Motherhood is box office death. There's so much in that statement that could be unpacked that Idon't know where to start. But it's funny. Funny in a watch someone else's misfortune kind of funny. Schadenfreud?
But a film about women being mothers is never going to appeal to men or women, so I'm mystified at who this was made for.
Amazing. Took the children to see the Cologne New Philharmonic Orchestra play at St Stephens church on Thursday and this piece was the encore. Beautiful evening in balmy Sydney amongst the old tombstones, listening to Vivaldi, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Bach and Pachelbel. The children are learning three of the pieces the orchestra played. Zoe particularly insisted on staying awake in second half to hear 'patchybelle's' canon.
The extended mix. For a transcendental materialist version far beyond this I recommend Flatline_Constructs Mark Fisher http://www.cinestatic.com/trans-mat/Fisher/FC2s6.htm
and for the medium theory I recommend FibreCulture Journal Issue 12 John Potts http://journal.fibreculture.org/issue12/issue12_potts.html
This is the quick read. The really interesting stuff doesn't start to come out until you've got this definition of terms done though so I recommend reading my extended mix. Next post.
I have a lot of thoughts about this. I'm not certain if I agree with xkcd's conclusion but hey, that's just me. i might not be a people.
However, the public perception that everything female including deepest fantasies revolves around housework is imho both true and deeply disturbing.
We are proud to announce the 2010 Women of Vision Award Winners:
Lila Ibrahim, Kathleen McKeown and Kristina Johnson
Connecting Women and Technology
We are women technologists. We use technology to connect our communities. We create technology because it is who we are — intelligent, creative and driven. We lead with compassion and a belief in inclusion. We develop competitive products and find solutions to problems that impact our lives, our nation, our world. Together, through the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology (ABI), we are inventing a better future. Working with men that believe in our mission, we are changing the world for women and technology.
The Anita Borg Institute has several initiatives to promote and celebrate women in technology. The 2010 Women of Vision awards celebrate women who have made significant achievements in 3 areas.
For Innovation: Kathleen McKeown, Henry and Gertrude Rothschild Professor of Computer Science, Columbia University
For Social Impact: Lila Ibrahim, General Manager, Emerging Markets Platform Group, Intel Corporation
For Leadership: Kristina Johnson, Ph.D., Under Secretary for Energy at the Department of Energy
This excerpt of a post from Katy Dickinson at SanJose.MetBlogs.com shows why this is important!
"I have referred dozens of young women to the 2008 WOV talk by Helen Greiner. Any girl geek who feels too alone in her love of technology will be encouraged by the amazing founder of iRobot saying that when she was young “not one person told me I should be an Engineer” and “we need diversity of perspectives … more women’s life experiences influencing our directions and designs”.
We are proud to announce the 2010 Women of Vision Award Winners:
Lila Ibrahim, Kathleen McKeown and Kristina Johnson
Connecting Women and Technology
We are women technologists. We use technology to connect our communities. We create technology because it is who we are — intelligent, creative and driven. We lead with compassion and a belief in inclusion. We develop competitive products and find solutions to problems that impact our lives, our nation, our world. Together, through the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology (ABI), we are inventing a better future. Working with men that believe in our mission, we are changing the world for women and technology.
The Anita Borg Institute has several initiatives to promote and celebrate women in technology. The 2010 Women of Vision awards celebrate women who have made significant achievements in 3 areas.
For Innovation: Kathleen McKeown, Henry and Gertrude Rothschild Professor of Computer Science, Columbia University
For Social Impact: Lila Ibrahim, General Manager, Emerging Markets Platform Group, Intel Corporation
For Leadership: Kristina Johnson, Ph.D., Under Secretary for Energy at the Department of Energy
This excerpt of a post from Katy Dickinson at SanJose.MetBlogs.com shows why this is important!
"I have referred dozens of young women to the 2008 WOV talk by Helen Greiner. Any girl geek who feels too alone in her love of technology will be encouraged by the amazing founder of iRobot saying that when she was young “not one person told me I should be an Engineer” and “we need diversity of perspectives … more women’s life experiences influencing our directions and designs”.
Thanks @cesar_albarr #ARIN6902 for finding this great Liquid Theory TV http://bit.ly/9wuJ09 on Deleuze & Control with the recent thinking on digital culture, web 2.0 and internet governance.
Thanks @cesar_albarr from #ARIN6902 for fwding this great video from Liquid Theory TV.
“EVERY MOUTHFUL HELPS”
The sexualized campaign against breast cancer (i.e., “save the tatas”) is fascinating. Why should we care about breast cancer? Because we think boobs are hot and we like to put them in our mouths.
I think it’s the ad companies that win. This bottled water advertisement (found here) gets to be simultaneously socially conscious and titillating:
Also in breast cancer awareness and advertising: if men had boobs, they’d care about breast cancer, gender symbolism in breast cancer ads, and objectification in the service of breast cancer awareness.
Also don’t miss boobsboobsboobsboobsboobsboobsboobsboobsboobs.
I was excited by the Facebook breastfeeding is not obscene campaign and decided to use it as one assignment topic for internet & governance, but the potential for exploring breastfeeding more thoroughly in Gender, Media and Consumption was so compelling that I went searching for advertising images of breasts in Australia.
I was pretty certain that there would be either sexualised images selling anything unrelated to breastfeeding... or indeed actual breasts vs public service info type advertorials with a few discreet helping women with their problems type niche ads for maternity wear, pads etc.
Then I found this image over at Sociological Images (along with vajazzling) and I can't stop laughing. That is one kick arse ad. I must write about THIS AD! Even better, the site authors, Lisa Wade, Ph.D. Occidental College and Gwen Sharp, Ph.D. Nevada State College, have done so much research and writing about the sexualisation of the breast and the changing consumption of the body that I'm just going to dive right in and read myself stupid!
Just the moment I finish off discussing Baudrillard's hyperreality in the context of internet governance. Well, how about the fact that the real breast pictures can't get published unless they're 'bredazzled'? Sigh.
Vajazzling Revealed
Dmitriy T.M., Christina W., Kelly V., and George asked us to comment on Vajazzling. Dmitriy, who sent in the video link, said he was too frightened to press play, but I am very brave and now I know what vajazzling really is! It’s hard to know because the term “vajayjay” is, um, who knows what that word means… and the term “vagina” (which actually refers to what is otherwise known as the birth canal) is now used to mean the vulva and, apparently, anything within 12 inches of it.
In any case, the video below, in which a woman documents the vajazzling of her “vagina,” reveals that the term refers to the placing of a field of tiny crystals where your public hair would be. So, you essentially replace your pubic hair with shiny objects.
So, brave souls who pressed play, sociologically analyze away.
I laughed so hard I wet myself when vajazzling burst onto the cultural consciousness c/o Jennifer Love Hewitt on Lopez Tonight. There's a whole feminist cyborg consumer trash thing going on as well as it's just enormously funny. Forget arguing with my 11yr old girl about earrings!
I just have to post this thanks to the spirit of inquiry at Sociological Images. I went looking for breasts but got more than I bargained for!
But you know what picture Facebook did remove?This one. Originally posted on the "Hey Facebook, breastfeeding is NOT obscene" group, with 258,448 members.
Here, where, after three years of infertility and a traumatic and pre-term birth, I finally tandem nursed my babies successfully for the first time. Facebook told me this picture was offensive. And warned me that they will delete my account if I continue to break the rules
Go April and everyone else who created/joined the Facebook group, event and official petition, "Hey Facebook, breastfeeding is not obscene! (Official petition to Facebook)".
Group now has 259,644 members cause I joined too. That's a quarter of a million people. But I agree with an earlier comment to the blogger above, America is a funny combination of repression and expression. Sex is ok but not being female.
The Governance of Cyberspace; Politics, Technology and Global Restructuring ed Brian D. Loader (1997)
Information and communication technology are the core of the restructuring of advanced capitalism. The internet is the manifestation.
Loader's concern is how the 'cyberspace' made possible by the internet and underlying advances in ICT changes modernist governance, economically, politically and culturally.What is cyberspace? Outline of William Gibson's vision in Neuromancer (via Barlow) whose original pessimistic visions of commodification and control was leavened with space for individuality and democracy that are closer to our current concerns. Utopian or dystopian?Contributing to the development of 'cyberspace' are groups described by Loader as cyber-libertarians, like Barlow, international commercial interests (ICT, media, porn etc), and cyber-enthusiasts like Rheingold.Sterling's 'electronic frontier' (1994) to an alternative virtual reality expects a qualitative difference to the real reality for our social space, which leads the cyberlibertarians to equate freedom with progress and social trumps political in a rather modernist manner like the settling of the 'wild west'.In this utopian vision, politics and commerce are individually anarchically negotiated to the benefit of all and explicitly independent of the nation state (Barlow's 'declaration of the independence of cyberspace').Loader finds the mystical rhetoric surrounding the internet is muddying the waters as prophesy is confused with analysis of current behavioural practise. Is the internet being used for the benefit of humanity? What about spam and porn. Is the internet open to all? What about the digital divide. Who owns which bits?Loader proposes dissecting cyberspace into usages or technologies as sharing TCP/IP alone does not make a common space. Will cyberspace colonise and homogenise global culture? What about the privileging of English language US .com ownership.Perhaps the internet is the apparatus of the post-industrial state. The most rapidly growing multinational corporations (MNCs) 'are the very computer and software companies responsible for driving the visions of the information age'. (Loader).Loader points out the development of internet funded by military, educational and commercial corporations and agencies and is still indirectly funded by govt and in many ways connected to the bodies it supposedly frees us from.In conclusion, this is not to say that the internet is not challenging traditional models of governance simply that cyberspace is not separate or alternative to the real space. Not a utopian or dystopian construct by ICTs but their response to economic, political and social drivers.PostModernity, Identity and GovernmentalityMost theorists are linking post-industrial society and postmodern cultural theory. David Harvey considers 'the condition of postmodernity' (1989) a social account of structural change. Mark Poster's 'second media age' synergises postmodern culture with wider political, economic and social change seen through the mediation of ICTs. (1995a, 1995b).Loader summarises key concepts in postmodernism 'to consider the idea that cyberspace is in some sense a manifestation of the post-modern world: a domain where post-modern cultural theories fuse with the post-industrial information society thesis'. (1997)Little narratives, fragmentation and pluralism in cyberspace.Social critic and 'high priest of postmodernity', Jean-Francois Lyotard foregrounds 'the knowledge society' in 1984. Knowledge becomes a commodity through the use of ICTs and at the same time our cultural is losing the 'grand' or 'meta-narratives' of modernity. Universal progress through rationality towards social advancement is replaced by postmodern 'little narratives'.Postmodernists and cyberenthusiasts find the communications of cyberspace a good fit for a fragmented, pluralist and ephemeral society which evades older power relations and social bonds. Is a new society emerging, not based on socio-economic grouping, hierarchical power relations or geographic location? Loader suggests that communication does not equal political participation and that the internet appears full of 'the sound-bite politics which epitomises the commodification of political discourse rather than informed political dialogue. In a postmodern world where information and knowledge are said to be power, this is surely not without significance.'The rise of the global and local, and fall of the nation-state.National, financial and cultural boundaries, which were intrinsic to modernism, have been weakened through ICT networks like the internet. The traditional functions of the modern state, external defence, internal surveillance and the maintenance of citizenship rights, have been eroded (Crook 1992). New formulations of governance at local level are expressed by enhanced participation and economic regeneration contiguous with re-emergence of local cultural identity. Nation-states are under threat from urban communities, 'the rise of electronic cities such as Singapore, Tokyo, London or New York (Sassen 1991) could be regarded as a significant reconfiguration of international, political and economic relations'.'Hyperreality' and virtual reality.Baudrillard's exposition of 'hyperreality' (1988) contends that technologies are creating a new electronic reality, an entirely new social environment. However, his is a dystopic vision, in which media communication technologies conceal reality 'behind a veil of signs, images and symbols which constitute processes of commodification, propaganda and advertising'.Classic examples of Baudrillard's 'hyperreality' are Disneyland and Las Vegas, where copy and fabrication have become reality. Cyberspace is seen as an extension of 'hyperreality', where time, place and individual identity are separated from modernist reality and can become fabricated at will. Virtual reality technology is held out as a promise for the future. (I contend MMORPGs are now at that visionary place as VR technology continues to evade fulfilment).Virtual empowerment may allow escape from gender (Haraway 1985), race, class or physical disability, however living in a fantasy world risks becoming psychotic, 'it is the continuity of grounded identity that underpins and underwrites moral obligation and commitment' (Robins 1995).Baudrillard's analysis suggests that the governance of cyberspace is bound up in the creation and maintenance of metaphors, icons and symbols.Government and IdentificationAlthough technically a post-structuralist rather than a postmodernist, Foucault's work on 'governmentality' analyses the power relations between state and individual in modern society and is seminal in understanding technologies of control and surveillance.Foucault studies the 18th century development of nation-states, the rise of capitalism and population increases. He compares sovereignty's ruling for ruling's sake with government's mandate being the welfare of the population and improvement of its condition, 'and the means that the government uses to attain these ends are themselves all in some sense immanent to the population' (Foucault 1991).Governmentality allows the subsumation of individual needs in the common interest. Its power is the synergy of satisfying the individual (or group) while policing and regulating them to strengthen governance.Governmentality is not centralised state control or coercion, rather an everyday form of power which celebrates the individual yet by doing so imposes truths and consequences. Loader continues, “This internalisation of individual identity according to external classifications implies that governmentality can also involve manipulation of the subject.”So, in pursuit of economic prosperity, the individual colludes with the state through confession, identification, classification and regulation. With this background, cyberspace clearly has liberating potential! Individuals may free themselves from subjugated identities and nation states therefore seem threatened. However, Foucault differs from cyberlibertarians by asserting that 'power is a precondition for freedom rather than a barrier to its attainment'.“Power is exercised only over free subjects, and only insofar as they are free. By this we mean individual or collective subjects who are faced with a field of possibilities in which several ways of behaving, several reactions and diverse compartments may be realized.” (1982)Loader asserts that cyberspace is not a new society but only new communications (with the same grounding as any other reality) but that governments may need to adjust policing and regulation in response. A response that is defended on the grounds of security, commerce and law enforcement.Loader sees a continuation of governmentality in cyberspace, 'power relationships based upon public compliance and subject identity will continue to play an important part in human interaction'. We will voluntarily surrender some privacy and autonomy in exchange for quality of life.Exploring the Debate FurtherThe remaining chapters clarify the concept cyberspace to provide a critical framework for the considerations of governance which follow.*This is pertinent to the Australian climate today as well as useful for my Masters subject Internet & Governance!
*please note, this summary is my study notes and therefore not properly cited, however I have tried to keep names and dates in place. If you want more info go straight to the real thing!
“I think we will have an outcome that is a hybrid of your two options. For many users, the end-to-end principle in its literal form is a pain--it means they have to install software and manage upgrades on a PC that is complex and insecure. Much better to take advantages of services that are professionally run. But I think the end-users will be able to maintain the ability to reach the content of their choice and use the applications of their choice. I think the crucial question is not where a function is located (at the end-point or from a service provider somewhere on the network), but the extent to which the end-user will preserve the right to choose providers that they decide to trust. The real question is about trust, not location.” – David Clark, senior research scientist for the Next-Generation Internet, MIT professor
For #arin6902 I find the description of the end-to-end principle subsumed in the integrated internet application service model very interesting. As a number of other commentators in this report make clear. We are increasingly using the internet as an integrated delivery system. By removing hardware/software dichotomies we are potentially removing content freedom. The baby with the bathwater.
I know this is a little old (2009) but I'm reading his book "Sketching User Experiences" and this is a succinct intro to how cultural factors ought to be driving technological development. He identifies a great product opportunity at the end. I'm adding imitation turn dial radio to my iPhone apps 'to be developed' list.By thinking outside the parameters imposed by technology, executives and designers can build businesses by creating an experience that truly resonates
I confess to being an early adopter, and much of what is adopted ends up at home. In this, there is some collateral damage—namely, my long-suffering family.
One early adoption came in 1980, when I brought home my first dial-up terminal and started telecommuting. This inevitably led to a conversation that goes something like this:
"Bill, you're always on your @#$&&$ computer!!!"
My typical response—uttered in complete innocence—goes something like:
"But I'm just doing X."
("X," of course, could be almost anything, such as reading my mail, writing to Mom, planning a great vacation, doing the household accounts, playing a game, looking up something in the encyclopedia, working on my book, reading a newspaper, and so on.)
Sound familiar? Anyone who has a home computer and claims not to have had such a conversation in their household is either a chronic liar or a saint. That being the case, have you ever stopped to wonder why our parents never had a parallel exchange? Theirs, of course, would have been along the lines of: "You're always on your pencil!"
In my parents' age, the pencil was just as prevalent as the computer is today. Yet, the first exchange is almost universal, and the latter borders on the absurd.
Single Computer, Multiple Tasks
In the pre-computer age, we had specific rooms in our homes where certain activities were centered—for instance, games or study or eating. Hence, one had a fairly good idea of what you were doing from the room you were in. And within a particular room, the fact that you were on the couch, at a table, or sitting at a desk gave some indication of not just your activity, but also your level of "interruptability." And then, there were generally all kinds of other physical artifacts that gave away what you were doing. For example, when doing household accounts, you might have a pencil, a checkbook, bills, stamps, envelopes, and a scratch pad for making notes.
These days, virtually all of these cues have disappeared. All that remains—in the extreme telling of the story—is a single device onto which all of the associated information is consolidated in digital form, as are all of the tools. Furthermore, this is true not only for any single task, but for a vast multitude of everyday activities. Hence, to any outside observer, you are always on your computer.
Part of the purpose of design thinking is to improve our ability to tease out conflicts such as the one described above, and figure out how not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. In a way, this is a reflection of the second "law" of the historian of technology, Melvin Kranzberg, which states: "Invention is the mother of necessity." It is also a reflection of Proust's observation that: "The only true voyage of discovery is not to go to new places, but to have other eyes."
More Than a Technology Issue
So when it comes to the matter of "always being on your computer," the question becomes: "How can we restore the cues around activity that would help recapture the moral order of the home while keeping the benefits of the new technology?"
In many ways, this is the kind of question that we were asking ourselves at Xerox PARC back in the 1980s when we were developing the notion of ubiquitous computing. But that makes it too easy to assume that this is about technology. It's not. This issue is not just about technology or the user, but also about place: Where is the activity taking place physically, and in what social context? How can we redesign tools and technologies such that they encourage behaviors, and visibility of activity, that are consistent with such places and values?
User-centered design commonly tries to take into account different canonical user types through the use of persona. Perhaps one thing we need to do is to augment this tool with the notion of "placona," that is, capturing the canonical set of physical and social spaces within which any activity we are trying to support might be situated. After all, cognition does not reside exclusively in the brain. Rather, it is also distributed in the space in which we exercise that knowledge—in the location itself, the tools, devices, and materials that we use, and the people and social context in which all of this exists.
Making Innovation's Benefits Holistic
By way of example, let me refer to my 89-year-old mother. She loves music, lives where there is terrible radio reception, and has access to my 90-year-old father's computer, which is connected to the Internet and which has speakers in her living room. But despite the fact that all of the right streaming audio and associated software are available in the right room for music listening, the obfuscating cyberbabble of today means the radio is now a browser specialized for accessing streaming audio over the network, while radio buttons are bookmarks. It is simply beyond her understanding and my mother will never gain any benefit from it. Our lack of attention to place, time, function, and human considerations means these fancy new technologies fail to deliver their real potential to real people.
If one of the purposes of design and innovation is to improve our lives—for business, artistic, or familial purposes—then design that does not consider the larger social, cultural, and physical ecosystem is going to miss the mark. Increasingly, the results will make the "Bill, you're always on your @#$&&$ computer!!!" rant seem mild by comparison. The design and innovation that we deserve and need to strive for should reduce the complexity of living in this world, and improve the quality of life in so doing. Without a conscientious effort to understand that world, we stand little chance of achieving this.
On the other hand, if would-be innovators can integrate these kinds of considerations into their very DNA, the opportunities are limitless, and the path to them far better illuminated.
Bill Buxton is Principal Scientist at Microsoft Research and the author of Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design. Previously, he was a researcher at Xerox PARC, a professor at the University of Toronto, and Chief Scientist of Alias Research and SGI Inc.via businessweek.com
xkcd, you are scientific proof that telepathy exists. That is word for word exactly what I was just thinking. (on my birthday in 2008, that is)
The F Word: How we learned to swear by feminism
When it comes to the work/life balance, modern women continually find themselves in a no-win situation where they are criticised regardless of the path they choose. The F Word: How we learned to swear by feminism argues that the pervasive idea that women will never be able to effectively combine work or interests outside the home with marriage, a social life and parenting is a furphy. In their lively and topical new book, Caro and Fox combine both personal experience and the stories of a range of women with the big picture, and provide practical suggestions for forgiving ourselves, having fun and not giving up while holding it all together.
Jane Caro is an award-winning advertising writer with 25 years experience. She also writes on educational and other issues for a range of publications, and is a regular commentator on radio.
Catherine Fox is deputy editor of AFR Boss magazine and writes a weekly column, `Corporate Woman', for the Australian Financial Review. She joined the AFR in 1989 and has held a variety of positions, including marketing and Smart Money editor, and court reporter.
Table of Contents via unswpress.com.au
TED I'm disappointed to say the least. My husband and partner's application to TED Global (which I wrote) has been accepted but I haven't had a reply yet. My husband queried as he's now a VIP and ... well, I'm not being looked at yet.
Not only does that suck for us personally because I'm the TED zealot who's been running TED salons and passionately promoting the talks everywhere I go, right up to writing both of our applications to TED conferences! But travelling the whole family to England just for TED and a quick holiday takes a bit of planning and the possibility of us actually going is quickly receding!
TED you are lacking in feminist principles. Perhaps if you knew I was now teaching at University on top of everything else I do that is kind of p/t, community, child and volunteer based then I'd look more impressive. Everyone who knows both of us knows that I am equally valuable, intelligent and into changing the world as my husband. If anything I am a far greater passionate communicator across far more areas.
It would be cynical to believe that Michael's position within a large global company is what got him a place. It would devalue his contribution as a great strategist and futurist. But he and I work as a team on brainstorming and writing futurist scenarios and I am being seriously devalued here.
It is far more likely to be the feminist blind spot. What I do is not seen or valued. Why do I take this share of the partnership? My students today said "But hasn't it been proven that women don't want big jobs and responsibilities?" And I am battling to get the explanation into a short accessible sound bite.
My individual choice is somewhat constrained by the society and culture that I am in. The majority of women are making life choices that afford them less pay and prestige than men. Let's ask why that is? Perhaps we are being constrained. And perhaps we also see that these are very important things to be doing. Things that are obviously not being valued highly enough. Perhaps that is the real problem. Whichever way you slice it women are still coming out worse off than men in almost every instance in every single society.
The second wave of feminism only went so far and has ebbed. Jane Caro and Catherine Fox describe the position that women (and men) are somewhat surprised to find themselves in right now and explode all of those elephants in the room.
I love this book and I want everyone (TED) I know to read it. I only wish that the authors had gone further right at the end and talked more about how feminism is a social issue. MEN need feminism. (2 income families especially... don't you realise that if ALL the work you were both doing was more highly valued that you wouldn't be so poor and tired?) Ironically, if I am more valued for teaching at University right now, it is at the expense of my football club volunteering. I'm trading influence with 750 families and 250 adult players/coaches for influence with 75 students.
Finally, I wish the authors had been invited to speak at TED.
I am a sucker for charts, figures or stories that turn ideas upside down and show you a completely new side to something. Like the top 100 ways to die (cars, stairs etc) VS the things that scare you (shark attacks and velociraptors etc).
Hans Rosling has done this for everyone's most important issue - the health of the world. You HAVE to watch this talk! Some snippets are that 'developing countries' is a fallacy from the 1950s. Most countries have emerged. Within large areas of poverty or disease, a closer analysis shows that only some groups or more localized areas are affected, which can help avoid stereotyping and generalising and start the solutions.
And finally, the bottom billion are still in shocking need of everything.
