Re: [-empyre-] lists and gender roles

Christina McPhee <christina112@earthlink.net> · Sat, 07 Aug 2004 12:16:53 -0700

Dear Sue and empyreans,

Moderation stepping in ... Thanks for the red flag about gender divides, but
perhaps a bit of caution is in order.

A quick scan through recent posts yields these provocative remarks about the
social, cultural and political aspects of lists, each offered from the point
of view of a European male artist/practitioner/theorist who contributes
substantially to the cultural critique of new media on a regular basis
through writing, publishing and festival organization.

I think it is important to realize that the interface/tools are just as much
aspects of cultural production as the words and images that they carry, a
point implied by Geert here, about OS and about pdas.

For architects, graphic and industrial designers of augmented reality
interfaces and media in the public space, this interface and its cultural
meaning is of prime importance in design.  Is it really that connected to
gender or maybe we are a little more crossplatform :-) ??

cm

> On Fri, 2004-08-06 at 09:26, Andreas Broeckmann wrote:
> 
>> in this context, how do you evaluate the success of the Discordia project?
>> http://www.discordia.us/
> 
> with mixed feelings. blogs and the new media arts scene do not go
> together all that well. this has been known for a long time. i associate
> this generational behaviour and subcultures. some tribes primarily use
> mobile phones, others love blogs and social software such as orkut. it
> is impossible to make general statements about this. i see many people
> running away from email. the shift towards pdas and mobile phones is
> remarkable. many give up their fights against spam and virusses (and
> rightly so...). remember that linux and apple users are not justified to
> make general claims about email because they are not exposed to the
> avelange of crap in the same way as MS users are. so always beware what
> OS someone has if they make bold statements about the web or email.
> 
> Best, Geert
> 
> geert,
> 
>> so possible improvements of lists should take
>> this into account and not look at web applications.
> 
> in this context, how do you evaluate the success of the Discordia project?
> 
> http://www.discordia.us/
> 
> discordia was initiated exactly with the idea in mind to improve
> certain aspects of online communication and to work around
> disadvantages of lists. while i a sympathetic to discordia, i hardly
> find the time to follow discussions there, while i have no problem
> following lists such as Spectre, Rohrpost, Xchange, Nettime, or the
> Sarai Reader-list, because i can read those when i'm somewhere
> offline.
> 
> i also believe that the issue of reading and being online/offline is
> very important for lists. with the Spectre list (and, in the past,
> the original Syndicate list) we find that a lot of people with
> unstable modem connections are dependent on a 'light' channel.
> 
> personally, i also like the mix between synchronicity and
> asynchronicity on lists which you get by people being present at
> different times, entering different speeds into the communication;
> this is also the result of different types and speeds of connection
> to the net, and the result of personal choices. (some people see
> e-mail as it is coming in, all the time, while others - incl. myself
> - only check their mailboxes occasionally over the day in order to
> avoid the constant distraction.)
> 
> greetings,
> -a
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre

> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
On 8/7/04 11:42 AM, "Thomas, Sue" <sue.thomas@ntu.ac.uk> wrote:

> Hi everyone
> 
> First I must apologise because I'm about to go offline until Thursday so I am
> throwing in this point and then disappearing tomorrow for a few days. But I
> just can't resist commenting on the huge yawning gender divide that has
> appeared in this discussion!
> 
> We began with a number of long and thoughtful posts from several women about
> the political, social and personal dimensions of managing lists. I was
> inspired to contribute and started responding but was twice pulled away by RL
> and never finished my posts. Apologies for that. Anyway, after the posts by
> women came an equally substantial series of emails from men - except that most
> (not all) of these were about building new kinds of lists.
> 
> The difference between these two streams of discussion reminded me so much of
> the gender divide I've seen all around me since I was growing up in the 50s
> that it has made me feel quite depressed.
> 
> After all that we've gone through in virtuality, have we really not changed
> all that much?
> 
> Please please reassure me that this strange gender divide that has opened up
> beneath our feet here at -empyre- is just a blip! A one-off! A sun spot!
> 
> Sue
> 
> Sue Thomas
> Artistic Director
> trAce Online Writing Centre
> http://trace.ntu.ac.uk
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 soundart performance videoinstallation multimedia painting theory

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