Our degenerate modern linkspamming society (18th December, 2009)
- How the Geek Stereotype Stunts Computer Science: Lisa Grossman, writer of "Of Geeks and Girls", responds to some Hacker News comments: “The entrance fee to a computer science career is membership in geek culture, and that’s way too restrictive. If any other field had a cultural barrier to entry like that, no one would stand for it.”
- Dear Marvel Comics: Rusalka appreciates Marvel Comics’ efforts to spotlight female superheroes in comics. But why are they spotlighted as “girls” or “ladies” rather than “women”?
- Denver University “Cyber Civil Rights†Symposium Recap: Eric Goldman recounts the “Cyber Civil Rights: New Challenges for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties in our Networked Age" symposium, with special attention to Danielle Citron's session on harassment of women online and legal solutions to it.
- Thinking Out Loud: Is Social Media the new Pink Collar Ghetto of Tech?: The Learned Fangirl wants to avoid a "separate but equal" tech ghetto for women.
- Nerd Girls: a video documenting the Tufts University’s “Nerd Girls” team, women engineering students building a solar car.
- Management changes at Canonical: Jane Silber, current COO of Canonical Ltd, will take over from Mark Shuttleworth as CEO in March 2010. (Canonical is a company owned by Shuttleworth and is the sponsor of Ubuntu development among other ventures.) There’s been much discussion around the Linuxosphere (Linux.com, Slashdot, LWN), but most of it around Shuttleworth’s decision.
- Charting a course from virtual reality to the White House: CNET News profiles Beth Noveck, Deputy CTO for the Obama administration in the US.
- UbuntuGeek republished a laptoplogic article (original now gone): Is Ubuntu Ready for a Non-tech-savvy Girlfriend? Is making sure to specify “non-tech-savvy” enough to get this article out of the So simple, [a woman you know] could do it? trap, or is it playing into it?
If you have links of interest, please share them in comments here, or if you’re a delicious user, tag them “geekfeminism†to bring them to our attention. Please note that we tend to stick to publishing recent links (from the last month or so).
I just realised that “There’s been much discussion around the Linuxosphere (Linux.com, Slashdot, LWN), but most of it around Shuttleworth’s decision” may come across as a criticism of the coverage I didn’t intend to make. I didn’t intend to argue “the coverage is wrong to focus on Shuttleworth”, just that coverage of Silber would have been of more interest for the purposes of this blog.
Actually that is a valid criticism. Virtually nothing has been written about new CEO Silber. Hmm, that sounds like a job for Ace Editor Carla :)
Canonical themselves did, as they should too. As for the tech press, it’s a problem if no one does it, I agree, but I don’t know that it’s a problem for any one individual article, it’s more of a collective failure. Go for the gap in the coverage!
Is making sure to specify “non-tech-savvy†enough”
Because men are all tech-savvy by default and all that. Right?
So, IMHO, no. It is still reinforcing the patriarchy in both ways.
The “So easy…” problem is that it highlights women specifically as the non-tech-savvy people. While this phrasing does indeed imply that there are tech-savvy women, it is a minor concession because it still ignores the concept of non-tech-savvy men.
The problem is still there.
http://chronicle.com/article/Brochet-Rhymes-With/49438/
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/21/nerd-and-geek-should-be-banned-professor-says/?partner=rss&emc=rss
PSA moreso than linkspam (because I can’t bring myself to link it): the review of Phantom Menace that’s on Youtube and linked from slashdot (and probably the rest of the web by now) spends significant time advocating violence against women (in occasionally graphic detail). Probably VERY triggery for some people, and I’m kinda regretting eating lunch.
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