Reading Outline 4/16/07: Lee, Shireen. The New Girls Network: Women, Technology, and Feminism

Description: Lee describes how technology has benefited women’s organizations by increasing communication. Prior to the internet age women’s activist groups rarely communicated with one another on a global scale so even if one group had knowledge that would help another group, the second group would have to figure it for themselves. With the Internet as an asset, knowledge can flow quickly and easily so a network of women activist groups is created. Lee also describes that there is very little, if any, gender awareness within the technology industry.

Analysis: Lee says that this lack of gender awareness comes from a lack of gender diversity within the industry. Since mostly men create technology, most technology is created with men in mind. So even though technology is helping women it could probably be even more helpful for women if women created it themselves.

Vision: Lee envisions a technological industry that is full of women. She wants women to be creating technology just as much as they are using it. Then technology will benefit women even more because it was created with women in mind.

Strategy: Lee says that more women need to be educated in engineering and computer science and that we need to find ways to get them into the workplace working on creating technology. Once this starts to happen we’ll be on our way to have a technology industry that has equal representation of men and women.

Technology & The Class

From the class:

List 3 items that you couldn't live without and then pick the most recently invented or innovated item on your list to add to this class list:

Item - Year of Estimated Invention - Year of birth (Name)

laptop 1990 - 1980 (jessie- I used this one as an example)
satellite - radio 2004 - 1985 (jess t)
cell phone - late 90s - 1987 (jess b)
laptop - 1990 - 1987 (amanda g)
cell phone - 2000 - 1988 (katelyn)
cell phone - 1998 - 1987 (oops! forgot to type name in class)
internet - early to mid 90s - 1987 (pat)
ipod - 2002 - 1988 (lauren)
laptop - 1985 - 1986 (spencer)
cell phone - 1995 - 1988 (devon)
cell phone - 1997 - 1987 (michelle)
internet - 1990 - 1987 (jen m)
ipod - 2003 - 1988 (kristin)
internet - early 90s - 1987 (Liz)
laptop - 1990 - 1988 (Leo)
Laptop - 1991 - 1987 (Anthony)
Laptop - 1991 - 1987 (Darling)
ipod - 2001 - 1987 (Alex)
computer - internet - 1995 - 1987 (Erin)
cell phone - 1992 - 1987 (Melissa)
air conditioning - 1980 - 1984 (Mark)
cell phone - 1995 - 1985 (Tara)
cell phone - 2000 - 1984 (Dan)

Class Notes 4/16/07

Class Notes 4/16/07

By Erin D.

Argument: The need for women to become active producers of technology, not just users of it.
Men are the main creators of technology and women need to find a balance.
Once women became involved, it was easier to produce out of the home and for the technology created to reflect the political and social concerns of women everywhere--Bejing+5 conference example
Started at the grassroots level and gave voice to these smaller activist groups i.e. President Bush donations to Planned Parenthood
More involvement in the world of technology means greater political and economic power.
More women creating means more products and services targeted toward women--male creators should also strive to include women more
Not enough women in science and technology fields--pushed away by education system
Tendency toward gender bias from those who create--maybe subconscious, maybe not--more encoded and subversive than other examples like violence or pornography
Article focuses too heavily on differences between men and women and assumes there are fundamental reasons for these differences--social constructions of femininity and masculinity vs. biological construction
Lee argues that men and women have different perspectives and worldviews on technology
Men programmers and creators are socially conditioned to disregard the concerns of women
Is more women representation the answer?
More than two sexes and more than two worldviews do exist
Implied that women will automatically balance out inequalities or other minorities will diversify a workplace or situation--again implies that there are fundamental differences between different groups
Hypocrisy of multiculturalism for the sake of multiculturalism
Tokenism of Bush cabinet

Advertisements for technology are not targeted toward women--section in "Maxim" for tech ads - same isn't true for Cosmopolitan magazine.

Class Meeting 4/16/07 Techno-Pop Culture

Techno-Pop Culture
How has technology become a part of mainstream pop culture?

Jessie's timeline of arbitrarily selected technologies:

Sony's Betamax ($1300 player) Video (1975) & Pong @ home (1975)
VHS Video (1977) Apple II personal computer (1977)
Sony Walkman (1980)
Music CDs for sale in retail stores (1983)
Nintendo (NES) (1985)
Compuserve - retail stores sell "box" for service (mid 1980s)
Prodigy - regional introduction (1988)
Prodigy - US-nationwide (1990) LCD Displays (1990)
Super Nintendo (1991)
WWW gains interest (1994)
CompuServe, America Online, Prodigy as ISPs (1995)
Nintendo 64 (1996)
MP3s online via Winamp (1997) AOL Instant Messenger (1997)
4 years after 1994 over 30 million people online (1998)
Napster (1999) Tivo (1999)
Google - resembling its current incarnation (2000)
iPod (2001) Nintendo Game Cube (2001)
Friendster (2002) Blog - as distinct online format (2002)
MySpace (2003)* Second Life (2003)
Blog - increase in blog titles - political content (2004)
YouTube (2005) Facebook.com (2005) Webkinz (2005) Blog - use by mainstream media for commentary & for primary source reporting of major world events - Madrid Train, London Tube, Hurricaine Katrina, Tsunamis (2005)
Nintendo Wii (2006) Unless you're me, then it's still not on the the timeline b/c they're always out of stock!

Myspace:
The service has gradually gained more popularity than similar websites to achieve nearly 80% of visits to online social networking websites. It has become an increasingly influential part of contemporary popular culture, especially in English speaking countries (Wikipedia)

What is Second Life?

Second Life is a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents. Since opening to the public in 2003, it has grown explosively and today is inhabited by a total of 5,583,649 people from around the globe.

• From the moment you enter the World you'll discover a vast digital continent, teeming with people, entertainment, experiences and opportunity. Once you've explored a bit, perhaps you'll find a perfect parcel of land to build your house or business.
  
  
• You'll also be surrounded by the Creations of your fellow residents. Because residents retain the rights to their digital creations, they can buy, sell and trade with other residents.
  
  
• The Marketplace currently supports millions of US dollars in monthly transactions. This commerce is handled with the in-world unit-of-trade, the Linden dollar, which can be converted to US dollars at several thriving online Linden Dollar exchanges.
  
  

Welcome to Second Life. We look forward to seeing you in-world.

Webkinz
Ganz stuffed animals with a secret code for kids to use online in Webkinz World

What are Webkinz pets?

Webkinz pets are lovable plush pets that each come with a unique Secret Code that lets you enter Webkinz World and play with a virtual version of your pet.

What are all the cool things I can do in Webkinz World?

Where do we start? First, you adopt your pet and name it. Then you can custom design a room for it. You can play games in the Arcade, or compete against other players in tournaments. You can answer quizzes in Quizzy's Question Corner and enter contests, too. All of these things earn you KinzCash, which you can use to go shopping for your pet in our W Shop, where you can buy toys, furniture and clothes. There are stories to read and fun daily activities. The best part is that we add things to Webkinz World frequently, so it's always getting bigger and better.

Discussion Questions:
Does virtual representation (re)create the gender norms and appearance of difference between the sexes?
Has technology altered gender norms? Does technology have the capacity to alter our understanding of what it means to be a man or a woman in a less-concrete, virtual world?

Recent Articles from Salon.com Related to Class Blog-Topics

Reading Outline 4/9/07: Boyle, Karen. "The Pornography Debates: Beyond Cause and Effect."

Boyle, Karen. "The Pornography Debates: Beyond Cause and Effect." Gender, Race, and Class in Media. Eds. Gail Dines and Jean Humez. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks:
Sage Publications, 2003. 406-16.

Description: Boyle describes the inherent problems with the traditional media effects research that focuses on pornography. These problems include the limited populations used during studies, measuring a subjects level of arousal as opposed to their reaction to that arousal, and focusing on whether pornography causes violence against women rather than asking why violence is committed against women in pornography in the first place.

Analysis: In order to describe the relationship between pornography and violence as causal you need to take a “scientific” approach, but this approach also obscures women’s stories of violence during the production of pornography and denies the “abusers’ agency and accountability.”

Vision: Boyle describes the goal of pornographic research and analysis to be a return to a focus on production practices, representational strategies, and consumption patterns. Another goal is a clearer definition of the word pornography, which denies the experiences of individual women by lumping Playboy and tapings of rape camps into the same category.

Strategy: We must stop worrying about whether pornography causes violence against women because many forms of pornography require the taping of violent acts perpetrated against women. Trying to blame violence on pornography does not address the bigger issue of the individual accountability of those involved with the production and consumption of the pornography.