Mohamed, a self-assured kid with thick-framed glasses and a serious expression, had just started at MacArthur High School a few weeks ago. The Irving, Tex., ninth-grader has a talent for tinkering — he constructs his own radios and once built a Bluetooth speaker as a gift for his friend — and he wanted to show his new teachers what he http://gotartwork.com/Profile/juaaerec-payrones/4310/ could do. So on Sunday night, he quickly put together a homemade digital clock (“just something small,” as he casually put it to the Dallas Morning News: a circuit board and power supply connected to a digital display) and proudly offered it to his engineering teacher the next day.
But the teacher looked wary.
Yesterday, the story of a 14-year-old hoping to impress his teachers with a homemade clock who ended up in handcuffs instead turned Ahmed Mohamed into an instant celebrity. Police have decided not to file “hoax bomb” charges against Ahmed, but social networks are still seething with outrage over the egregious treatment of a person of color simply wanting to participate in technology.
Along with the outrage, however, has come an outpouring of support from technology’s biggest names.
“Ahmed, if you ever want to come by Facebook, I’d love to meet you,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a post that went up on his personal page today. “Keep building.”
Marc Andreessen, co-founder of prominent Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, tweeted a sly joke about the potato clocks he hacked on as a kid before turning his Twitter feed into a supportive retweet storm.
Thousands of other tweets from techies have been collected at the hashtag, #IStandWithAhmed.
We at WIRED want to extend the same http://www.inprnt.com/profile/vinnmatguid/ invitation. Ahmed, if you do end up visiting Silicon Valley or San Francisco, come by our offices and hang out! We’ve got dogs and gadgets and tons of other cool things to tinker with. We’d love to build some digital clocks with you.
On Monday, teachers at the Irving Independent School District in Irving, Texas, had police arrest a 14-year-old student named for bringing to school a simple electronic clock he had built as an engineering project. Police escorted Mohamed out of school in handcuffs — photos of the arrest show him wearing a NASA T-shirt — and accused him of trying to build a bomb.
But the teacher looked wary.
Yesterday, the story of a 14-year-old hoping to impress his teachers with a homemade clock who ended up in handcuffs instead turned Ahmed Mohamed into an instant celebrity. Police have decided not to file “hoax bomb” charges against Ahmed, but social networks are still seething with outrage over the egregious treatment of a person of color simply wanting to participate in technology.
Along with the outrage, however, has come an outpouring of support from technology’s biggest names.
“Ahmed, if you ever want to come by Facebook, I’d love to meet you,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a post that went up on his personal page today. “Keep building.”
Marc Andreessen, co-founder of prominent Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, tweeted a sly joke about the potato clocks he hacked on as a kid before turning his Twitter feed into a supportive retweet storm.
Thousands of other tweets from techies have been collected at the hashtag, #IStandWithAhmed.
We at WIRED want to extend the same http://www.inprnt.com/profile/vinnmatguid/ invitation. Ahmed, if you do end up visiting Silicon Valley or San Francisco, come by our offices and hang out! We’ve got dogs and gadgets and tons of other cool things to tinker with. We’d love to build some digital clocks with you.
On Monday, teachers at the Irving Independent School District in Irving, Texas, had police arrest a 14-year-old student named for bringing to school a simple electronic clock he had built as an engineering project. Police escorted Mohamed out of school in handcuffs — photos of the arrest show him wearing a NASA T-shirt — and accused him of trying to build a bomb.
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