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Decolonizing Unicode: Can We Type Every Word That Has Ever Been Written? Aditya Mukerjee Observability Engineer at Stripe AlterConf Portland November 4, 2017

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1. What is decolonization? What is Unicode? 2. What are the problems with Unicode? 3. How can we fix these problems? @chimeracoder

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What is decolonization? @chimeracoder

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Decolonization: process of actively reversing the influence of and damage caused by a hegemonic, imperial, or oppressive power. @chimeracoder

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What is Unicode? @chimeracoder

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The ’ problem @chimeracoder

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@chimeracoder H E L L O ! ☺ 72 69 76 76 79 33 9786

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@chimeracoder Д ∫ ∯ ㈥ ꣷ ﷽"#$% అ Ψ ◔

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Who created Unicode? @chimeracoder

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Unicode Consortium •Started in 1987 by engineers at Xerox and Apple @chimeracoder $7,000/year $12,000/year $18,000/year

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What matters isn’t just who’s at the table – it’s who’s not at the table @chimeracoder

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What is a character? @chimeracoder

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Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic Alphabets @chimeracoder Character Name Unicode Number Character Latin Small Letter A 97 a Greek Small Letter Alpha 945 α Cyrillic Small Letter A 1,072 а Acute Accent 180 ´ Latin Small Letter A with Acute [Accent] 225 á

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@chimeracoder Character Name Chinese (simplified) Chinese (traditional) Japanese Korean Vietnamese ‘edged tool, cutlery, knife edge’ 刃 刃 刃 刃 刃 Han-based Writing Systems

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“catalog” vs. “catalogue” @chimeracoder “a” vs. “α ” “Stephen” vs. “Steven”

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Han Unification @chimeracoder

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@chimeracoder Character Name Unicode number Chinese (simplified) Chinese (traditional) Japanese Korean Vietnamese ‘edged tool, cutlery, knife edge’ 20,995 刃 刃 刃 刃 刃

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@chimeracoder

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An iterative approach to diversity is incompatible with a commitment to backwards-compatibility @chimeracoder Languages are hard and messy …but…

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Emoji @chimeracoder

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Racemoji @chimeracoder

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2. Structural biases are more subtle than skin tone @chimeracoder 1. Encoding skin tone into all interactions is not representation

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What’s the solution? @chimeracoder

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1. Engineering convenience cannot be an excuse to sacrifice authenticity 2. We need qualified engineers and linguists from around the world 3. The writing system for a language must be developed by native speakers @chimeracoder

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Unicode could be the first time in history that the writing systems for languages are defined by people who don’t even speak those languages @chimeracoder

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Thank you! Aditya Mukerjee @chimeracoder