Sigh. Okay, okay. More detail? Alright.<br><br>There is a rich social history of the telephone that shows that it was originally conceived of as a business, not social, tool. For example, see <span class="w"><a href="http://books.google.ca/books?hl=en&lr=&id=ncY4zhQ2H-UC&oi=fnd&pg=PP13&dq=telephone+%22social+history%22+gender&ots=Fk4YJrQJMl&sig=n2FAoYR2hMBOVyxiMn83bo4TjjY" onmousedown="new Image().src='/scholar_url?sa=T&url=http://books.google.ca/books%3Fhl%3Den%26lr%3D%26id%3DncY4zhQ2H-UC%26oi%3Dfnd%26pg%3DPP13%26dq%3Dtelephone%2B%2522social%2Bhistory%2522%2Bgender%26ots%3DFk4YJrQJMl%26sig%3Dn2FAoYR2hMBOVyxiMn83bo4TjjY';">
Hello, Central?: <b>Gender</b>, Technology, and Culture in the Formation of <b>Telephone </b>Systems</a></span>, which, granted, is a Canadian study. But it does show how Bell Canada was quite vexed by housewives using the phone for "frivolous" purposes, which was not at all their intention when they designed it.
<br><br>Re: tech is not neutral. See, for starters, <br>MacKenzie, D., & Wajcman, J. (1999). Introduction. In D. MacKenzie & J. Wajcman (Eds.), The Social Shaping of Technology (pp. 2-27): Open University Press,<br>
<br>in which they argue that technology is often decontextualized from its historical context and somehow given this superhuman power of affecting social relations quite separately from its design intents. <br><br>How are the overpasses that prevented buses from going to the beach the same? Well, designers of technology have a set of implicit assumptions when they build technology. No, this is not a "vast male conspiracy" -- quite the contrary. It is largely unspoken, implicit, but nonetheless effective in shaping how the technology is used.
<br><br>Don't misunderstand me -- I don't think designers of technology, who largely happen to be white men of a certain economic class and position, *intend* to exclude women, people of colour, the disabled, the elderly, and the otherwise different, from using their products. No, I believe they intend to actually have their tools used by as many as possible.
<br><br>But what ends up happening is often a product of the implicit "scripts" designers of technology embed in their tools (see for example Akrich, M. (1992). The de-scription of technical objects. In W. Bijker & J. Law (Eds.), Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change (pp. 205-224). Cambridge: MIT Press.).
<br><br>It's true that some companies, such as Best Buy like you describe, realize that women are the decision makers in most domestic purchases. So they tailor their shopping experiences to appeal to women. However, this is not the same thing as *designing* technology. Am I saying that women are "sheep"? Good Lord no! Ewe should know better than that ;-)
<br><br>Perhaps your daughter would disagree with me and say that her 4,000 SMS messages shows that she's more tech-savvy than the average man her age. And maybe a young woman in, say, Indonesia would grow and learn about herself through a computer (see Turkle, S. (1984). The Second Self: Computers and The Human Spirit. New York: Simon and Shuster for example).
<br><br>But again, as I mentioned, you cannot "dis-embed" technology from its context. Chances are your daughter faces pressures that men her age do not, such as expectations about BEING social or organizing social events, or emailing photos out. And chances are that our young friend in Indonesia faces pressures her brother does not, such as expectations about learning to cook and keep house, rather than emailing new friends in Scandinavia.
<br><br>Is OLPC a BAD thing, inherently? Absolutely not. Will it change social relations, autonomous from the existing social relations in which it is used? No, and that's my main point.<br><br>And just to be a jerk, but a thorough jerk, here are few more references to back up what I'm saying:
<br><br><b>Technology is subordinate to the political:</b><br>Barney, D. (2000). Prometheus Wired: The Hope for Democracy In The Age of Network Technology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.<br><br>Winner, L. (1986). The Whale and The Reactor : A Search for Limits in An Age of High Technology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
<br><br>Noble, D. (1985). Social choice in machine design: The case of automatically controlled machine tools. In D. MacKenzie, and Wajcman, J. (Ed.), The social shaping of technology (pp. 109-125). Philadelphia: Open University Press.
<br> <br><b>Technology is not gender neutral:</b><br>Burris, B. (1998). Computerization of the Workplace. Annual Review of Sociology, 24, 141-157.<br><br>Cockburn, C. (1999). The Material of Male Power. In D. MacKenzie & J. Wajcman (Eds.), The Social Shaping of Technology (pp. 177-198): Open University Press.
<br><br>Noble, D. (1992). A World Without Women: The Christian Clerical Culture of Western Science. New York: Alfred A. Knopff.<br><br>Menzies, H. (1996). Whose Brave New World?: The Information Highway and the New Economy. Toronto: Between the Lines.
<br><br><br>