User:Lidia.Pereira/SDRII/TF

Abstract

My interest in this field of research is explained by a desire to better understand the relationship between technology and gender.
Notions of an utopian future, with the digital revolution shaking the foundations of traditional gender power relations, have shaped cyberfeminist theories - uploading our consciousness to the cyberspace, enacted embodiment as a source of gender identification would be out of the question; the days of biological slavery would be long past. However, as Katherine Hayles argues, it is necessary for us to pose the question as a feedback relation between embodiment and consciousness, for thought is dependent on the body that enacts it. By merging thought (represented body) and enacted body, technology produces the cyborg. Such ideas are mirrored in Judy Wajcman's assumption that technology both shapes and is shaped by social/gender relations. Trying to bridge both extremes of feminist perspectives on technological change - an utopian view which embraces technology as total freedom as opposed to the dystopia which perceives technology as a sociotechnical product shaped by social relations which produce it - Wajcman, without downplaying the historical male dominance over the field of technology, proposes that the female "engagement with the process of technical change must be part of the renegotiation of gender power relations." Gendering across state, class, sexuality, nationality, etc is also a source of analysis in similarities and differences which impact women's participation on technoculture.

Notes on "How We Became Posthuman" by Katherine Hayles

Preface
The Turing Test - Identify who's the machine, who's the human. If you fail, it proves that machines can think.
Inaugural moment of computer age - "Intelligence" as a property of formal manipulation of symbols as opposed to enaction in the human sphere. The Turing test served as a starting point for artificial intelligence researches for three decades in its effort to erase embodiement. Conceptualized by Claude Shannon and Norbert Wiener, information is a distinct identity from the substrates which carry it, providing the ground to rethink information as a bodiless fluid capable of flowing different substrates without being impaired of its meaning or form.
After Turing, Moravec - the human identity as an informational path rather than embodied enaction, which could be demonstrated by downloading human consciousness into a computer. Moravec test then followed the Turing test. Turing test - prove that machines can think. Moravec - prove that machines can store human consciousness, thus becoming human beings (Cyborg)
Forgotten - Turing example to distinguish between a man and a woman - if your failure in the previous proves machines can think, what does it prove in this case? It is fundamental to consider gender when discussing intelligent machines (human's evolutionary successors). Relation between gendered body and embodiment erasure (cyborg).
Hodges biography of Turing - Turing lack of understanding of the impact of sex, society and politics on what people might say, limited by what people might do and not by "puzzle-solving" intelligence - Turing's theories implied free will and free speech of the individual. However, embodiement greatly afects thought as demonstrated when convicted by the court over his homosexuality: the importance of doing over saying was proven - power enforced its will upon his body.
Turing's inclusion of gender - boundary between human and machine involves more than asking "what can think" instead of "who can think". Other characteristics of the liberal subject must be taken into account, if the goal is to distinguish between the enacted body (flesh) and the represented body, constituted electronically through verbal and semiotic markers. The technology which connects both enacted and represented body turns the subject into a cyborg. If you guess correctly who's the man and who's the woman, you unite enacted and represented body into a single gender identity. However, the existence of the test implies the possibility of disjunction between enacted and represented body - thus, this connection is not inevitable but socially constructed, mediated by a technology which produces identity so you cannot separate it from its human subject.
Katherine Hayles argues that Hodges is wrong when assuming embodiment secures human identity (distinction between humans who can think and machines which cannot) and univocality of gender, however she agrees that embodiment should be considered, for it clarifies that thought depends on the embodied form which enacts it. This conclusion births the Posthuman. "The important intervention comes much earlier, when the test puts you into a cybernetic circuit that splices your will, desire, and perception into a distributed cognitive system in which represented bodies are joined with enacted bodies through mutating and flexible machine interfaces. As you gaze at the flickering signifiers scrolling down the computer screens, no matter what identifications you assign to the embodied entities that you cannot see, you have already become posthuman."

Notes on "Technofeminism" by Judy Wajcman

Preface
"Feminism Confronts Technology" -> Feminist perspective on social science debates about technology. Different technological change impact on women and men: how does their social experience affect technology? Technological artifacts are shaped by gender - which is a social construction. How do the hierarchies of sexual difference affect the design and reproduction of technologies?
Introduction: Feminist Utopia or Dystopia
Contemporary inability to live outside technology - our life is mediated by it. ICT acquired centrality, which makes for a global information society characterized by the compression of space and time.
However this raises concerns of a "digital divide", both between countries and within them, as a new source of inequality.
Our idea of self, of what means to be human, is changing thanks to the new biomedical technologies and new forms of commodifying nature. It is time to rethink technology impact in culture.
Nowadays, society's advancement index is partially determined by scientific and technological development. There's a reverence for "rational" as opposed to "emotional"
In the West, the feminization of the paid labour force has allowed for a new-found economic independence for women, generating a shift in public discourse about gender equality. In Western societies, aspects of gender equality are enshrined in law, although true equality is far from conquered. Besides, gender identities began to be questioned.
Social changes brought about by technological advances. Feminism is torn between utopian and dystopian visions of the impact of technology on women. Both scenarios crowd the future with automata, androids and robots.
Cyberspace age brought about new possibilites of emancipation from the flesh. "What might these imaginings about the future reveal about gender relations? How does the social and political revolution in women's lives relate to the digital revolution?"
Utopian visions -> Virtual reality can be seen as a new political space defying conventional gender roles and old social relations. Cyberfeminists imagine a gender free future in cyberspace. Digital networks are perceived as offering women new possibilities for global information exchange and thus participating democracy. Besides, the Internet is a powerful tool for political activist mobilization. It doesn't belong to anyone, making it an open space for women's political and social purposes, thus subverting the traditional definition of woman as biologically determined and confined to the private sphere. The idea of bodily transcendence and possibility of engagement in international politics is seen as highly seductive.
In the field of biomedical technologies, which allow us to reconfigure our bodies and design our babies, or chose when to and if we're going to have them, there's also some space for positive thinking: these advancements allow women to defy biology. The cyborg stands for the dissolving of borders between biological and cultural, human and machine - dichotomies which sustained previous fixed gender identities, such as the identification of femininity with maternity.
Regarding women's part on digital economy, this perspective argues that the expansion of information service sector creates a knowledge economy based on life-long learning, requiring expertise, judgement, discretion, skills, knowledge and traditionally held female values, such as communication and social skills, ideal for post industrial business (empathetic, "soft" style of management). (perpetuates socially constructed gender roles)
Dystopian visions -> The Internet is marked by its military origins and the image of the white male hacker that spawned it. So it is also a means of evading social regulation, strenghten political control and concentrate economical power. These groups are mainly dominated by men, not to mention the huge gender gap regarding access and control of electronic networks. The massive growth of pornographic websites as the most visited, sex trade activities, pedophile networks and sexual harrassment contribute for the view of the Internet as far from gender neutral, fully democratic and utopian.
Regarding biomedical technologies, cloning and genetic engineering deprive women of control over reproduction, thus implicating the masculine project of dominating women and nature. The negative aspect of the cyborg, with artificial life going out of control, also comes into play. How is nature going to be redesigned (GMOs, cloned animals, perfect human beings)? This changes more and more accentuate the idea of life as a commodity. Reproducive engineering thus removes power of self-determination of women's bodies.
The digital economy poses for women a higher chance of flexible and temporary jobs. The new economy requires simple, routine tasks which represent little skill. New styles of management involve electronic surveillance of the employees performance. Telework worsens the domestic burden for women. The spatial flexibility allowed by ICTs will result in the assignment of tasks offshore, requiring low-cost female labour in developing countries. Thus, digital economy replicates patterns of exploitation and sex segregation.
Regarding both positions, Wajcman argues that for feminism there is an option lying between total rejection or total embracing of technological change (technofobia/technofilia).
Summary:
1st Chapter - Feminist literature which tries to explain men's historical hold on machines and continuing under-representation of women in STEM careers. Technology as a source of men's power, as defining masculinity. The pessimistic view which perceives technology as socially shaped by men to the exclusion of women, emphasizes technology's role in reproducing the gendered division of labour. However, contemporary feminist debates argue, optimistically, new possibilities for women within new technologies.
2nd Chapter - The evolving social studies of science and technology allow for a interchange between gender theory and developments in science and technology studies, resulting in a feminist reconfiguration of theories which perceive technology as a sociotechnical product, i.e., shaped by social relations which produce and use it. The mutually shaping relation between gender and technology is thus taken into account, and technology is defined as both a source and consequence of gender relations - technofeminist framework. This analysis introduces space for women's agency in transforming technology.
3rd Chapter - Cyberfeminism occupies this space in an utopian fashion - post-feminist theories which emphasized agency and subjectivity as opposed to determinism. Its main argument is that the digital revolution represents the decline of traditional institutions and social relations (patriarchal power included). Technological change signifies the end of biology as the basis for gender difference, thus liberating women.
4th Chapter - The figure of the cyborg as feeding feminist imagination. This represents a reaction to either feminist theories which treat women as passive in the face of technological change or to the vision which perceived technological change as unlimited freedom. Donna Haraway's work (prosthetic appeals of biotechnologies) is an attempt to bridge these positions. Hayles argues that Haraway's work offered important insights into technological gender power relations, but however runs the risk of fetishizing new technologies (more her followers, though).
5th Chapter - "Engagement with the process of technical change must be part of the renegotiation of gender power relations. I take this as my central concern, while fully recognizing that gender is not the only axis of social hierarchy and identity (...). Indeed, the enormous variability of gendering by place, nationality, class, race, ethnicity, sexuality and generations makes a nuanced exploration of the similarities and differences between and across women's and men's experience all the more necessary." Digital revolutions, albeit not creating new societies, impact social, political and economical relations.
This book is a contribution to the heritage of feminist theory which analyses the gendered effects of the power, making distinctions and building worlds.
Male Designs on Technology
"Millenial reflections" (end of 20th century) - Social scientists consider technology as a major catalyst of social transformation. All theories about radical transformation reflect on technological change and subsequent social impact. The three paradigmatic Western theories are that of an information society, post-Fordism and postmodernity. Recent theories of globalization place emphasis on ICT and technologically mediated lifestyles, globally. Anthony Giddens and Manuel Castells theorize that states and societies are facing historical change trying to adapt to a more interconnected world. They underline how intense and extent are global network flows, characteristics of the so-called "Information Society" and "Knowledge Economy", whose work form is based on information and knowledge. Technical institutions shape social institutions such as schools, family and leisure by means of new pressures and opportunities. For both Giddens and Castells, digital change shakes the foundations of traditional hierarchies and give way to a network society. These are commonplace ideas in sociology, placing centrality in technology. Echoes of a "post-industrial" society can be heard in the adoption of a technologically determinist frame. Their failure consists, as it did with their predecessors, in understanding gender gaps on the impact of the technological revolution, concentrating on class hierarchies exclusively - it is unclear if the statement that everything will be different in the digital future applies to gender social relations. Optimistic views promise freedom, empowerment and wealth, but ignore the relationship between technology and gender. These views are oblivious to male domination on scientific and technological fields and institutions - those who command are involved and have power over the future. There's a coincidence between post-industrial debates and the re-emergence of feminism - where theorists are obliviously optimistic, second-wave feminists identify women's absence from technological spheres of influence as an important characteristic of the inequality present in gender power relations. This point, according to Wajcman, is being missed again in contemporary social theory. Men's dominance of technology is a source of power. Different feminist theories try to determine what's the problem: is it men's monopoly of technology or is it that technology is inherently patriarchal? Liberal feminism conceives the problem as one of equality of access and opportunity, whilst social feminism focuses on an analysis of the gendered nature of technology itself. The study of social factors shaping technologies exposes the way technology reflects gender divisions and inequalities. This approach presented a valuable critique of technological determinist sociological arguments. However, Wajcam states that both liberal and socialist feminist analysis place to much emphasis on the role of technology as reproducing patriarchy and, although building on these, contemporary theories must modify the pessimist note.
From Access to Equity
Biographies of women scientists contributed to demonstrate women's important contributions to this area. Part of feminist scholarship work has been to recover the history of women's achievements. A shift from looking at great women to examining patterns of women's participation was then necessary, propelled by the more apparent extent of women's exclusion from technoscience. A major concern is to explain women's limited access to scientific institutions, a research which highlighted what is perceived as "feminine" in our culture. The hypothesis include gender socialization, gender education which directs girls away from math and science and the identification of masculinity with technological artifacts, spread far and wide by schooling, youth cultures, family and mass media. We can understand that there is a direct link between education and labour market. 70's/80's liberal feminism saw the issue as one of equality in access to education and employment. This perspective didn't question technoscience bias - technology was intrinsically objective. For them, equal opportunity policies would solve the gender gap. However, the problem is that they don't ask if technoscience institutions could be reshaped to accomodate women. The problem is exclusively their socialization, aspirations and values - this calls for a major exchange of gender identity for a more male version, while the contrary is not asked of their male counterparts. To succeed, women need to "model themselves to model themselves on men who have traditionally avoided such (domestic) commitments." This is an approach which fails to question sexual division of labour. The sex-stereotyping of technology as appropriate for men (both its language and symbolism is masculine) keeps women away. It is not only about acquiring skills which are embedded in a masculine culture, but to enter this world is to forsake femininity without having the same being asked of men. The prototype inventor is still portrayed as male.