. Change the game when that digital dropped. Know where you was when that digital popped. I shot the world.

Speaker 38:05

Male or female in ec

Speaker 28:07

No difference, I stopped. The world stopped. The world stopped.

Speaker 28:10

Carry on.

Speaker 28:12

Pretty on feet, pretty pretty gang, always keep them on on geek. Ridin', ridin' through Texas, feed em for his practice. Every time I whip it, I be talkin' so rap.

Presenter8:24

Nikki Minaj featuring Beyoncé and feeling myself. Sue Black, you were a geek before the term was really ever invented.

Presenter8:31

How and when did your love of numbers start?

Presenter8:34

I was about seven or eight and I used to get like sixpence a week pocket money, I think. And um I used to save up my sixpences until we went to the local shopping centre and then run into W H Smith's over to the math textbooks section. I didn't think you were gonna see that, right.

Speaker 28:48

I didn't think you were going to say that, right?

Presenter8:52

And I mean, I just loved puzzles, mazes, riddles. I just absolutely loved them from when I could read. A couple of years before that, just as you were starting school, it's a very crucial time in any little kid's life, your mother had twins, so that must have been very busy family wise.

Dr Sue Black9:02

And in your little kid's life, you're m

Presenter9:07

Yeah, I can remember them coming home from hospital. My dad would look after me more than previously. And also my dad's sister, my Aunt Faith. And I can remember her taking me to a dog show. She was a dog breeder. So she allowed me to show one of her dogs at the age of five. And I can remember running rounds with her dog was called Top Joy's Tara Tripaway. I remember her name. As they are. Yeah.

Dr Sue Black9:12

Yeah, yeah.

Dr Sue Black9:21

But

Dr Sue Black9:32

Uh

Speaker 39:32

Yeah.

Presenter9:33

Like you see on Crofts. I definitely won a prize and was kind of congratulated for doing well. The defining moment of your life or of your young life at least came when you were twelve and your mother died. I I want to ask you about that in a moment, but for now it can be

Dr Sue Black9:44

Yeah.

Presenter9:48

Difficult for people to have early memories of a parent who has died young. Do you have sort of a strong sense of your mother as a mother?

Dr Sue Black9:51

Yeah.

Presenter9:57

Well kind of, but I just wish I could remember more. You know, it kind of depresses me in a way that, you know, she brought me up till I was 12. Yeah. And I've got very fleeting, vague memories, you know, and I was like, my youngest daughter now is 14. So if I died, would she hardly remember anything about me? That just seems crazy. So my main memories are of her.

Speaker 310:05

Yeah.

Presenter10:18

Cooking nice food. So I remember she cooked tripe.

Presenter10:21

And uh she used to like home baked bread. And then and then also I just remember having the kind of period talk with my mum just before she died. So I feel like I suddenly got quite close to her. Yeah, that's a big moment in a in an adolescent girl's life. We're going to have more of your music, Doctor Sue Black. Tell me about this. It's your third.

Dr Sue Black10:35

Yeah.

Presenter10:40

This song San Francisco by Scott McKenzie.

Presenter10:43

It was one of those moments from childhood when I remember the song that was playing at the time. This is, I think, on the way back home after taking Tara around the dog show. So I just have this memory of laying on a blanket in the back of my aunt's car with Tara, the dog. We just won a prize. I could just remember sunshine, the trees kind of like flickering over the top of you with the sunlight, and hearing this song come on the radio and thinking, I want to go to San Francisco, which is quite funny now, considering my career.

Presenter11:15

If you're going to San Francisco

Speaker 211:21

Go.

Dr Sue Black11:23

Uh

Speaker 211:23

Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair

Speaker 211:32

If you're going

Speaker 211:34

Into San Francisco.

Speaker 211:41

You're gonna leave

Presenter11:43

Uh Uh

Speaker 211:43

Some gentle people

Presenter11:45

Over

Presenter11:48

That was Scott Mackenzie with San Francisco. You were we were chatting during that, uh Sue Black, and you were saying you also remembered uh just sharing memories of of your mother, which are relatively scant, really, but you said she used to make her own wine.

Speaker 211:54

Yeah.

Dr Sue Black11:55

Yeah.

Dr Sue Black11:57

Really?

Presenter11:59

Yeah, she did. I can remember going and stopping the car where there were loads of gorse bushes and my mum wanted to make wine from gorse flowers, I guess. And so we were picking loads but they're prickly bushes, right? I can just remember picking loads of yellow flowers helping her.

Dr Sue Black12:06

I was like, well, you can't.

Dr Sue Black12:10

I guess.

Presenter12:13

She died then when she was very young. She was in her mid-thirties, thirty. Thirty-four. She died of a brain hemorrhage. You were at home. W your father was there, I think. Your young siblings were there. You were the ones sort of with her in the room looking after her. She had this terrible headache.

Dr Sue Black12:15

She was in her mid-30s, thirty-four.

Dr Sue Black12:23

Yeah.

Dr Sue Black12:26

Thing after it

Dr Sue Black12:28

Yeah.

Presenter12:28

That's a big responsibility for somebody who's 12. I guess so, yeah. I was sat with her in the bedroom. My dad was looking after my brother and sister because they would have been six or seven. And she was saying things like, Oh God, please let me die. So obviously, that was very traumatic for me and obviously terrible for her. And then I remember then she wasn't speaking anymore. So I thought she was probably unconscious. I'd read all of my parents' medical textbooks by that time because they were both trained general and psychiatric nurses. And, you know, I knew that something was seriously wrong, that it just wasn't a headache. And my dad called for an ambulance. An ambulance came out. They said they wouldn't take her away because they thought she had a migraine. So basically, she was laying there.

Presenter13:17

I think for about eight hours. I mean, you know, my memory. Sure. I don't know exactly how long it was, but it was a very long time. Later on, my dad called an ambulance again, and this time they did take her to hospital. But I think by then, you know, there was no hope really. They took her away in the ambulance. I remember standing at the end of the garden path with my sister. My sister said to me, Is she coming back? And I said, No, I don't think so. And that was, I think, on the Saturday. And then I think on the Tuesday, yeah, they decided to switch the life support machine off. So that's, you know, that's the last I ever saw of her.

Presenter13:49

People in the same circumstances now, you know, parents are given all sorts of uh advice and we hope often support about how best.

Dr Sue Black13:56

But how best

Presenter13:58

to deal with their children in that situation? And what happened in your family?

Dr Sue Black13:59

That's it.

Presenter14:02

Obviously it was awful, but but not that difficult then. I think in a way we all got closer to my dad then for a bit. Um it was only months after that really when he was starting a new life with my stepmother that all of that went away and I think it was at that point actually that was the most difficult in a way because

Dr Sue Black14:17

I think it was at that point.

Presenter14:22

When my mum died we had my dad, but then when my dad's remarried well I kind of felt like an orphan then really, so from the age of thirteen I suppose.

Presenter14:30

That tragedy of of your mother's early death, you know, you can look at it now with perspective. What what effect do you think it it had then and it has now on your personality?

Dr Sue Black14:35

Yeah, what

Presenter14:40

Well, I think that it's it's kind of taught me that I've at the end of the day only got myself to rely on really. So if I want to make something happen I'd need to get on with it.

Presenter14:50

Let's take a break, Sue Black. Let's have some music. Tell me about this, your fourth. So, next song is Ever Fallen in Love by the Buzzcocks. This reminds me of being about 16 and leaving home, finding a new life really, where I was free. A time when I feel like I escaped. I escaped from an awful place. And the Buzzcocks were the first band I ever went to see in Chelmsford in I think 19 well, it must have been 78 with my friend Kate, who I was now sharing a bedroom with in her mum's house.

Speaker 315:23

Disper my natural emotions You make me feel under the hood And I'm hurt

Speaker 315:34

And if I start a commotion, I run the risk of losing you, and that's worse.

Speaker 315:45

Never fall in love with someone, ever fall in love in love with someone, ever fallen in love in love with someone you should've fallen in love with

Presenter15:57

Flash Cox ever fallen in love. You were seventeen then, Sue Black, when you moved to London and you had just a few O-levels because of the disruption of your home life. You went to work in a creche. You were working among refugees. What were your fledgling ambitions for yourself at that time in your life? I think at that time I just wanted to get away from Essex. I really wanted to move to London. I felt very, I guess, kind of culturally stifled in Essex. Most people around me, you know, were great, but no one was reading the books that I was reading. I couldn't have discussions about, I don't know, I was like trying to read Les Miserable, you know, and there was no one else around me.

Presenter16:38

That that was reading books like that. You had to go at nursing at one point, didn't you? Yeah. It wasn't for you. Why kn what was the problem?

Presenter16:45

So I worked with refugees from Vietnam for a year, which I absolutely loved, but I thought to myself, I've got to have some sort of career, you know, like I was getting towards eighteen. I think there's so many people in my family are nurses, so that just seemed like a safe bet I suppose and I had the minimum requirements which was five O levels I think. But from the first week I absolutely hated it. I was like, oh God, what have I done?

Presenter17:07

You know, a lot of being a nurse when you're a student nurse is basically washing people, you know, and there's nothing wrong with that, but.

Dr Sue Black17:11

Oh yeah.

Presenter17:14

I was a really shy, just eighteen year old, and the staff nurses would make light of it, but I certainly didn't feel comfortable with doing it. By the time you were twenty, you yourself were responsible for by that time you'd al already had a daughter, then you had twin boys. You were married by that time. By twenty five, you'd fled

Dr Sue Black17:26

They do.

Dr Sue Black17:28

Yeah.

Dr Sue Black17:29

By that time

Presenter17:33

Your first marriage, you were living with these three young children in a refuge.

Dr Sue Black17:34

You are l

Presenter17:38

That is a decade of turbulence. Well, more than a decade of turbulence. If we look back at losing your mother when you were just 12.

Dr Sue Black17:41

We look back.

Presenter17:44

At that point in your life, you know, when you woke up in the women's refuge each morning with these three young kids who were only looking to you and nobody else to take care of them

Dr Sue Black17:52

Yeah.

Presenter17:54

Where did your hope come from? Where was your optimism?

Presenter17:57

Well, I think again, I'd escaped. So, or we'd escaped, you know. The first evening and day was, I was quite traumatised, of course. But the next day, you know, I can remember we'd been given, I don't know, like £10 to buy some food or something in the morning, walking down, finding a local co-op, going in, buying some provisions. I was with twins in the double buggy, and my daughter was a three-year-old holding onto the buggy. You know, everything's going round and round and round in my head. You know, how am I going to cope? And all that sort of thing. But also, it was kind of like great and terrible at the same time. Right. So, there's the relief of not being in that situation. Absolutely. I can remember actually feeling physically sick. I think just all the emotional trauma of it all. And then somehow after that, it was sort of a bright morning and I was walking along and I was thinking, yeah, but I don't have to worry about all of that stuff that's kind of been hanging around my life, you know, my ex-husband's kind of temper.

Dr Sue Black18:29

Right.

Dr Sue Black18:31

Yeah, absolutely.

Presenter18:52

Trying to predict his moods and stuff like that. So I didn't have to worry about that anymore. And I was now in complete control. So then, as I was walking up a hill, I just started thinking, okay, I can do this, I can do this. And he'd always said to me, you know, you can't survive without me. And I just thought, I can do it. I can survive. We're not going to hear Gloria Gaynor, but tell me what we are going to hear then. We're on your fist. What are we going to hear now? The next song I've chosen is Straight Out of Compton by NWA. I loved hip-hop from when I first knew about it. And when I'd been married, we'd both listened to hip-hop and loved it. And then, you know, I moved to the refuge and we got a council flat in Brixton. And I got the kids into playgroup and school. And then I was like, what am I going to do with my life now? And decided to go back into education. So I went to university and loads of my friends there. I was in computing. Lots of guys loved hip-hop as well, which was great. And with one of my friends, Moshud, we went to see NWA at Brixton Academy.

Dr Sue Black19:52

You are now about to witness the strength of street knowledge.

Dr Sue Black20:04

Straight out of confidence. It's the crazy brother man Ice Q. From the stupid dope gang with an attitude. When I'm caught off, I got a sword off. Kick knowledge as bodies are hard off. You too, boy, if you get with me. The police are gonna have to come and get me. Off your back, that's how I'm doing now. For the sun duck brothers that's showing out. Some spot to muck.

Presenter20:26

NWA straight out of Compton. You said, Dr. Sublack, you'd chosen that because it was memories of a gig you'd gone to when you were at college. And I want to just rewind a little bit because surely we have a lot to thank the teachers of the world for, but there is one teacher in particular when you were starting at college at the end of the 80s, 1988, that deserved a special mention. He encouraged you to do something called polymaths. I went along to Southwark College saying that I wanted to A-level maths and chatted to a teacher there called Woody Taylor. And yeah, he said, I don't think you should do A-level maths because you'll just get aboard. Why don't you do this polymaths course? So actually for me, that was perfect because it meant when Emma was at school and Sam and Ollie were at playgroup, I had about 20 hours a week that I could do the studying and then I could get a babysitter twice a week so I could go to the classes in the evenings. And also I would get to university entrance level in one year rather than two years. And as an academic, now, when you work with younger people, do you recognise a lot of, let's say, young women like you? Some of the time through tech mums, you know, my social enterprise teaching technology to mums. You know, some of the mums are obviously not very well off, possibly living on benefits with several kids and some might be single parents. Like you were. Yeah, like I was, yeah. And it's funny because at the time when I set up Tech Mums, I thought I was trying to get everyone excited about technology, which I was. But it wasn't until we started actually running it and going out to schools like in town hamlets and teaching stuff like app design and web design to mums in the area that I started realising, oh actually these mums are like me 20 years ago and maybe that's what was kind of in the back of my mind when I was setting Tech Mums up was to provide a course for me 20 years ago. Because there are whole government departments devoted to working out how we can get people in difficult circumstances out of those difficult circumstances and enable them to get into a world where they're no longer dependent on welfare. If you had a message.

Dr Sue Black22:20

Yeah.

Dr Sue Black22:24

Well fair.

Presenter22:26

To the people who are working out how we do that. What would you say to them? I mean, you've been there and you've done it.

Dr Sue Black22:32

But

Presenter22:33

Well go to where the people are and find out what they need. Because one of the issues I think we have is that most people that work in government are middle class and white and they've come from a traditionally middle class background. Now of course I know that's not everybody and I know that there's a big focus on diversity but at the same time most people working in positions of authority will have been to university and so possibly don't have the life experience of being in very reduced financial circumstances and just having to work out how to live their lives and provide for their family. And I suppose because I've lived through it, I know how to do that. You know and that's basically by treating people as regular human beings and talking to them about what would work for them and then going out and working with them and encouraging them and helping to boost their confidence and helping them to see where they could get to.

Presenter23:27

Tell me about your next track. It's your sixth.

Presenter23:29

So, my next track is Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana, and I chose this because it just reminds me of a really happy time. We had this amazing day where there was me and my friend Michael, we had a car, we went to the beach somewhere. We were living on a council estate in Brixton, so going to the beach was a very exciting thing. It was a sunny day, me and Michael are sat in the front, and three kids are in the back. And this track came on, and I just remember where it gets to a certain part in the song, all the kids in unison in the back just started headbanging in the back of the car. I just thought, This is it, this is just amazing, I love this.

Presenter24:38

Nirvana and smells like teen spirit memories Sue Black of your three kids head banging in the car. Now four kids, of course. You met Dr. Paul Boca, a fellow computer scientist and academic, back in 2004. And a little while later, when he proposed, it made headlines. Tell me what happened. Yeah, a little while later. I think it was 11 years later. Okay. Eleven years later.

Dr Sue Black24:43

Yeah.

Presenter24:59

A couple of years ago on 29th of February, he just sat next to me and said, look at this. So I looked at his screen on his laptop and it was an Enigma machine simulator. And he said, click on decrypt. So I clicked on decrypt and the message came out, will you marry me? And I was like, oh my goodness, it's actually happened. And what a cool, like the coolest way possible to propose to me after all the stuff that I've done with Bletchley Park. So I was tweeting about it like crazy and it was picked up, I think, by the BBC first and then all the nationals. And, you know, I'd run the campaign to save Bletchley Park for three years. And in all that time, I never got that much publicity for anything that I was trying to do, you know, about the fact that the work that was done there had shortened the war by two years, saving 22 million lives. That wasn't as big a story as Paul proposing to me. That's the British media for you. When it comes to Bletchley Park, because as I introduced you today, you know, you were fundamental to making sure this place didn't fall to wreck and ruin. And now it's got.

Dr Sue Black25:50

Duh.

Speaker 325:51

That's

Dr Sue Black25:56

Yeah.

Speaker 325:58

Okay.

Dr Sue Black25:58

Making sh

Speaker 326:00

Really?

Presenter26:01

Thousands of visitors every year. The movie's been made. What was it in the beginning that captured you about the story?

Dr Sue Black26:03

Yeah.

Presenter26:06

I went up there the first time in 2003, and at that time I didn't really know much about Bletchley Park at all. So I just knew the code breakers worked there, and I thought it was probably like 50 old blokes work there basically. Wearing tweed jackets, smoking pipes, doing the Times crossword, and maybe a bit of code breaking on the side. That was kind of like my vision of what had happened there. And I walked around the site, bumped into these guys who were rebuilding Turing's bomb machine, the machine that you see in the imitation game, the film. And then they asked me why I was there. So I said, I set up VCS women, you know, women in computing. And they said, oh, did you know that more than half the people that worked here were women? So I was like, no, how many people worked here? And they said, more than 10,000. I was like, how can I not know about that? Being a computer scientist, a woman, always going on about women in technology. How did I not know that story? So I managed to raise some funding to run an oral history project to record the memories of the women that worked there. And at the launch of that, the director at the time said that Bletchley Park was teaching on a financial knife edge. This was in 2008. And that if they didn't get some funding in soon, he thought they'd close. And if they close, they'd never open again. So I thought, that's terrible. We've got to do something about it. This place can't close. And by that time, I was head of a computer science department at the University of Westminster. I emailed all the heads and professors of computing in the country saying we've got to save Bletchley Park. Got them to sign a letter which we sent into the Times and then contacted the BBC. You know, like suddenly got loads of publicity within just a week or so. I started using Twitter and realised that, you know, there were lots of people out there who cared about Bletchley Park. I just had to find them. I saw my challenge as raising awareness that Bletchley Park was open as a museum because the main money that sustains them, at least then anyway, was people coming to visit and paying on the gate. And also the fundamental contribution that Bletchley Park made during the Second World War, which most people didn't know then.

Dr Sue Black27:48

Because they may

Presenter27:59

Well they do now see

Presenter28:01

Yes, they do. Tell me about your next track. We're on your seventh.

Dr Sue Black28:03

But

Presenter28:04

So my next track is Yellow by Coldplay. When I first got together with Paul, my husband, I was kind of like the hip hop R and B girl and he's like Coldplay He likes dad rock.

Dr Sue Black28:14

He likes dad rolling.

Presenter28:17

So what I used to say was, I don't know why you like this ching ching ching music because it's just like ching jing jing ching jing ching all the time. But I actually I narrowly like Cold Play I have to admit and we've been to see them a few times and and really enjoyed it and kind of Yellow by Cold Play is like our song.

Dr Sue Black28:34

Look at the stars.

Dr Sue Black28:37

Call they shine for you

Dr Sue Black28:42

Everything you do

Dr Sue Black28:48

Yeah, they were all yellow. I came along.

Dr Sue Black28:53

I wrote a song for you

Dr Sue Black28:59

And all the things you do

Presenter29:05

And it was called Yellow

Dr Sue Black29:07

Uh

Presenter29:09

That was Coldplay and Yellow and very definitely not Dad Rock. I feel I've got to set the record straight there. Soubla, in the light of the ongoing furore around personal data, around Facebook right now,

Presenter29:22

I mentioned TechMums, this organization that you set up and helped run. What are you?

Presenter29:27

Teaching children and mums now about social media that you weren't before, because we understand things differently now.

Presenter29:35

Yeah, I guess so. I mean, I don't think we've changed that much really, because the message we're trying to get across is to be your best self on social media. To think about the fact that anybody in the world could be reading what you're putting out there. So don't put anything too personal which could affect your or your kids' life in some negative way. We're encouraging mums to use it if they feel comfortable with it, not if they don't. As parents, you have to educate yourself about what's going on. The worst case scenario for me is a mum says to their kids, You're not allowed to use social media because I'm worried about it. You know, and you can see why you would say that. But the thing is, your kids are then at some point they're going to use it because all their friends are using it. And my worst nightmare is kids use it, kids get into trouble, you know, maybe something terrible happens, but then they can't tell their mum that it's happened because they promised their mum that they wouldn't use it.

Dr Sue Black30:28

They've promised them

Presenter30:32

What about I mean, the seduction of Facebook and other types of social media is so great in what it brings to our life, in the way that it allows us to be connected. It's been designed in such a way that the seduction is so great.

Dr Sue Black30:40

And the way that it

Dr Sue Black30:42

Yeah.

Presenter30:46

That although there is this very loud background noise of the problems with it, people will still discount that because their life is almost.

Dr Sue Black30:49

The problems

Presenter30:54

built around these platforms now. What do you make of that? It's a difficult time for all of us to work out what to do, and I don't feel like I know exactly what we should do because we're all kind of learning as we go along really. But the way I see it, again, if if you're only posting stuff that you wouldn't mind anyone in the world seeing, then you'll probably be fine. There's also the point that

Dr Sue Black30:55

Yeah.

Presenter31:13

We're all in it together. It's not like it's just a few people exposing details about their life. The kind of safety in a way is in the fact that we're all doing it. I'm going to put up my hand now and say I'm a non-Facebook user. Okay. Well, that's fine. And you know what? My life's good. Yeah.

Dr Sue Black31:26

And you know what?

Presenter31:28

But isn't it isn't it interesting that people almost can't imagine somebody living without Facebook in their life?

Dr Sue Black31:31

Yeah.

Dr Sue Black31:33

Yeah.

Presenter31:33

Yeah, but I can totally imagine it, and it's your choice. I think maybe coming from a background where I had nobody, one of the things I love about technology is it connects me to all of my friends. I just love that. I love that I can see my son and his family, my grandson in Singapore, I can see what they're doing.

Dr Sue Black31:44

Sure.

Presenter31:53

So for me, that's very important, but that doesn't mean it should be important for everybody. One last little question. We've been sitting here talking to each other for a good long while now without any devices. Yes. How's that? Feeling a bit itchy? Want to get back in there?

Presenter32:06

No, I'm fine actually. See? Tell me about your eighth disc. What are we going to hear now?

Dr Sue Black32:07

See?

Dr Sue Black32:09

Yeah.

Presenter32:11

So my eighth track is The Hills by the Weekend. I think The Weekend is a phenomenal talent and this is my favourite track of his because it makes me think of my youngest daughter Leah. She's 14. We listen to Kiss FM in the car or Regio 4, one or the other. And there's one line in it that's particularly rude. And for some reason, wherever we are, just before the rudest line comes on, she shouts out, this is mum's favourite line, really loud. And it's just hilariously funny. This is the radio edit, so we're not going to get that. Yeah, no, you won't get that line. But, you know, it's about my relationship with her, which is amazing. And I just love my life. I love my family, my friends. So it reminds me of that. And I just love The Weekend's music and this track in particular.

Dr Sue Black32:42

This is the radio edit, so we're not gonna get it.

Presenter32:56

A man on the road he doing promo You said keep our business on the lolo

Presenter33:05

I'm just tryna get you out the friend zone Cause you look even better than the photos I can't find your house, send me the info Driving through the gated residential Found out I was coming, sent your friends home Keep on tryna hide it, but your friends know

Presenter33:31

I only called you when it's hell.

Speaker 233:34

Bye bye.

Presenter33:35

Dave. The Hills and the Weekend. Sue, I'm going to give you now the books. I give everybody, you might know, the complete works of Shakespeare and the Bible. They get to take one other book along with them to this island. What are you going to choose? So, I never did A-level maths, so I thought to keep my mind occupied, I would really like to take an A-level maths textbook and a pencil. I won't deny you that.

Presenter33:58

What will your luxury be? So, my luxury has to be some red hair dye because I won't feel like myself if I can't have red hair. Okay. It's yours. Which of the eight tracks would you save if you have to save just one? I've decided on the hills by the weekend because that will make me think of Leah, of my kids, of my family, and us having a great time together and laughing. It's yours then. Dr. Sue Black, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Thank you very much.

Presenter34:37

I really hope you enjoyed my conversation there with Sue. Given her association with Bletchley Park, you might be interested to listen to my interview with one of the women who worked there during the war, the delightful Pamela Rose. She was 97 when I spoke to her back in 2015. You'll also find Dame Wendy Hall in the Desert Island Discs archives. When she spoke to me in 2014, she was very clear-sighted about what the key issues would be for us coming up in the world of tech.

Speaker 335:04

The most important thing is that we get to grips with the issues of how we manage our personal data and who manages the Internet.

Speaker 335:15

This is a really difficult question.

Speaker 335:18

Because actually nobody does. It's very like you can lose use an analogy with what we're trying to do with tackling climate change, that you have to come to an agreement as a world on what you're going to do. And we're way off, way off being able to do that in terms of how we run this thing for the good of humanity going forward. So this is a really serious issue. And I'm just being made a member of a new Global Commission on Internet Governance, which has got a two-year brief to try and come up with some sensible suggestions as to what we might try and agree to. And I think it's largely about

Speaker 335:58

openness and transparency in terms of people knowing what happens to their data and knowing what rights we have as individuals in this world and what responsibilities our governments have.

Presenter36:09

Looking into the much more short term, in ten years' time are we going to look back and sort of wryly nod our heads at the olden days when people used to use Facebook and Twitter?

Speaker 336:17

Well that's the sort of question I we set our students to think about because nobody knows the answer. In a hundred years time will they still be using social networks to communicate? Well they won't call them social networks for a start and we could have chips in our brains by then. I think there is one fundamental though. We as human beings absolutely love to communicate. I remember with my school friends we found a way to do what we'd call today a teleconference. I can't remember whose phone had a fault on it but we used to call each other up and we used to help each other our maths homework on this sort of conference call. This was in the sixties and the worst thing you can do to a human being is put them in solitary confinement. So I think the technology will change and we've got to get to grips with the ethical issues and the regulatory issues or it could go horribly wrong.

Presenter37:05

Bong.

Speaker 337:05

Uh

Presenter37:05

Yeah.

Presenter37:05

Dame Wendy Hall, I'm sure you know this, but you can download her programme and those of Pamela Rose and of course Dr. Sue Black to listen to whenever you want. You can do that via the Desert Island Discs website or via your usual podcast provider. And as always, it would be great if you could rate them as it really helps other people find us. My guest next time is the comedian and writer David Bedil. I do hope you'll join us.

Presenter37:43

I'm Dr. Hannah Fry. And I'm Dr. Adam Rutherford. And if you're trapped on your desert island, you may well need some scientific tips and tricks to help you survive. And the Curious Cases of Rutherford and Fry is on hand to help, where we take questions from listeners, such as, What is the sharpest thing? How can you make the perfect cup of tea? And has Kate Bush been conspiring to create a secret sonic weapon? Yeah, not really terribly useful for survival, that one, but it might help pass the time. Download the Curious Cases of Rutherford and Fry from your usual podcast provider.

Presenter38:18

This is the BBC.