September 26, 2004
The Remote Control by SQ
-In 1996, The Consumer Electronics Manufacturers estimates that 400 million units of this technology are currently in use.
-Usage is now so widespread that, according to Solutions research group (hint: they track entertainment and media industries), in 2003 the average Canadian household owns more than five of them.
-Originally developed in 1950, it didn’t catch on in popularity until the 1980s, by which time, the average American had the TV on for more than seven hours a day (who wants to have to keep getting up to switch channels!)
-Timeline of the remote control from an article in Canadian Business magazine ....
A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE COUCH POTATO'S BEST FRIEND
1950: The first TV remote control, Zenith Radio's Lazy Bones, was attached to the TV with a cord and activated a motor inside the set to rotate the tuner.
1955: Zenith engineer Eugene Polley invents the light-activated Flashmatic. Upside: it's the world's first wireless TV remote control. Downside: in direct sunlight, the tuner could start flipping channels on its own.
1956: The Space Command, invented by Zenith's Robert Adler, is the first remote to use high-frequency sound. More than nine million remote-controlled TVs are sold over the next 25 years.
Early 1960s: Development of hand-held, battery-operated remotes that produce high-frequency sounds electronically.
Early 1980s: Infrared remotes-which send a low-frequency light beam to the TV set-replace ultrasonic remotes.
2000: 99% of TVs and 100% of DVD players and VCRs sold in North America are equipped with remotes. (Kevin Libin, “Out of one, many.”)
-So, it would seem that remote controls are reproducing like tribbles in many Canadians homes (One for the TV, VCR, DVD, Stereo, Satellite…) and consumers are getting annoyed and confused with the amount of different remotes littered about their houses. Out of that annoyance comes the demand for a comprehensive universal remote (oooohhhh…).
-How does a universal remote work? In a nutshell, today’s remotes are infrared, with each different model giving out a different signal with a different programming code. A universal remote is capable of programming these different frenquencies into one unit, with varying degrees of results. Basically, Popular mechanics says it best: “The more you’re willing to pony up for a remote, the more remote horsepower you’ll gain.” I think this means you should be able to change the channels on the TV in your home from your office or something like that.
-Now, on the Futureshop website they range in price from $9.99 to $299.99 (cdn dollars) for your standard universal remote, but a 2003 article in “Cablecaster” magazine also outlines the following nifty gadgets: (because, as the article says “the couch potato’s steering wheel of choice when driving their new wired homes will look nothing like their father’s Jerrodsmobile.”)
• The iPronto, a “home theatre control system, lap computer and wired home controller complete with 802.11b wireless Internet access.” Best thing about it, dimensions: “less than an inch thick, weighs 31oz. And is 9 inches wide.” Retail: US$1699 (www.phillips.com)
• The Nevo, which is a software program for your PDA (like a palm pilot), which allows you to wield
control over your “consumer electronics devices” in your home (up to twenty!). And I guess check you schedule for the day at the same time. Retail (PDA & Nevo software): US$699 (www.mynevo.com)
• The Batman and Robin of the Universal remote world: MX-700 with sidekick. Can do a whole bunch of funky stuff, but the part I like best is it’s “sleek design, ‘gemstone’ buttons and joystick controls are designed to appeal to a higher end crowd.” Retail: US $499 (www.universal-remote.com)
• Then there is the Midas, which is a remote control built into your watch (for that “Midas touch”). Doesn’t do as much (only controls cable/satellite), but its still pretty Dick Tracy. Retail: US$39.99 (www.uei.com)
- It also talks of the Harmony remote, and for the sake of can/con, I’ll talk about it in a little more detail. Canadian invention, originally developed by Intrigue Technologies in Mississauga, On. Now owned by Logitech, it promises ‘amazingly simple operation of any home theatre,’ and comes in metallic silver or gunmetal black. It boasts a simpler design; it has command buttons like ‘watch TV’ or ‘listen to music,’ but sadly no ‘go to the kitchen and get me a drink’ button. It’s what is called a ‘learning remote,’ it’s able to adapt to a variety of different makes and models of living room technology (but it won’t fetch). It can do this because new users must log on to the harmony website (www.logitech.com/harmony) and enter the makes and models of their entertainment devices. The programming codes are then downloaded into the Harmony. It is also able to emulate the signals of existing remotes for brands not found on the site (such as older models). As of October 2003, approx. 26 000 users had entered info on 280 000 components since the remote was introduced in 2001 (Stat from Canadian Business magazine - that’s almost eleven each!-I think this is off). It retails for CDN$299.99 at futureshop.ca
-But enough with the technical malarkey, how are these things marketed? I looked at the Harmony and Nevo websites to see what kind of people they were targeting. The Harmony website has images of family members playfully wrestling the remote out of one another’s hands as they joyfully operate the remote with ease. The Nevo website, on the other hand, does not seem so family oriented. It features video clips of the devices capabilities, and situates it in a living room that is more ‘Miami Vice’ than ‘Family Circus.’ In general, the language used to describe these devices seems stereotypically male oriented (one line I rather like from Popular mechanics again: “Omnipotence doesn’t come cheap”… Cablecaster magazine likening to a car), and focuses on their slick and sleek designs, which are chock full of funky features (lcd, touch screens, one button operating, internet access etc…), and their performance specs. All of this makes these remotes seem way more important than their actual use: let’s not forget, that basically, it’s a device to enable you to change channels on your television without getting up out of your chair.
-Of course that’s just me. The politics behind who controls the remote are a little more involved. It has been said that the one who wields the remote has the ultimate power, able to “seize broadcast signals from mid-air, banish from sight all home decorating shows or movies with subtitles and make appear before the eye an endless string of car chases and explosions.” (Robert Cribb’s article) Hmm…I wonder who has the remote? While I am partial to the occasional car chase myself, that previous description sounds rather stereotypically male, doesn’t it? Well, when one pictures a remote control, especially a universal remote, it’s seen as a toy, with all it’s funky little functions and capabilities.
-But, according to Rebecca Sullivan, a professor of gender studies and popular culture at the U of Calgary, this toy ‘masculinized’ TV watching by making it something to be tinkered and fiddled with (through the act of channel surfing). Masculinized in the sense that men are seen as the aficionados of gadgets, whereas women are designated by society as technophobes, causing them to be forced to sit through whatever their significant other is watching (or leave the room). And then there is the entire concept of ‘surfing’ , which has been known to cause much strife in the home, and is generally attributed to the male of the species. Women are usually thought to change channels in a manner that allows one to actually figure out what is on before moving to the next one.
-Now I must ask, to flip, or not to flip? How do you guys watch TV? Does it cause issues with you friends/roommates/significant others?
-A 1998 phone survey conducted in the U.S polled 715 men and women (all in serious relationships) and found that 48% have argued over who gets the remote, and 65% bicker over the choice of show. Men are more likely than women to admit to channel surfing, and if we break it down by age, 44% of those aged 18-24 will resist giving up the remote, compared to 17% of those aged 45-54 (both genders).
-So, according to the articles I have read in preparation for this presentation, the TV/universal remote is partly a constantly evolving technology that is bringing us closer to the idea of a ‘wired home’ and partly to demonstrate that men and women have different ways of watching TV, ways that don’t always mesh. I can see how the importance of the remote has increased as we spend more and more time in front of the TV, since she who wields the flicker decides what to watch. But I find it hard to believe that it is so cut and dried. Are women really more likely to relinquish the remote? Because I’m not.
Things to ponder:
What other technologies can you think of that are seen to cause so much strife in the home?
**************
References:
Libin, Kevin. “Out of One, Many.” Canadian Business 14-26 October 2003: 119
“Channel-surfing Men Rule the Roost: balance of power tilted toward guys at home—study.” Daily News. Halifax, N.S.: 1 July 1996, pg. 16.
Cribb, Robert. “Master of my remote at last;” Toronto Star. Toronto, On.: 11 December 2003, p.L2
Day, Rebecca. “For Control Freaks Only.” Popular Mechanics. January 1999: 56
Harmony remote’s website: www.logitech.com/harmony
Huang, Thomas. “Control freaks just gotta hold onto the remote.” The Province. Vancouver, BC: 3 February 1999, p C3.
Kadane, Lisa. “Remote possibilities: Is the holder of the channel changer really in control?” Calgary Herald. Calgary, AB: 7 September 2003, p. F4.
Lewis, Justin. The Ideological Octopus: an exploration of television and its audience. New York: Routledge, 1991.
Nevo’s website: http://www.mynevo.com/.
“Re-inventing the wheel.” Cablecaster Feb/Mar 2003: 28.
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September 25, 2004
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GenderScripts and The Short Life and Death of Audrey™
According to van Oost (2004, p. 195), "'gender script' refers to the representations an artifact's designers have or construct of gender relations and gender identities - representations that they then inscribe into the materiality of that artifact. Like gender itself, which is defined as a multi-level process, gender scripts function on an individual and a symbolic level, reflecting and constructing gender differences in the division of labor."
In The Gendering of a Communication Technology: The Short Life and Death of Audrey™ (LR Shade, pp. 294-308 in Out of the Ivory Tower: Taking Feminist Research to the Community, ed. Andrea Martinez and Meryn Stuart, Toronto: Sumach Press, 2003), I looked at 3Com’s Audrey™, described by the company in a press release as “a breakthrough Internet appliance created for the kitchen, living room or ‘nerve center’ of any home. Audrey, with one-touch access to email, Internet channels, a household calendar, address book and Palm™ HotSync® technology, debuts as the first in 3Com’s Ergo® line of lifestyle-centered connected appliances.” Audrey™ was targeted and marketed expressly for the upper-middle class woman and her family, and was featured in an array of designer kitchen colors—“ocean, meadow, sunshine, linen and slate”. Introduced in October 2000, 3Com announced “the end of life” for Audrey™ in March 2001. The chapter looks at the short life and death of Audrey™, examining the premise of Internet appliances in the wake of the promises of the wired “New Economy” and the specific gendering of Audrey™ through an analysis of their promotional material.
The Gendering of a Communication Technology
....“We named it Audrey because we want to emphasize the personal nature of
this appliance. We want you to think of her as a member of the family,”
3Com President Bruce Claflin told TechTV News (Godoy, 2000).
A significant body of research has looked at how communication technologies have been gendered both through their social uses—which have often been unintended—and their design (Shade, 2002). The telephone is particularly illustrative here, as researchers such as Rakow (1992) and Moyal (1992) have shown how women have used the telephone as a tool of community bonding and family “kin keeping”. However, as Martin (1991) has demonstrated in a case study of the roll-out of telephone services in Canada, the original purpose of the telephone, as envisioned by Bell Canada, was as an imperative to meet the business needs of men. The feminization of the telephone became apparent when women were first hired as operators, and then later when a viable culture of the telephone developed for socialization. Telephone technology and design has since changed considerably in order to appeal to the female consumer, reflecting its status as an indispensable domestic artifact, through stylistic trends, including colors (from the plain black telephone to pale hues) to design (the Princess telephone and the cartoon-licensed phones) to technological innovations (push-button to portables) (Lupton, 1993). With the exception of the Barbie computer and the Macintosh IMAC computer (which comes in an array of funky colors) the design of the computer has not, so far, been particularly gendered. Thus, the Audrey™ appliance can be seen as a particular instance where the technology (whose primary purpose is for e-mail and calendering) has been developed as a specific female consumer item.
The relations between gender, consumption, and technology have been increasingly documented by several scholars, notably Schwartz-Cowan 1985), Oldenziel (1999), Cockburn and Dilic (1994), and Horowitz and Mohun (1998). They have pointed out how, in many instances, technologies that exist in the women’s sphere (such as domestic technologies) are oftentimes not considered ‘real’ technologies. It is assumed that these ‘technologies of consumption’, as Lubar (1998) refers to them, are to be consumed by women in a passive fashion. Technological designers and promoters rarely consider that technologies can be utilized in unforeseen ways, or that technological artifacts can be actively resisted.
Audrey™ was designed, according to 3Com’s advertising copy, as “the digital home assistant with style”. Just as with the various designs the television set has assumed throughout the years to meld into the changing domestic décor (Spigel, 1992), the aesthetics of Audrey™ were carefully considered in relation to its alignment amongst other domestic appliances and its placement within various rooms in a house – kitchen, bedroom, family room.
Promotional material featured Audrey™ as a new home appliance for married (and presumably well-off heterosexual) women to keep up with their busy family lives. Indeed, 3Com hired anthropologists to study the “lifestyle habits” of families, and found, not surprisingly, that “families are busy, and both their homes and their schedules are disorganized” (Couzin, 2000). Audrey™ features included a Datebook (“keeps all your family’s events in one place”), an Address book, an e-mailer (letting one send “an e-mail in your own handwriting” and providing “instant access to e-mail”), and a Palm synchronizer (“keeps you on top of your family’s busy schedule”).
Audrey™ was designed to be “family friendly” and “a product easy enough for the whole family to use (Wagner, 2000). Ad copy boasted, “Audrey has the taste for the latest information…a flair for communication…a gift for getting it done”. One ad showed a refrigerator covered with a bevy of notes and photographs, birthday party invitations, soccer game schedule, prescriptions, magnets, notes (‘Hi honey! Sorry I’m running late. Dinner is in the fridge, just pop it in the oven. I’ll be back at 8”), shopping lists, recipes, postcards, kids paintings… indeed, all the accoutrements from a normal, busy family life. Swap this mess for a simple ‘family organizer’, ad copy hinted. Life, then, will be regularized, scheduled, less stressed. One could argue that Audrey™ was tapping into the ‘home beautiful’ sensibility of what I will call here the ‘Martha Stewartization’ of domestic femininity amidst a striving for uncontroversial gender relations. Audrey™ was a tool designed for the private, domestic sphere—and in this case, coded as gendered. Like other domestic technologies, Audrey™ was promoted as a ‘labor saving’ device (think of the washing machine and dishwasher), a family organizer and communicator (e-mail replaces the telephone) and a leisure device (the web-based channels akin to television and radio soaps, perhaps).
There is no doubt that 3Com was attempting to tap into the growing market for women online. A Pew Internet and American Life study released in 2000 revealed that the fastest growing demographic online was women, with older women constituting the highest number (the socio-economic range was middle to upper-middle class). The most popular use of the Internet for women, the Pew study found, was e-mail, utilized to keep up with distant family and friends, and serving as an ‘isolation antidote’. The most popular web activities of women, according to the Pew study, included looking for health or medical information, checking out job information, playing games online, and hunting for religious or spiritual information. Men, on the other hand, listed as their favourite web activities looking for news and financial information online, selling and buying stocks online, looking for information about a product or service, participating in online auctions, looking for information about hobbies or interests, seeking political information, and checking sports and information (Pew, 2000).
References
Cockburn, Cynthia and Ruza Furst-Dilic, eds. 1994. Bringing technology home: Gender and technology in a changing Europe. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Couzin, Jennifer. 2000. Too Cool for Christmas? The Industry Standard, December 25.
Godoy, Maria. 2000. 3Com Hopes Consumers Will Welcome ‘Audrey’ Home. TechTV.com, October 17. Available from World Wide Web: http://www.techtv.com/news/computing/story/0,24195,3005889,00.html
Horowitz, Roger and Arwen Mohun eds. 1998. His and hers: Gender, consumption, and technology. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia.
Lubar, Steven. 1998. Men/Women/Production/Consumption in His and hers: Gender, consumption, and technology, edited by Roger Horowitz and Arwen Mohun. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, pp. 7-37.
Lupton, Ellen. 1993. Mechanical brides: Women and machines from home to office. New York: Cooper-Hewitt National Museum of Design, Smithsonian Institute, and Princeton Architectural Press.
Martin, Michele.1991. Hello central?: Gender, culture, and technology in the formation of telephone systems. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Moyal, Ann. 1992. The gendered use of the telephone: An Australian case study. Media, Culture and Society 14:51-72.
Oldenziel, Ruth. 1999. Making technology masculine: Men, women and modern machines in America, 1870-1945. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Pew Internet and American Life Project. 2000. Tracking online life:
How women use the internet to cultivate relationships with family and friends. Available from World Wide We: http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=11
Rakow, Lana. 1992. Gender on the line: Women, the telephone, and community life. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
Schwartz-Cowan, Ruth. 1985. More work for mother: The ironies of household technology from the open hearth to the microwave. NY: Basic Books.
Shade, Leslie Regan. 2002. Gender and community in the social construction of the internet. New York: Peter Lang.
Spigel, Lynn. 1992. Make room for TV: Television and the family ideal in postwar America. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
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September 22, 2004
Mini-Essay One
Instructions:
Choose ONE essay only
500-750 words maximum
Refer to course readings as needed (you do not have to refer to all of the readings!)
Due October 5th. You may email to me as attachment or submit in class.
1. What does Ursula Franklin mean by holistic technologies and prescriptive technologies, and how does she distinguish amongst them? Give an example of each.
2. What is meant by technological determinism? Give an example. What are criticisms against technological determinism?
3. Are there, as Wajcman contends, male designs on technology?
4. Comment on one of these two statements by McGaw:
--“Looking at feminine technologies makes visible precisely those aspects of technology that we need to examine if we seek alternatives to a modern, Western technology that appears to be self-destructive, self justifying, and self perpetuating.”
--“Some might argue that neglecting feminine technology means telling only half of the technological story. I submit that it means missing the most important parts.”
5. What is meant by a ‘gender script’ analysis of technologies? Give some examples.
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September 21, 2004
Schedule of Artifact Presentations
September 21
--Adrienne Hiles, S. J. Pariso, Siobhan Quinn
September 28
--Elena Richards, Sonia Falkovitch, Sara Homer, Nathaniel Jewitt
October 5
--Jessica Landry
October 12
--Anders Yates, Andrea Young
October 19
--Zaida Marquez, Dan Hughes
October 26
--Daniel Nahimas-Leonard, Veronica Louis, Photo Sotirapoulos
November 2
--Adam Mintz, Michael Mastroberardino
November 9
--Cassidy Lerman
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September 17, 2004
Add Gender and Stir??
Powerpoints for class lecture and discussion on Feminist Perspectives on Technology, September 21, 2004
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Boys and Their Toys
There has been a lot of research lately looking at issues of masculiniity and technology. Here's a recent article of interest; unfort., Concordia Library does not have this journal (if interested, try inter-library loan):
Marie Lohan and Wendy Faulkner, Masculinities and Technologies: Some Introductory Remarks, Men and Masculinities vol. 6., no, 4 (April 2004): 319-329(11).
Another article online - I cannot locate its citation is Boys and their Toys: Men’s Pleasures in Technology by Tine Kleif and Wendy Faulkner - google this to download.
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Feminist Perspectives on Technology
Excerpted from Gender, Community and the Social Constitution of the Internet, by Leslie Regan Shade, PhD Thesis submitted to McGill University's Graduate Program in Communication, 1997.
FEMINIST PERSPECTIVES ON TECHNOLOGY
By contrast, feminist theories of technology have always been attentive to Winner's insistence that social studies of technology instill a sense of the social consequences of technology. Feminist theories and case studies have been preoccupied with ensuring equitable access to technological know-how in the workplace, educational settings, and in domestic contexts; with debunking the dominant masculinist mythos surrounding technology; and with the creation and practice of environmentally-sound communities and technological methods.
As Cockburn and Ormrod point out, feminist historical analyses have underscored several conspicuous components missing from mainstream social studies of technology (Cockburn, Ormrod, 1994, 12-13). They point out that a focus on women can highlight the connections between production and consumption, and production and reproduction. It can also pinpoint the relevant social actors and the gendered assumptions in the design, diffusion, and consumptive stages of a technology's life-cycle. An emphasis on the 'culture' of a technology has been brought centre-stage, and "these studies show that technological change is quite capable of transforming detailed tasks and activities without changing the fundamental asymmetry and inequality of the relation between women and men" (Ibid, 13).
Most importantly, feminist analyses of technology have taken an avowedly political stance, with their ongoing concern with the implications of technologies for women, their work, reproduction, and consumption, and in the wider sphere of the feminine domain: nutrition, horticulture, contraception, childbirth, the environment, and equitable educational and workplace sites.
The resurgence of women's issues in the 1970's created an opportunity to raise feminist issues related to technology in an institutional context. The professional association for research in the history of technology, the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT) sponsored a sub-group in 1976, WITH (Women in Technological History). From this group came panels on gender issues in technology, exploring women as actors in technological innovation and change, subsequently published in Martha Moore Trescott's 1979 edited collection, Dynamos and Virgins Revisited. [3]
One of the seminal papers regarding women and technological history was published in 1979. In "From Virginia Dare to Virginia Slims", Ruth Schwartz Cowan articulated four main topical areas of concern to historians of women's technologies:
WOMEN AS BEARERS AND REARERS OF CHILDREN
Cowan points out that, although many technologies directly affecting women have long histories, they are rarely accorded entry into the standard textbooks of technological history. As she says, "the indices to the standard histories of technology...do not contain a single reference to such a significant cultural artifact as the baby bottle...the history of the uniquely female technologies is yet to be written, with the single exception of the technologies of contraception"...(Cowan, 1979, and 1991, 292-3).
WOMEN AS WORKERS
Pervasive facts related to women in the economy include: 1) women have been systematically paid less than men doing the same work; 2) women's work has been consistently ghettoized; and 3) women are very often considered transient participants in the labor force.
WOMEN AS HOMEMAKERS
Women's place has been traditionally thought to reside in the home, and the household has both resisted industrialization and remained decentralized.
WOMEN AS ANTI-TECHNOCRATS
Women, Cowan says, have been socially instructed not to consider technology as a viable profession: "We have trained our women to opt out of the technological order as much as we have trained our men to opt into it" (Cowan, 1991, 302).
At the same time as the social constructivist and social shaping methodologies were being elucidated, feminists were developing their own criticisms of science and gender, and expounding new theories, such as feminist standpoint epistemologies, which "ground a distinctive feminist science in a theory of gendered activity and social experience" (Harding, 1986, 141). [4]
Drawing from Cowan's initial work, feminist sociotechnical perspectives moved away from postulations of technology as either merely oppressive or merely liberating forces, and looked at technology "as a network of forces and relations which affects us differently according to where we are positioned in the production and reproduction of labour" (Karpf, 1987, 159). By refocusing women's involvement in technology to include, not just the productive side, but the reproductive and consumption angles, women's involvement in technology has been made more explicit. Steering away from determinist analyses, "feminist scholars have forced their colleagues to consider such difficult questions as sexism in traditional definitions of technology and thus in traditional history of technology; the value-laden nature of our culture's body of technology; relationships between gender and technology and power; the nature of technological `progress'; real motivations for invention and technological change; and what is appropriate technology" (Stanley, 1992, 467).
Feminist scholarship in technology is by nature inter-and multi-disciplinary, spanning the disciplines of history, anthropology, sociology, communications, psychology, literature, and education. Feminist sociotechnical research then, "can help to create models for interdisciplinary approaches that are academically sound yet cross disciplinary boundaries" (Rothschild, 1983, xxiii). Feminist research often concentrates on the powerless, as well as the powerful, in exploring the interrelated nature of workers, work and technologies, and, as such, often promotes cross-cultural studies. [5]
Judith McGaw (1989) has succinctly suggested what a feminist perspective can be for the history and study of technology. Drawing on the work of Evelyn Fox Keller, who examined the masculinity of science and the constitutive elements of a feminist science (Keller, 1983, 1985, 1992), McGaw expands the notion of feminist theory to include not just attention to the concerns of women in technology, but rather to the wider domain of the ideology of gender, which ascribes particular characteristics to men and women. [6]
McGaw is especially cognizant of both the way that gender assumptions have shaped technology, and the way that gender notions shape the way technological history is written. She therefore has outlined a tripartite change in the scholarly trajectory so that such gender bias will be minimized. First, McGaw wants us to remember that gender is not biologically or behaviorally based, but is rather an ideology. This ideology attributes polarities to the domains of men and women: men are active, rationale, aggressive, and in control; women are passive, irrational, and subordinate. In technological studies, men are typically shown to be producers of technology, women mere consumers.
Several studies have since debunked this myth, most notably Cowan on the effects of industrialization on domestic technologies. In More Work for Mother (1983) she recounts how two different classes of American housewives actively shaped the success of domestic technologies amid burgeoning industrialization. Similarly, recent studies on the technological development of the telephone conducted by Michele Martin (1991) reveal how women's appropriation of the telephone into the domestic sphere changed the developmental trajectory of the telephone from an instrument of solely business concerns to one that encompassed residential uses, and Lynn Spigel's (1992) study of the introduction of the television into the American home also reveals that women were active negotiators of the rules and practices that the television assumed in the domestic context.
Secondly, McGaw recommends that any serious study on gender and technology should concentrate not only on the impact of technology on women, but also on the social shaping of the men who were responsible for the design and diffusion of the technology. What notions of masculinity and attendant socialization influenced the technological path? McGaw believes that the doctrine of separate spheres places undue emphasis on looking at history through gender, rather than at gender in history. This socially constructed separation should therefore not be encouraged, as important questions-such as the relationship between the unmechanized work of women to the mechanized work of men-can often be ignored.
And lastly, McGaw emphasizes that the attribution of females to 'passive' domains and males to 'active' domains needs to be challenged. For instance, consumption is widely held to be a passive activity conducted by women, but as the above studies indicate, such consumption can be a vital and surprising force. For instance, Cowan's (1989) call for consumer-focused research and her itinerary for the "consumption junction", which she defines as the "interface where technological diffusion occurs", and "the place where technologies begin to reorganize social structures", is an ideal locus for situating various studies on technological systems. Cowan is wary, however, of generalizing the consumer, but feels it is just this variability of the consumer that can "add rather than detract from the usefulness of consumer-focused analysis, because it reminds us that we must define consumers in terms of the artifact about which they are making choices, as well as by other socioeconomic variables" (Ibid, 263-4). What about male consumption? How has this influenced technological development? (Think of the contemporary example of suburban California garage-tinkerers who came up with the Apple computer, and therefore radicalized the computer industry from its mainframe mentality. See Levy, 1993). As well, notions of nurturance are generally thought to reside in the female sphere only, and rarely explored in the male domain. How has paternalism influenced technological design?
Feminist perspectives on technology stress the social context of technology. This is where the importance of the various and heterogeneous social factors in the shaping of technological design, change, and diffusion, and the interrelatedness of the work, lives, and status of the producers and consumers can be explored. This research agenda concentrates on the effects of society on technology, rather than just the effects of technology on society.
Six years after co-editing The Social Shaping of Technology, Judy Wajcman elaborated on the emerging feminist analyses of science and technology by analyzing how both the production and use of technology is shaped by male power and prerogatives, and by broadening the definition of technology to include those devices often relegated to the dustbin of `women's domains'. Wajcman demonstrated that political choices are integral in the very implementation and design of technologies. For instance, in her discussion of domestic technology, she urged an analysis, not only at the design level of specific technologies, but also at its location within both the public and private spheres. How have the designers of domestic technologies structured their tools around gender assumptions? Regarding the built environment, Wajcman reminded us that it is salient to ask what political interests have motivated the design of modern cities and the transport facilities within them. What sexual divisions are built into the domestic and urban environment that perpetrate the cultural representation of men and women? How have computers and the engineering culture been constructed to disregard and exclude women?
Wajcman rejected essentialist stances which posit that technologies must be based on universal feminine attributes and values. She therefore critiqued the tenets of ecofeminism by writing that "rather than simply going `back to nature', we need to work from within and without to create another kind of culture." Forging beyond masculinity and femininity to create technologies that subscribe to new social values and needs is an imperative task. For Wajcman, confronting technology involves contesting technological sites which are in need of change, gaining access to technological institutions in the fields of education and work, and demystifying masculine expert conceits (Wajcman, 1991).
The rejection of technological determinism is implicit in feminist analyses of technology. Exposing the fallacy of technology as a 'liberating' factor is of prime consideration for researchers.This has been demonstrated by some of the aforementioned work on domestic technologies, and is a constant theme in analyses of reproductive technologies. As an example, Rothschild (1983) summarizes the debate on explorations of the rise of the typewriter and women's office employment. Feminist research, while not taking the deterministic view nor completely ignoring the role of the typewriter in the feminization of office work, has sought other variables to explain the growth of the female clerical labor force in the United States in the late-19th to early-20th centuries. These include the distinctiveness of the labor force, employment patterns, demographics, and economic and business connections. By examining these complex characteristics, it was discovered that the growth of changing business practices, coupled with shifting market ideologies and the emergence of a well-educated female populace, as well as the new technology itself, were all instrumental in `creating' the phenomenal growth in women's office employment. But, the technology itself did not `cause' this employment growth.
Some of the trajectories feminist sociotechnical perspectives have taken include: rectifying the historiographical omission of the contributions and participation of women in technological innovation, design, and use; paying attention to technologies that have been ignored or dismissed because they have resided within the 'women's sphere', such as domestic technologies; examining the historical exclusion of women from the domain of technology, particularly in the labor process; and, examining what technologies based on women's values would encompass.
RECTIFYING THE HISTORIOGRAPHICAL OMISSION OF THE CONTRIBUTIONS AND PARTICIPATION OF WOMEN IN TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION, DESIGN, AND USE
In A World Without Women, Noble (1992) traces the gendered boundaries of scientific culture from its advent in early monasticism to its 19-th century modern origins, revealing how the world of science has perpetrated a marginal and discriminatory environment for women. As Noble shows, by tracing the Christian clerical culture of science, several characteristics endemic to modern science are illuminated. These include the separation of subject and object; the preference for objectivity over subjectivity; an often depersonalized discourse; the perpetuation of the stereotype of the scientist as asocial; and his alienation and dread of women.
Noble's quest begins at the dawn of the Christian Era, when androgynous ideals of Christian piety were heralded for both men and women. The Christian intelligensia of the age accepted women as both disciples and patronesses, and double monasteries and didaskaleions (co-ed study circles), were common. However, women's entry into the cultural mainstream was short-lived. By the 2nd century, clerical asceticism within the church, along with its concomitant acceptance of sexual renunciation and the ideology of virginity, was revived, and heresy was equated with the proximity of women. The culture of science was essentially a religious calling and a medium of Christian devotion. It was centered in the medieval university, a bachelor's sanctuary adhering to celibate ideals. During the Scientific Revolution, women could be educated at home by their fathers or by male tutors, but marriage and study were mutually exclusive. Although noblewomen hosted scientific salons and entered the mainstream of Western thought in arts and craft circles (medical cookery and midwifery), the scientific priesthood, while expropriating their knowledge, still defined science and discouraged and disqualified women as knowledge-seekers. Educational reforms for women in the 19th century resulted in the establishment of many new universities, with scientific pursuits both a religious and capitalist aspiration. The burgeoning professionalization of science in the mid-20th century, and the resultant revival of an ascetic ideal, Noble feels, once again relegated women to the fringes.
In Mothers of Invention (1993) Stanley has indefatigably documented the achievements of women's inventions in all aspects of human endeavors, including areas of women's work and life usually not deemed as significant technology (food, clothing, shelter, menstruation, childbirth, nursing, childcare, and healing apparatuses) to achievements in agriculture, medicine, and computing. Stanley has suggested that "...men have adopted technology-and specifically its creative aspect, invention-as their equivalent for childbearing, have made it taboo for women, and will fight harder, if sometimes unconsciously, than in virtually any other discipline or field of endeavor, to keep it that way" (Stanley, 1992, 459).
Anne Macdonald's (1992) historical survey of women patentees in U.S. history from the 19th century to the present is, like Stanley's encompassing research, both a celebration of women's superb ingenuity and ambition, and a cautionary tale of the rigors of the patenting process, as her survey is replete with the sad cases of latter-day compensatory recognition, stolen ideas, or male expropriations, often settled with costly patent interference suits. MacDonald details a dizzying array of women's patents, from domestic tools to chemical compounds. Like her predecessor Ida Tarbell, who in the late 1800's marshalled Patent Office statistics to proclaim the use-value of women's domestic inventions, Macdonald makes a spirited pitch for continued recognition of women patentees in the public record, and educational reforms to encourage science and mathematics training for young women.
TO PAY ATTENTION TO TECHNOLOGIES THAT HAVE BEENIGNORED OT DISMISSED BECAUSE THEY HAVE RESIDED WITHIN 'WOMEN'S SPHERE', SUCH AS DOMESTIC TECHNOLOGIES
Technologies which were considered marginal or not subject to scholarly scrutiny, such as domestic technologies, are now legitimate and vital venues for research, thanks to the pioneering work of Cowan. In More Work for Mother (1983), Cowan provides a history, not just of housework, but of household technologies. Through her concepts of work process (household work is inextricably linked to other household activities) and technological system (each household appliance is part of a system of implements), Cowan demonstrated how the rising industrialization of the 19th and 20th centuries mediated the availability of tools necessary to fulfill domestic duties. Cowan enquired into how social and economic institutions affected the character and availability of the tools with which housework is done, and concluded that new tools and changing technologies created a rising expectation for American consumers. Ironically, the new tools and technologies also created 'more work for mother'-between 1920 and 1960, women found that the new 'labor saving' devices multiplied their workloads. New technologies did not create more leisure time for mother, because 'more' (in terms of cleanliness, a varied cuisine) was expected of her. As well, any semblance of the communality of household chores shifted to an individualized, suburbanized experience. For instance, laundry changed from practices such as neighborhood 'Blue Monday' sessions and the widespread availability of commercial services, to individual home appliance ownership. And, the maintenance of many household technologies was simply not feasible unless there was someone at home full-time to operate them. With the increase of women's participation in the labor force in the 1970's, women then typically assumed the 'second shift' of household duties (Hochschild, 1989). [7]
TO EXAAMINE THE HISTORICAL EXCLUSION OF WOMEN FROM THE DOMAIN OF TECHNOLOGY, PARTICULARLY IN THE LABOR PROCESS
Cynthia Cockburn has been influential in developing theories of gender and technology, particularly in sites of technological change within the labor process, where gender relations have been challenged in terms of both capitalism and hierarchy (Braverman, 1974). Her study on the history of typesetting technology in Great Britain revealed how male compositors, faced with obsolescence of their craft because of mechanization, fought to exclude unskilled women from their trade. The new computerized technology of photocomposition was an attack on the resolute definition of what constituted an impregnable 'man's craft', and an example "that the gender relations of work and public life, of the factory and the street, are sexual politics too" (Cockburn, 1985, 142). To Cockburn, this was a power struggle involving both gender and class: "The appropriation of muscle, capability, tools, and machinery by men is an important source of women's subordination, indeed, it is part of the process by which females are constituted as women" (Cockburn, 1985, 129).
Her later work with Susan Ormrod, tracing the developmental trajectory from innovation to consumption of one technology, the microwave oven, was chosen as a research site in order to examine the questions: how are technological outcomes shaped by gender, and how does technology bear on gender relations? Cockburn and Ormrod designated the various social relations they examined technology relations: from the initial conception of the microwave, to the design and manufacturing process, the penetration of the microwave into the retail trade with its requisite advertising and point-of-sale positioning, and finally, its entrance into the household. (Cockburn, Ormrod, 1994).
Barker and Downing (1985) wrote about female office worker's resistance to the patriarchal order in the workplace at the eve of office mechanization through word processing technology. Rather than lead to de-skilling, proponents of word processing claimed the technology would free secretaries from the drudgery of typing, and allow them to partake in more interesting work. Despite the admitted convenience of word processing, it did not, for the most part, `free' most secretaries (usually all female) from donkeywork. It did lead many secretaries from assuming varied job duties to only one-and a tedious one at that-of being in the `word processing' pool. Writing almost a decade later, Webster (1993) has remarked how the mass computerization of offices has led to a loss of women worker's monopoly of expertise in word processing and more job deskilling, as more skilled male workers (including the managerial class) have learned keyboarding skills. [8]
TO EXAMINE WHAT TECHNOLOGIES BASED ON WOMEN'S VALUES WOULD ENCOMPASS
In the philosophical arena, feminist issues related to the ideology, epistemology, and values of technology are frequently invoked. Are there indeed feminist values in technology, and what would these be? Essentialist analyses assert that there are fixed and unified opposed male and female natures, and these proponents have tried to show how some `female' qualities such as subjectivity, intuition, creativity, nurturance, and even irrationality can and do play an often positive role in technology. Feminist standpoint epistemologies, as advocated by Sandra Harding, Dorothy Smith, and Hilary Rose, (Harding, 1986; Smith, 1974; Rose, 1983) for instance, claim that women are privileged epistemologically in that their historically under-represented position in society produces more 'accurate' and 'better' accounts of the 'real' world-an integration of "hand, brain, and heart", as Rose puts it. Ecofeminists (King, 1990; Cox, 1992; Seager, 1993) who celebrate women's potential to effect environmental change by linking promotion of global awareness, activism, and spirituality, insist that technologies must be based on these `universal' feminine attributes and values. Wajcman, however, criticizes such tenets, saying that "rather than simply 'going back to nature', we need to work from within and without to create another kind of culture" (Wajcman, 1991, 163-4). Harding (1986) questions whether there can be a feminist standpoint when there is a multiplicity of women encompassing a variety of races, classes, and ethnicities; and in support of this goal, she would have us embrace a "successor science". In response to this proposal, Haraway suggests that the politics of the partial perspective, a notion of objectivity that "privileges contestation, deconstruction, passionate construction, webbed connections, and hope for transformation of systems of knowledge and ways of seeing", (Haraway, 1991, 191-2) would be an apt maneuver.
Knut Sorenson (1992), in his empirical investigation of whether feminist attributes were to be found amongst a group of Norwegian engineering students and R&D scientists, found that the gendered character of organizational R&D and the "single-minded non-human orientation of technological discourse" was not a "fertile ground" for nurturance of feminine "caring ideals". He suggested, however, that the presence of more female scientists might rectify both this oversight and create a more hospitable environment for both male and female scientists.
A sensitivity to the nuances of masculinist and feminist impressions and activations of technology can often reveal new definitions and subtleties. Pacey acknowledges that "nearly all women's work, indeed, falls within the usual definition of technology. What excludes it from recognition is not only the simplicity of the equipment used, but the fact that it implies a different concept of what technology is about" (Pacey, 1993, 104). And, Kramarae has written that: "Technological processes have been studied from the (usually implicit) vantage of men's experiences. When one puts women at the center of analysis, male biases and masculinist ideologies become clearer, and one discovers new questions as well as fresh approaches to old questions. Women and men share some social processes, and there are other lines of differences (e.g. social class) which divide women from women and men from men, and which at times may unite working-class women and men. The challenge is to develop a more inclusive understanding of the social relations and ideologies of technological processes" (Kramarae, 1988, 7).
Confronting technological sites that are in need of change has been elaborated in both the global and local spheres. It can run the gamut from women protesting against nuclear technology (to include local protests such as women in Sellafield, England protesting their neighborhood nuclear reprocessing plant), and to the scholarly work by physicists such as Rosalie Bertell (1985), to women boycotting sanitary products and challenging the disposable paper industry because of their continued use of questionable organic chemical compounds (Armstrong, Scott, 1992; Cox, 1992). Challenging technology can mean questioning the design of urban transportation technologies which are typically not hospitable to women and small children (Weisman, 1992). It can also mean trying to redesign computer interface systems so that they are more user-friendly and amenable to women (Benston, 1989; Benston and Balka, 1993).
Gaining access to technological institutions in the field of education and work is a key ingredient in technological equality and an ongoing struggle. In the present technological work system, Ursula Franklin (1985) encourages women, in order to effectuate change, to strengthen their notion of community. This idealized community would provide "non-judgemental, non-pressuring support of all women by all women", and would serve to counteract the occupational segregation that Franklin feels is endemic to women in technical professions (she doesn't mention, however, that the playground and the daycare are often the common, albeit often rushed, meeting grounds for many women of diverse occupations). Franklin's point, nevertheless, is that women's greatest contribution to the current technological landscape lies in their potential to change the present structure by "understanding, critiquing, and changing the very parameters that have kept women away from technology" (Franklin, 1990, 104).
Integrating females into the new technological landscape and recognizing gender differences in educational environments is also of prime importance. Recent studies on the integration of the computer into schools reveals how new technologies perpetuate and reinforce the masculine cultural system. In spite of equity legislation in first world countries, the ratio of females to males in computer science courses, and the number of professional female computer workers in the corporate and academic world, is quite dismal (Clarke, 1992). Feminist analyses of technology should strive to uncover both the dimensions of these inequities and highlight the very real success stories of technological integration and empowerment that are available.
Morgall (1993) advocates a feminist technology assessment, whose aim is to integrate technological social processes with other social processes. Technology assessment (TA) is the process of identifying and evaluating the impact of technological change. It has traditionally been a way to provide industry and government with methods to examine the health and safety, efficiency, economic feasibility, and regulatory measures necessary to bring new products to the marketplace. This type of technology assessment, which Morgall dubs the policy orientation TA, acts more like a type of quality control, as it tends to support and encourage innovations, rather than cast them in a more critical light. Research-oriented TA, on the other hand, is more often carried out by social movements and groups seeking to control or influence the trajectory of technological development. Feminist TA subscribes to this alignment of TA, and is concerned with the everyday consequences of technology, including the effects of power, control and knowledge interests on women.
Morgall sees as a more urgent priority, not just getting more young girls and women into technology streams in education and the workplace, but rather to get women involved in decision-making. She advocates that women take a pro-active stance towards technology, and get actively involved in the policy process:
A TA that is appropriate for women would attempt to make women's contributions and women's needs visible to society-not only to the male members of society but to the female as well. It is not enough for policy-makers to be made aware of women's needs; women must look out for their own interests, and making their needs visible is a means of making all women aware of the role technology plays in their lives. It is important for women to understand how technology affects them and their lives, and how they can affect technology. The very definition of TA links it to policy-making. It is important that women, as a potential influence in directing technological development, play a part in policy-making (Morgall, 1993, 127).
Morgall's outline (Ibid, 199-208) of constitutive elements for a feminist TA consists of the following elements:
FEMINIST TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT (Morgall, 1993)
Theoretical Considerations:
...Interdisciplinary in nature
...Assessments must be appropriate for the specific technology
...Explore social relations of technology, including economic components, within an actual social context
...Explore all the relevant social actors and interests in the technological design, development, and diffusion
...Analyse systems of domination; labor division by sex; values
...Analyse the alternatives to the technology under question
...Democratic approach: allow for public participation by interested individuals, public interest groups, and others
Research Questions:
...Origins: Who developed this technology? (military, industry, university, private or public R&D)
...Use: What human or mechanical function does this technology replace, or enhance
...Potential for change: What social organizations and social relations will it affect?
...Potential for action: What procedures or modes of work will accompany and follow the use of this technology?
...Interests: What does this technology mean for women and how will they use it (if at all)?
...Needs Analysis: What are the potentially liberatory or unempowering aspects of this technology?
Methodology:
...Retroactive studies and historical analysis
...Trend Analysis
NOTES
[3] Until the 1990's the number of edited collections dealing with issues relevant to gender and technology had been small. These included Jan Zimmerman's The Technological Woman (N.Y.: Praeger, 1983), Joan Rothschild's Machina Ex Dea (N.Y.: Pergamon, 1983), Wendy Faulkner's and Eric Arnold's Smothered by Invention (London: Pluto Press, 1985), Cynthia Cockburn's Machinery of Dominance: Women, Men and Technological Know-How (London: Pluto Press, 1985), and Cheris Kramarae's Technology and Women's Voices (N.Y.: Routledge, 1988).
[4] Harding later examined the intersection of race, gender, and science. In her edited collection The "Racial" Economy of Science: Toward a Democratic Future (Bloomington; Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1993), she focuses on the `racial' economy of Western sciences and its prevailing 'Eurocentrism'. Harding defines 'racial' economy as "those institutions, assumptions, and practices that are responsible for disproportionately distributing along 'racial' lines the benefits of Western sciences to the haves and the bad consequences to the have-nots, thereby enlarging the gap between them"; and "Eurocentrism" as referring to "the assumption that Europe functions autonomously from other parts of the world; that Europe is its own origin, final end, and agent; and that Europe and people of European descent in the Americas and elsewhere owe nothing to the rest of the world" (Ibid, 2).
Such a narrow Eurocentric perspective, Harding contends, breeds a different form of scientific illiteracy and erodes any semblance of democratic commitment. One of the aims of her collection is to provide valuable resources so that a more objective understanding of the nature and consequences of Western science can be examined. Resources that Harding's collection investigates are anti-Eurocentric movements which have been increasingly in the vanguard, challenging prevailing assumptions about the efficacy and results of Western science; as well as methodological concepts as evidenced in the social studies of science and technology formulated by constructivists and feminist theoreticians, which have added immensely to our knowledge about how racist, sexist, and colonialistic platforms come to the fore. These agendas, increasingly recognizing changing notions of scientific value and objectivity, are having an impact on both institutional practices and diversity concerns in educational institutions, boding well for global democracy.
Four conceptual challenges in analyzing Western science's implications with racism and Eurocentrism are identified by Harding. She first elaborates the position that "'race', class, and gender form a matrix of privilege" (Ibid, 11), so our understanding of race policies must necessarily encompass both class and gender policies. Second, she reminds us, as many of the authors in this collection so energetically do, that science is a contested zone, and that "the goal of critics of racism and Eurocentrism is to make more democratic the political discussion of the sciences" (Ibid, 14). Can we believe anymore in 'pure science'? Harding thinks not and instead advocates the need to develop stronger standards of objectivity and a more rigorous methodological research agenda: a 'strong objectivity' would be able to conscientiously examine the heterogeneous social values that shape scientific research.
Like Harding, Londa Schiebinger asks "who gets to do science?" and finds that eighteenth century culture systematically discouraged all non-white peoples and women from becoming integrated into scientific and educational endeavors. Nature's Body: Gender in the Making of Modern Science (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1993) is an investigation of the impact of natural history in the eighteenth century and how gender relations and perceptions shaped this discourse. Through several case studies, Schiebinger uncovers the often hilarious yet politically saturated beliefs regarding racial and sexual differences that were concocted to justify scientific privilege. As Schiebinger points out, today we take the ideas of natural history for granted, but in the eighteenth century, the study of botany and the cultivation of botanical gardens, the fascination with apes and other non-human mammals, and the dissection and measurement of racial differences was a continual source of amazement and a popular attraction in both everyday culture and studious endeavors.
[5] As an example of this, consider the work done on female migrant farm workers in the high technology electronics manufacturing industry in the Silicon Valley by Aihwa Ong, "Disassembling Gender in the Electronics Age", Feminist Studies 13:609-626. See also Dennis Hayes, Behind the Silicon Curtain: The Seductions of Work in a Lonely Era (Montreal, NY: Black Rose Books, 1990).
[6] As Evelyn Fox Keller documents:
From an original focus on gender as a cultural norm guiding the psychosocial development of individual men and women, the attention of feminists soon turned to gender as a cultural structure organizing social (and sexual) relations between men and women, and finally, to gender as the basis of a sexual division of cognitive and emotional labor that brackets women, their work, and the values associated with that work from culturally normative delineations of categories intended as 'human'-objectivity, morality, citizenship, power, often even `human nature' itself (Keller, 1992, 16). See Evelyn Fox Keller, "Gender and Science: an update", pp. 15-36 in Secrets of Life, Secrets of Death: Essays on Language, Gender and Science (N.Y.: Routledge, 1992).
[7] A decade after Cowan's work was published, the household was inundated with a variety of new digitized domestic appliances, and her admonishments were still apt: "we can best solve the problems that beset many working wives and their families by not returning to the way things used to be (since that is probably impossible and, in view of the way things really used to be, hardly attractive), not by destroying the technological systems that have provided many benefits (and that much of the rest of the world is trying, for fairly good reasons, to emulate), and not by calling for the death of the family as a social institution (a call that the vast majority of people are unlikely to heed)-but by helping the next generation to neutralize both the sexual connotation of washing machines and vacuum cleaners and the senseless tyranny of spotless shirts and immaculate floors" (Cowan, 1983, 216).
[8] Years later, the health and safety risks of excessive keyboarding-repetitive stress syndrome and carpal tunnel syndrome-were directly attributable to poor ergonomic design and constant keyboarding. Resistance to the irksome nature of clerical work and office automation in the 1980's led to the diabolically humorous San Francisco-based magazine, Processed World, which, true to its Situationist origins, featured the technique of detournement (appropriating the images and tools of the `ruling class' into montages and cartoons), along with fictional accounts of office workers with 'bad attitudes' (Carlsson, 1990). This `bad attitude'- "the indignant and undying creative spirit in workers that refuses to conform altogether to the absurd demands of the job....walk[ing] a tightrope between the persistent effort to preserve one's psychic integrity and the necessity of participating at least minimally in the worker form" (Carlsson, 1990, 12) featured stories entitled "Kelly Call Girl", or those commenting on the hypocrisy of corporate feminism, and included, not just female, but male workers (this was perhaps reflective of the San Francisco Bay Area workforce at that time, constituted by over-educated and under-employed non-yuppies).
[9] For Harding, "an adequate successor science will have to be grounded on the resources provided by differences in women's social experiences and emancipatory political projects". See Sandra Harding, The Science Question in Feminism. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986, 244).
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Stanley, Autumn. "Do Mothers Invent?: The Feminist Debate in History of Technology," pop. 459-472 in The Knowledge Explosion: Generations of Feminist Scholarship, ed. Cheris Kramarae and Dale Spender. N.Y.: Teachers College Press, 1992.
Trescott, Martha Moore. Dynamos and Virgins Revisited: Women and Technological Change in History, An Anthology. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1979.
Weisman, Leslie. Discrimination by Design: A Feminist Critique of the Man-Made Environment. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1992.
Winner, Langdon. "Upon Opening the Black Box and Finding it Empty: Social Constructivism and the Philosophy of Technology." Science, Technology, & Human Values 18 (Summer 1993):362-378.
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September 12, 2004
Thinking About Technology
Powerpoints for the second week ... notes on social shaping perspectives on technology...
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September 11, 2004
Publishing Instructions
Hi Folks,
The following link contains instructions for posting comments and publishing articles on the Communication Technologies and Gender weblog.
Your publishing password will be distributed shortly. You can post comments about any of the articles without your password.
Have fun.
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September 10, 2004
Do Artifacts Have Politics?
Langdon Winner wrote a provocative and fascinating article in 1981 (later republished as a chapter in his book The Whale and The Reactor: A Search for Limits in an Age of High Technology, 1986) called "Do Artifacts Have Politics?" where he examined how technological artifacts have political properties through their design or use...and how this relates to power and authority...
One of his famous examples is the development of Long Island automobile overpasses by the architect Robert Moses...Winner contended that Moses designed his overpasses to be too low for buses to go through, thus denying them access to the parkways and beaches. Who used public transit? Why, the less economically privileged, and also Black Americans...
This example has been contested and debated, most recently by Bruno Latour in Domus (June 2004) where he argues that
"Fifty years later, New York City Departments of Transportation, Parks and Traffic Enforcement are still disputing how to keep trucks on or off parkways. Has Robert Moses discriminated against trucks? Surely, this was explicit in all the plans and this is why he made the bridges so low retaining the normal height for the other expressways: trucks had no truck going to the beaches. But has he discriminated against buses ‘full of blacks’? This is pure ideology, that of the social critique: to separate parkways from expressways is not the same as to keep whites and blacks apart. To jump too fast from one to the other is indulging into some sort of conspiracy theory.
When you begin to read artifacts not as neutral objects indifferent to goals and values, but as the central node of a power struggle, it's true that you enter into politics, but the question then becomes which sort of politics? To read discrimination against blacks into a bridge is not doing politics. It's simply doing architectural critique and the most innocuous at that, namely the one that sees artifacts as simply ‘embodying’ some type of oppression. “Give me the social structure, I will give you the shape technology should take.” But this means that buildings do nothing of their own: they simply carry forth the pure effect of domination. Which is going back precisely to the neutral idea of technology that was criticized earlier."
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Social Constructivism & Social Shaping Approaches
Excerpted from Gender, Community and the Social Constitution of the Internet, by Leslie Regan Shade, PhD Thesis submitted to McGill University's Graduate Program in Communication, 1997.
Dominant approaches towards technology have tended to focus on the ideology of technological determinism, where technology is perceived to be at once an autonomous, self-determining, and omniscient process. Such determinism treats technology as both panacea or scapegoat, and, for instance, can detract from questions regarding power and political prestige. [1] This objectification of technology can, as well, distract us from asking crucial questions regarding the varied social actors that contribute to the design, development, and diffusion of technology. Subscribing to a semblance of technological determinism can lead us unwittingly to assume that "technical change is in some sense autonomous, 'outside' of society, literally or metaphorically", and that "...technical change causes social change" (MacKenzie, Wajcman, 1985, 4-5).
To counteract this pervasiveness, recent social studies of technology have been useful in delineating the myriad social actors that shape technological change. The research imperatives of social constructivism, or the social shaping of technology, concentrate on the effects of society on technology, rather than just the effects of technology on society.
A social shaping examination of technological systems places an emphasis on the social factors that shape technological change, departing from dominant approaches towards technology that typically study the 'affects' or 'impact' of technology on society. By analyzing the social factors that shape technological change, questions can be asked such as "to what extent, and how does the kind of society we live in affect the kind of technology we produce? What role does society play in how the refrigerator got its hum, in why the light bulb is the way it is, in why nuclear missiles are designed the way they are?" (MacKenzie, Wajcman, 1985, 2).
Case studies inspired in social constructivism, as espoused and expostulated by a heterogeneous mixing of North American and European scholars, have been particularly influential in ferreting out specific instances of the various social uses of technologies (Bijker, Hughes, Pinch, 1987; Bijker, Law, 1992). The tenets of social constructivism developed from analytic programs in the history and sociology of science that took scientific theories and hypotheses to be products of their political, economic and cultural milieu. These social studies of science investigated the institution and practice of science and considered the social relationships between practitioners, networks of communication, patronage and reward systems, the day-to-day or laboratory life of science, and science as cultural phenomenon (Latour, 1988; Knorr-Cetina and Mulkay, 1983; Woolgar, 1988). Some of the case studies that the social constructivists have concentrated on include 'thick descriptions' of the development, design, and diffusion of the bicycle (Pinch, Bijker, 1987), electric car (Callon, 1987), bakelite (Bijker, 1987), aerospace technologies (Law and Callon, 1992), and fluorescent lighting (Bijker, 1992). This discourse, dealing as it does with technological heterogeneity, is necessarily multi-disciplinary, as "technology and its shaping has to do with the historical, the economic, the political, and the psychological, as well as with the sociological" (Bijker, Law, 1992, 5).
Social constructivism does not impose essentialisms, as it urges us to abandon near-cataclysmic obsessions with truth and representation. The idea of the individual actor-genius takes back-stage to the innumerable relevant social groups which are involved in the design, development, distribution, and diffusion of technology, whether they be human, technical, artifactual, or policy-oriented, and which constitute an intricate web of actor-networks. Often the randomness and incoherence of such actor-networks leads to a messy complexity, in contrast to the deterministically beatific slate of technical euphoria, or `progress'.
The nomenclature of the social constructivist methodology includes the concepts of relevant social groups, actor-networks, interpretive flexibility, the unintended consequences of technology, and closure (Bijker, Hughes, Pinch, 1989). Relevant social groups are the various groups that influence the invention, design, production and diffusion of new technologies. By concentrating on the minute details (social, economic, technical and political) that comprise case histories of various technologies, we become attuned to these relevant social groups, or actor-networks, that are initially inspired to design, create, and implement technologies. Actor-networks include not only human actors, but natural phenomena "that have been linked to one another for a certain period of time" (Callon, 1989), and these networks reveal an interpretive flexibility in how artifacts are designed, and in how different groups perceive the artifacts (Pinch, Bijker, 1989).
The difficulty with assigning 'effects' to technology as determinists would have us do is that not all of the `effects' are the same for everyone and every situation. Different social actors exhibit varying levels of interpretive flexibility in how they design or conceive and expropriate technologies. We can think of interpretive flexibility as sanctioning a wide spectrum of epistemological views. Here is the site where the 'unintended consequences' or 'double life' of technology can manifest itself. Despite painstaking and deliberate care, technology, with the assistance of diverse social actors, often detours from its original 'intentionality' track. "Technology leads a double life," Noble says, "...one which conforms to the intentions of designers and interests of power and another which contradicts them-proceeding behind the backs of their architects to reveal unintended consequences and unanticipated possibilities" (Noble, 1984, 324-5). The notion of closure is, as well, contested. Technological closure and stabilization occurs when "the social groups involved in designing and using technology decide that a problem is solved" (Bijker, et.al., 1987, 12). But, how does one account for all of the relevant social groups? What about those groups whose viewpoints on closure might be disregarded, or whom might not have the power (financial or political) to exert their interpretation of closure?
Ben Keen's (1987) brief history of the development of home video technology is illustrative of this technological double life. By mapping the byzantine process of technological development and design that occurred amid a highly competitive environment comprised of various actors, such as major electronics and entertainment corporations, Keen reveals the social shaping of video technology as foreseen by the various corporations, and how their construction of an idealized consumption created the "spaces and unintended possibilities" that allowed for the elaboration of new and unforeseen video practices.
For instance, Sony's battery-operated portapak of the late 1960's-early 1970's ushered in the Portapak Generation: the development of the notion of video as an alternative televisual experience, for both artistic and political expression. [2] Taking television viewing outside the boundaries of the living room, particularly if its messages were of an often oppositional nature, was a surprise for Sony, who conceived of more benign domestic practices. As Keen (1987) relates, video pirating, which came to dominate at least 70% of the market in the mid-1980's, was also an unintended consequence of its developmental trajectory. In 1976, Walt Disney Productions filed suit against Sony alleging that their `time-shift' advertising campaign was an incitement to breach copyright regulations. By the time the suit was finally settled in favor of Sony, entrepreneurs had started a fledgling and very profitable video distribution business, having already bought up all the software rights they could find. The early video market was also dominated by products not readily available through conventional television and film distribution channels, such as pornography. As Keen mentions, "as has happened so often in the past with the introduction of new communications technologies, the growth of video provided the ideal breeding ground for a moral panic of considerable proportions" (Ibid, 37).
The social constructivist methodology has been soundly criticized by Winner, when he comments that it eschews "an almost total disregard for the social consequences of technical choice...what the introduction of new artifacts means for people's sense of self, for the texture of human communities, for qualities of everyday living, and for the broader distribution of power in society..." (Winner, 1993, 368). The stance of interpretive flexibility merely reflects "moral and political indifference" (Ibid, 372) and an "[un]willingness to examine the underlying patterns that characterize the quality of life in modern technological societies" (Ibid, 372).
The social constructivist agenda has been criticized as well, for not considering gender as constitutive of the `relevant social groups' in the various case studies of technologies that have been examined. The notable exception has been Cowan's examination of the history of home heating and cooking systems in the United States, where she outlined the notion of the "consumption junction". This is "the place and time at which the consumer makes choices between competing technologies" and the place where "technologies begin to reorganize social behavior" (Cowan, 1989). By focusing on the consumer, then, the social implications of technologies for individuals and communities can be more easily understood and facilitated.
Fischer (1992, 21-22) has also recommended that studies of emergent technologies consider the social uses that individuals make of the technology, the effect on their everyday lives, and the change in social structure as a result of the collective use and response towards a technology. In Fischer's social history of the telephone, he has stressed the agency of consumers (notably women and farmers) in adapting the technology of the telephone for myriad social uses, against the predisposed imperatives of the vendors.
These research imperatives, and the insistence on fixating on the users or consumers and their social attachments echo Winner, who has cautioned and cajoled us to "...come to terms with ways in which our technology-centered world might be reconstructed. Faced with a variety of social and environmental ills, there is growing recognition that what is needed is a process of redirecting our technological systems and projects in ways inspired by democratic and ecological principles" (Winner, 1993, 376). Winner's admonitions are particularly timely, given the furious hype and hyperbole surrounding technological convergence and the development and deployment of virtual communities.
Notes
[1] Daniel Chandler writes, with respect to technological determinism: "Whatever the specific technological 'revolution' may be, technological determinists present it as a dramatic and `inevitable' driving force, the 'impact' of which will 'lead to' deep and 'far-reaching 'effects' or 'consequences.' This sort of language reflects an excited, prophetic tone which many people find inspiring and convincing but which alienates social scientists. See "Shaping and Being Shaped: Engaging with Media", in Computer-Mediated Communication Magazine V3(2) February 1996.
References
Bijker, Wiebe E. "Do Not Despair: There is Life After Constructivism." Science, Technology, & Human Values 18 (Winter 1993):113-138.
Bijker, Wiebe E. "The Social Construction of Fluorescent Lighting: or, How an Artifact was Invented in Its Diffusion Stage," pp. 75-102 in Bijker, Wiebe; John Law. Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1992.
Bijker, Wiebe E. "The Social Construction of Bakelite: Toward a Theory of Invention," pp. 159-187 in Bijker, Wiebe; Thomas P. Hughes; Trevor Pinch. The Social Construction of Technological Systems. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989.
Bijker, Wiebe; John Law. Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1992.
Bijker, Wiebe; Thomas P. Hughes; Trevor Pinch. The Social Construction of Technological Systems. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989.
Callon, Michel. "Society in the Making: The Study of Technology as a Tool for Sociological Analysis," pp. 83-103 in Bijker, Wiebe; Thomas P. Hughes; Trevor Pinch. The Social Construction of Technological Systems. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989.
Cowan, Ruth Schwartz. "The Consumption Junction: A Proposal for Research Strategies in the Sociology of Technology," pp. 261-280 in The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology, ed.Bijker,. Hughes; Pinch. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1989.
Fischer, Claude S. America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.
Keen, Ben. "Play it Again, Sony: The Double Life of Home Video Technology." Science as Culture 1 (1987):7-42.
Knorr-Cetina, Karen, and Mulkay, M.J., eds. Science Observed: Perspectives on the Social Study of Science. London, Beverly Hills, Sage, 1983.
Latour, Bruno. Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988.
Law, John and Michel Callon. "The Life and Death of an Aircraft: A Network Analysis of Technical Change," pp. 21-52 in Bijker, Wiebe; John Law. Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1992.
MacKenzie, Donald; Judy Wajcman, eds. The Social Shaping of Technology: How the Refrigerator Got its Hum. Philadelphia: Milton Keynes, 1985.
Noble, David F. Forces of Production: A Social History of Industrial Automation. NY: Knopf, 1984.
Winner, Langdon. "Upon Opening the Black Box and Finding it Empty: Social Constructivism and the Philosophy of Technology." Science, Technology, & Human Values 18 (Summer 1993):362-378.
Woolgar, Steve, ed. Knowledge and Reflexivity: New Frontiers in the Sociology of Knowledge. Beverly Hills, London: Sage, 1988.
Another resource:
MORE RESOURCES
Williams, Robin and David Edge. What is the Social Shaping of Technology? In Research Policy 15 (1996): 856-899.
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Ursula Franklin
Some web resources on and about Ursula Franklin; press releases, news, speeches...
Bio from Canadian Women in Science
University of Toronto – Ursula Franklin Wins Pearson Peace Prize (2002)
Concordia University (2003) – UF Calls for ‘coexistence with the biposhere’
Council of Canadians – Distinguished Canadian Award, Real Audio
“Dr. Franklin embodies what science can do for the public good. One example of this is the work that she did with the Voice of Women. She and other mothers across the country collected their children’s baby teeth because they wanted to prove that the children of this country were absorbing vast quantities of strontium 90 as well as other things because of the atmospheric testing of the atom bombs at the time. This required no great research money but was research done at the bake-sale level which meant that individual families could do it. It was this work that led to the abolition of atmospheric testing in 1963.
Two and a half years after the campaign started, the teeth were sent to the Dental Faculty at the Universtiy of Toronto who sent them to Chalk River where proper testing could be carried out. The teeth disappeared and the results were never published or known publicly. It was never clear whether the teeth were actually tested or not but other teeth were tested that were later collected from children that were born after the testing had begun (the previous testing was on children’s teeth that were born previous to the testing). Cows milk was also tested and the because Strontium 90 comes through within 2 weeks of entry into the cow's body. The impact of this testing, because the ingestion of milk was part of the every day life of infants, brought about the end of the atmospheric testing.”
- Excerpted from the introduction by Cynthia Patterson – Board Member of the Council of Canadians
Building a People-First Economy:Canada under the occupation of an army of marketers. From POVNET
University of Toronto Settles Pension Dispute (2002) from CAUT Bulletin
Summary of Keynote speech from Community Access Conference, Ottawa 1995
The Ursula Franklin Academy, Toronto
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"Le" or "la"
(from an email)
A French teacher was explaining to her class that in French, unlike English, nouns are designated as either masculine or feminine. "House" for instance, is feminine -- "la maison." "Pencil" , however, is masculine "le crayon."
A student asked, "What gender is 'computer'?" Instead of giving the answer, the teacher split the class into two groups,male and female, and asked them to decide for themselves whether "computer" should be a masculine or a feminine noun. Each group was asked to give four reasons for their recommendation.
The men's group decided that "computer" should definitely be of the feminine gender ("la computer"), because:
1. no one but their creator understands their internal logic;
2. the language they use to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else;
3. even the smallest mistakes are stored in long term memory for possible later retrieval; and
4. as so on as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your paycheck on accessories for it.
The women's group, however, concluded that computers should be Masculine (le computer"), because:
1. in order to do anything with them, you have to turn them on;
2. they have a lot of data but still can't think for themselves;
3. they are supposed to help you solve problems, but half the time they ARE the problem; and
4. as soon as you commit to one, you realize that if you had waited a little longer, you could have gotten a better, more powerful model.
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September 06, 2004
What a Bummer! The Social Shaping of the Diaper...
What a Bummer: The Social Shaping of the Diaper in North America (1994), is an article published in one of the very first academic e-journals (now defunct), HOST: An Electronic Bulletin for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, which came out of the University of Toronto's Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology.
As a relatively new PhD student, I wanted to write about the internet in terms of a social shaping of technology perspective, but alas, in 1993 I had more personal experience with the technology of diapers than the internet...hence, this exploration...
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Venus Case Study
Gillette unveils Venus razor for women
BOSTON (AP) -- After four years and $300 million in development, Gillette Co. unveiled its Gillette for Women Venus shaving system, a 50-patent razor intended to revolutionize shaving and revitalize the company.
Gillette is banking on Venus, unveiled Thursday at New York's Guggenheim Museum, to help it grab a larger share of the 400 million women worldwide who wet shave. About half currently use Gillette products, but only a quarter of the total use products designed for women, the company said.
In designing the Venus, Gillette researchers did everything from filming women shaving to observe which blade shapes work best to conducting extensive interviews with women shavers.
(2001)
The Gillette Company
http://www.gillette.com/company/gilletteataglance.asp
Venus Razor
http://www.gillettevenus.com/
Mach 3 Razor
http://www.gillette.com/products/grooming_men.asp
Review of Venus
http://www.flakmag.com/misc/venus.html
Review in Business Week Online
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/feb2001/nf20010214_507.htm
Gillette on their campaign
www.gillette.com/women/pdf/venus_global_launch.pdf
Gillette for Women Product News
http://www.gillette.com/women/product_news/venus_tradition.htm
The Holmes Report on the Venus Razor
http://www.holmesreport.com/holmestemp/story.cfm?edit_id=183&type_id=4
Gendered Hair Slaying by Lora J. Mackel in the Arizona WildCat
http://wildcat.arizona.edu/papers/94/143/03_1_m.html
Hair Removal Through the Ages - it's a commercial site but interesting
http://www.depilatory.com/ages.html
A TeenFX Testimonial
http://www.teenfx.com/main.cfm?prod=20&sec=3
Gillette to Unveil Women's Version Of Mach 3 Razor. Mark Maremont. Wall Street Journal (Eastern Edition). New York, N.Y.:Dec 2, 1999. p. B, 14:6.
The billion dollar blade. James Surowiecki. Management Today London:Aug 1998. p. 32-36.
Latest offerings captivate consumers, prompt growth in shave category
Molly Prior. Drug Store News New York:Mar 1, 2004. Vol. 26, Iss. 3, p. 37-38.
The war of the razor blades. Brand Strategy London:Nov 2003. p. P.9.
Gillette, Schick Battle, Blades Drawn. Charles Forelle. Wall Street Journal (Eastern Edition). New York, N.Y.:Nov 12, 2003. p. B.4A.
Bic and Gillette spearhead raft of launches in ladies' sector. Marketing Week London:Jan 8, 2004. p. P.6.
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September 05, 2004
Course Syllabus
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September 04, 2004
Welcome to Gendertech ...
Welcome to Gendertech ... this is a weblog for the COMS 472 course, Communication Technologies and Gender, taught by Leslie Regan Shade at Concordia University, Dept. of Communication Studies, during the Fall Semester 2004.
The course provides an introduction to debates surrounding gender and technology, including historiographical and theoretical perspectives on feminism and technology from various perspectives – cultural studies, political economy, and STS (science & technology studies). Case studies of specific technologies will be provided, with particular attention paid to Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs).
Hopefully this weblog can be an interactive space for the class to discuss, debate, and highlight issues related to gender and communication technologies...any and all input is welcome...
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