Posts Tagged Technology

By Lori Adelman • 11 years ago

It’s 2013. Let’s end ‘booth babes’ for good

Woman of the future, when perhaps one can present technology and also simultaneously not be objectified.

Scene: It’s the year 2137. The world is doing pretty well. Hoverboards have gone out of style almost as quickly as they came in, surprising a lot of people. UGGs inexplicably live on in popular conceptions of fashion, as do ‘boots with the fur’. The President of what’s left of the United States (the previously large U.S. was reduced to a small island off the coast of Mexico after its population became predominantly, then overwhelmingly brown and insisted the mainland be renamed to “Brownlandia”) is a multi-racial pansexual queer-identifying trans womyn who was elected on campaign promises to bring traditional family values ...

Woman of the future, when perhaps one can present technology and also simultaneously not be objectified.

Scene: It’s the year 2137. The world is doing pretty well. Hoverboards have gone out of style almost as quickly ...
By Gwendolyn Beetham • 11 years ago

The Academic Feminist: Virginia Eubanks on Feminism, Technology, and Activism

Welcome back, Academic Feminists! This month’s interview features
Virginia Eubanks, who teaches in the Department of Women’s Studies at the University at Albany, SUNY. Virginia is the author of Digital Dead End: Fighting for Social Justice in the Information Age, and the cofounder of two grassroots community organizations focused on making technology serve social and economic justice: Our Knowledge, Our Power: Surviving Welfare (OKOP) and the Popular Technology Workshops.  

Virginia shared some of the inspiration for her interest in feminism and technology, how participatory action research led her to better understand women’s technology issues, and some of the projects she’s currently working on. ...

Welcome back, Academic Feminists! This month’s interview features
Virginia Eubanks, who teaches in the Department of Women’s Studies at the University at Albany, SUNY. Virginia is the author of

By Lori Adelman • 11 years ago

Speaking of rape jokes…

*Trigger warning*

I appreciate all of the conversation happening around LOLZRapeGate2012. I really do. Never has there been such a potent mix of characters – somehow strange and stereotypical — thrown into the same spotlight. Daniel Tosh, bloggers, rapists, Louis CK, Jon Stewart, Sarah Silverman, humorless feminists, and hilarious feminists alike are all finding themselves drawing, erasing, and then redrawing the lines of their boundaries around what it means to be funny, politically correct, and socially responsible. In my eyes, that’s a net positive, and in fact much of the dialogue that emerged from Tosh’s terrible “joke” has been really important and is certainly adding to the national, and maybe even global, dialogue around rape culture.

That being said, ...

*Trigger warning*

I appreciate all of the conversation happening around LOLZRapeGate2012. I really do. Never has there been such a potent mix of characters – somehow strange and stereotypical — thrown into the same spotlight. Daniel ...
By zerlina • 11 years ago

Yahoo names Google executive Marissa Mayer as new CEO

Yahoo made a major announcement yesterday, naming Google executive Marissa Mayer as their new president and CEO.  Mayer – Yahoo’s fifth CEO in as many years – is one of the most well known women in tech and business and the move came as a huge surprise even though she has a stellar reputation in Silicon Valley.

An even bigger surprise came later in the day with is Mayer’s announcement via Twitter that she is pregnant.  Mayer has already said her future maternity leave will be brief and it’s clear that such a demanding and high profile position for a woman may reignite the “Having It All,” conversations from a few weeks ago.  Mayer told Fortune that ...

Yahoo made a major announcement yesterday, naming Google executive Marissa Mayer as their new president and CEO.  Mayer – Yahoo’s fifth CEO in as many years – is one of the most well known women in ...
By Samhita • 11 years ago

Quick hit: Very few ladies in the Daily Beast/Newsweek Digital Power index

Your morning dose of sexist #realtalk comes from a new list at the Daily Beast/Newsweek media conglomerate that tries to map out digital power. According to their digital power index–women have almost none. It must be because so few of us even know what an internet is. Oh, wait. 

Notable:

Zero women are digital visionaries, builders, innovators, angels or virologists.

Let’s start our own list–who are some ladies that you would nominate as having mega-digital power?

Your morning dose of sexist #realtalk comes from a new list at the Daily Beast/Newsweek media conglomerate that tries to map out digital power. According to their digital power index–women have almost none. It must be because ...

LIKEHELL
By Vanessa • 11 years ago

NYT fail: “Men invented the internet”


Grace Murray Hopper: American computer scientist and U.S. Navy officer, one of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer and developed the first compiler for a computer programming language. Pic via Boing Boing.

Xeni Jardin at Boing Boing has a great response to this weekend’s New York Times’ piece on Ellen Pao’s sexual discrimination lawsuit against the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which is problematic in its very first line:

MEN invented the Internet. And not just any men. Men with pocket protectors. Men who idolized Mr. Spock and cried when Steve Jobs died. Nerds. Geeks. Give them their due. Without men, we would never know what our friends were doing five minutes ago.

Jardin responds:

Radia “Mother ...


Grace Murray Hopper: American computer scientist and U.S. Navy officer, one of the first programmers of the Harvard Mark I computer and developed the first compiler for a computer programming language. Pic via Boing Boing.

Xeni Jardin at Boing Boing ...
By Chloe Angyal • 12 years ago

Is Facebook enabling eating disorders?

A new survey has found that Facebook might be enabling eating disordered thinking and behaviour.

The survey, conducted by The Center for Eating Disorders at Sheppard Pratt in Baltimore, suggests that the omnipresent and seemingly omnipotent social media site “is influencing body image and hyper-awareness of body size.”

The CED surveyed 600 Facebook users between the ages of 16 and 40 nationwide. Fifty-one percent of respondents reported that “seeing photos of themselves and others makes them more conscious of their body and weight.”

Some more sobering stats from the survey:

51% of respondents said that seeing photos of themselves make them more conscious about their body and weight.

51% agree that they often find themselves comparing their life to that ...

A new survey has found that Facebook might be enabling eating disordered thinking and behaviour.

The survey, conducted by The Center for Eating Disorders at Sheppard Pratt in Baltimore, suggests that the omnipresent and seemingly omnipotent social ...
By Samhita • 12 years ago

Ladies who tech at SXSW and beyond

It’s that time of year where I run off to nerdy spring break in Austin, TX to hang out with geeks and eat breakfast tacos. This year the feminist offerings of SXSW are extensive–the conference just gets more and more progressive every year.

If you are going to be at SXSW try some of these panels:

Sex Nets: Pickup Artists vs. Feminists

Curing a Rage Headache: Internet Drama & Activism

How Not to Die: Using Tech in a Dictatorship

It’s Not News, It’s Business

Race: Know When to Hold It and When to Fold It

Sex, Dating and Privacy Online Post-Weinergate (My panel!)

These panels are full of feminist superstars–check them all out if you can.

I will also be doing a

It’s that time of year where I run off to nerdy spring break in Austin, TX to hang out with geeks and eat breakfast tacos. This year the feminist offerings of SXSW are extensive–the conference just gets ...

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