Sadie Plant points out in her essay that throughout history, women have been given jobs that are characterized as “menial, minor, secondary”, which in some cases, as with the loom and computer programming, have turned out to be quite the opposite (264). As Plant argues, historically, patriarchy has disregarded women’s work simply because it is done by a woman, and neglected the importance that such work has had on developing culture and society. In regards to the question, “How might the new media world have looked different had women, and particularly feminist women writers, been more prominent in theorizing the future during the decades of the 70s, 80s, and 90s?”, I think it is safe to say that their outlook about growing technology would be bad. The move towards technological innovation is making the world evolve at a faster rate, while humanity stays behind and relishes in its achievement of creating a hypothetical “better world”. As Haraway states, “we are living through a movement from an organic, industrial society to a polymorphous, information system – from all work to all play, a deadly game” (161). This is “a deadly game” because of the advent of what Haraway calls “cyborgs”, which in my mind would be human-like slaves to society. She argues in her piece that, “The main trouble with cyborgs, of course, is that they are the illegitimate offspring of militarism and patriarchal capitalism, not to mention state socialism. But illegitimate offspring are often exceedingly unfaithful to their origins. Their fathers, after all, are inessential” (151). Haraway is expressing here a fear of the “offspring” created by a military, patriarchal, and capitalist society, that historically has treated women as second-class citizens, but she is hopeful that the cyborgs will rebel against that particular aspect of the society that has created them. The machines and technology are everyday growing stronger, better, faster, while humanity is blasé, treating the advancements as opportunistic and helpful. What Sherry Turkle talks about in her essay is just that – a move from activity to passivity with the help of computers and “virtuality”. She states that this change is causing a “devaluation of direct experience” (Turkle 237). With the creation of virtual worlds and a separation from RL (real life), Turkle asks, “Instead of solving real problems—both personal and social—are we choosing to live in unreal places?” (244). It seems that the more technology advances, the more people want to live within it – whether it’s through a Facebook page or an MUD – and that’s frightening. As leisure time becomes increasingly spent in front of a computer or television being entertained and less time exploring the world and its issues, who will be around to argue for social and political change?
My response is coming a little past the deadline for this week - I really need to step up my game. First off, I agree wholeheartedly with the concerns you expressed at the end of your article. Technology often outpaces human's ability to understand its implications (I think it was Wiener who phrased it "our know-how is greater than our know-what"). Just as you point out in your post, the great explosion of technological knowledge that occurred during the half century between the Renaissance and WWII, instead of resulting in greater understanding of our common humanity, led to the growth of a patriarchal, imperialist ruling elite. Now proponents of technological media are always going on about how the Internet and social networking utilities expand human communication - but that's a little paradoxical considering this "communication" is millions of people sitting alone in front of a computer screen. Our virtual lives are becoming gradually more important than our embodied ones, and it is scary to think of the day when your "real life" is the one that only exists digitally.
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