Continued: Reading Part 2
The Mythic Machine: Gendered Irrationalities and Computer Culture
Zoe Sofia
The author mentioned two groups of people. Firstly, “technophillia” those with uncritical love of equipment and the opposite is “technophobia” those with lack of enthusiasm for new computer technologies. It is not surprise regarding widely reported finding from classroom studies is that boys comprise the vast majority of those computer users who ''love the machine for itself," and who like to spend long hours tinkering and game-playing on computers, whereas girls are far more likely to reject emotional identification with the computer as a "second self." In my opinion, I agree somewhat of this finding according to most of people around me, girls and boys are considered this way. The author also mentioned that “gender differences in attitudes towards computers and styles of computer learning could be interpreted differently from a perspective that was critical of technotopianism, alert to masculinist bias, and more sensitive to the relations between individual and cultural imaginaries”. However, I think this book was written in 1998; thus, I think now the world has changed and although the gender differences in attitudes towards computers still don’t change, they are getting more positive. I also believe that most modern women feel comfortable in using computers in their everyday life.
In the chapter, the writer also pointed out the concern between computers and games format to the reason why boy are more positive about computer. The author also compared men to “Jupiter space” and women to “Athena figures.”
Men can uninhibitedly love for itself a machine that offers them one more port of entry into a world of command/control technology to which they already feel entitled.
The gendering of computers as feminine may inhibit some women from learning to "master" a technology or "hack" into a space that is metaphorically equivalent to themselves (computers and women as the "to be used" rather than "the users," as occupiable spaces rather than space invaders).
The Mythic Machine: Gendered Irrationalities and Computer Culture
Zoe Sofia
The author mentioned two groups of people. Firstly, “technophillia” those with uncritical love of equipment and the opposite is “technophobia” those with lack of enthusiasm for new computer technologies. It is not surprise regarding widely reported finding from classroom studies is that boys comprise the vast majority of those computer users who ''love the machine for itself," and who like to spend long hours tinkering and game-playing on computers, whereas girls are far more likely to reject emotional identification with the computer as a "second self." In my opinion, I agree somewhat of this finding according to most of people around me, girls and boys are considered this way. The author also mentioned that “gender differences in attitudes towards computers and styles of computer learning could be interpreted differently from a perspective that was critical of technotopianism, alert to masculinist bias, and more sensitive to the relations between individual and cultural imaginaries”. However, I think this book was written in 1998; thus, I think now the world has changed and although the gender differences in attitudes towards computers still don’t change, they are getting more positive. I also believe that most modern women feel comfortable in using computers in their everyday life.
In the chapter, the writer also pointed out the concern between computers and games format to the reason why boy are more positive about computer. The author also compared men to “Jupiter space” and women to “Athena figures.”
Men can uninhibitedly love for itself a machine that offers them one more port of entry into a world of command/control technology to which they already feel entitled.
The gendering of computers as feminine may inhibit some women from learning to "master" a technology or "hack" into a space that is metaphorically equivalent to themselves (computers and women as the "to be used" rather than "the users," as occupiable spaces rather than space invaders).
