Annotated Bibliography

1) When Computers Were Women by Jennifer S. Light

#Themes: Women in science and technology, Gender, Labor, History of computers, Women hidden from history

Jennifer Light’s essay, “When Computers Were Women” explores how our understanding of technology is gendered and how different kinds of account of history shape what are assumptions are. Light’s explains how women were completely written out of the history of the invention of the computers. An absurd fact, regarding that women, specifically the “ENIAC” girls were the driving force behind the developing technology.

ENIAC was America's first electronic computer to automate ballistics computations during World War II. The invention of ENIAC, an undoubtedly a technological turning point in the history of computing, did not break away from the trend of minimizing women’s accomplishments in science and technology. The women built the machine which replaced them, yet their contributions were until recently, written out of historical accounts. The result of this removal is a distorted history of technological development that has rendered women’s work invisible and promoted a diminished view of women’s capabilities in this field. These incomplete stories emphasize the notion that programming and coding are, and were, masculine activities.

The gendered division of labour diminished their important, and challenging work as computers and as programmers to merely clerical, “women’s work.” In more recent accounts, however, the women computers are being re-written into their own history. As computer technology continues to permeate modern life, it will be critically important to remember women’s place within its development, in the past, in the present, and hopefully, in the future.

2) TechnoFeminism by Judy Wajcman

#Themes: Feminist Theory, Social aspects of technology, Gendered technology, Effect of technological innovations on women, Technology usage

"An emancipatory politics of technology requires more than hardware and software; it needs wetware - bodies, fluid, human agency." TechnoFeminism is a book by academic sociologist Judy Wajcman, about the role that gender plays in technology. The book reframes the relationship between gender and technologies, and presents a feminist reading of the woman-machine relationship. She shows how technologies are gendered by design and use.

Wajcman argues that technology is historically situated and shaped by the social relations that produce and use it. More specifically, she is interested in an "emerging technofeminist frame-work with an emphasis on the contingency and heterogeneity of technological change... to locate its possibilities in wider social networks". Such an analysis "introduces space for women's agency in transforming technologies". It directs to a need for women's voices to be heard for a change and to help shape the technologies that shape our world.

While acknowledging cyberfeminisms' enthusiasm and imagination (I would say cyberfeminist fetishism of technology), she challenges the feminist communities to engage more critically and actively with the latest digital developments. She points out the benefits of a broader, more materially grounded term that simultaneously addresses and incorporates the myriad ways that technologies shape our day-to-day lives.

"Analyses of everything from transit systems to pap smears must include a technofeminist awareness of men’s and women’s often different positions as designers, manufacturing operatives, salespersons, purchasers, profiteers, and embodied users of such technologies.". In the journal Science, Technology and Human Values, Sally Wyatt notes that the "theoretical insights from feminist technoscience (can and should) be useful for empirical research as well as for political change and action" and that one way of moving towards this is "return to production and work as research sites because so much work in recent years has focused on consumption, identity, and representation."

3) Life in Code: A Personal History of Technology by Ellen Ullman

#Themes: Female computer programmers, History of computer science, Social aspects of technology, Silicon Valley, Women in technology, Biography, Memoir

In a technology-dominated world, it is useful to be aware of what is happening behind the scenes. Ellen Ullman lived and worked inside the rising culture of technology, and she describes how digital technology has changed from the early years to the point it entered the mainstream culture. She tells us stories from Y2K to AI, to why there is so little diversity in tech.

The book is a memoir, comprised of several reflective essays on technology in relation to society, culture, and personal experiences. Remembering her life in programming and describing a toxic working environment, Ellen Ullman articulates much of what scares women and puts them off about tech. However, not all of her personal stories on the topic of gender relations in the office are bad. In one case, she tolerates frequent comments about her hair from one addled man in order to learn more about various aspects of computing from him. “I did have pretty hair; I went on to become a software engineer."

Her narratives point to the direction of changing the culture of coding, by bringing diverse people inside so that it will no longer be the exclusive domain of overgrown white boys who won't let any mere mortals into their exclusive club.

Notes

   Why this text could be relevant to my research:
   -How a field appropriated by men that reproduces a "male geek culture" pushes out diverse gender people
   -What can stories and anecdotes from women working in these environments tell us about the gender gap in technological sectors?
   -How can female and gender diverse people fit in current floss communities, or why is it necessary to create alternative ones?

4) Together: The Rituals, Pleasures and Politics of Cooperation by Richard Sennett

#Themes: Cooperation, Social acceptance, Social aspects of Cooperativeness, Do It Together

Living with people who differ—in gender, race, ethnicity, religion etc— is an urgent challenge facing civil society today. We tend socially to avoid engaging with people unlike ourselves, and modern politics encourages the politics of the tribe rather than of the city. In this thought-provoking book, Richard Sennett discusses why this has happened and what might be done about it.

Sennett contends that cooperation is a craft, and the foundations for skillful cooperation lie in learning to listen well and discuss rather than debate. In Together he explores how people can cooperate online, on street corners, in schools, at work, and in local politics. He traces the evolution of cooperative rituals from medieval times to today, and in situations as diverse as slave communities, socialist groups in Paris, and workers on Wall Street. Divided into three parts, the book addresses the nature of cooperation, why it has become weak, and how it could be strengthened. The author warns that we must learn the craft of cooperation if we are to make our complex society prosper, yet he reassures us that we can do this, for the capacity for cooperation is embedded in human nature.

5) Feminist Server Manifesto by Constant

#Themes: Feminist Infrastructures, Autonomours Infrastructures, Preserving Collective Memory, Protecting Feminist and Activist work, Threats to archiving formats

Feminist servers have been a topic of discussion, a partially-achieved aim and a set of slow-political practices among an informal group of transfeminists interested in creating a more autonomous infrastructure to ensure that data, projects and memory of feminist groups are properly accessible, preserved and managed. The need for feminist servers is a response to: the unethical practices of multinational ICT companies acting as moral and hypocrite censors; gender based online violence in the form of trolling and hateful machoists harassing feminist or women activists online and offline; the centralization of the internet and its transformation into a consumption sanctuary and a space of surveillance, control and tracking of dissent voices by government agencies among others.

The internet is not a safe space and where it is common to see feminist and activist work being deleted, censored, and/or prevented from being seen, heard or read. Freedom of expression is part of the feminist struggle and TransFeminists can contribute by providing collectively the knowledge and means to ensure their right to speak up remains accessible online, offline and wherever and under any format expression emerges. There will be no feminist internet without properly managed autonomous feminist servers. This is about regaining control and gaining autonomy in the access and management of our data and collective memories. It is also about being able to have feminist mailing lists, pads, wikis, content management systems, social networks and any other online services managed by feminist tech collectives. It is also of course about continuing to argue that social justice in technologically driven environments needs a more gender and culturally diverse presence in general.

Other

The Free Software Definition by Richard Stallman
Digital Commons: A dictionary entry by Felix Stalder
Every Woman Is a Working Woman by Silvia Federici
A Cyborg Manifesto by Donna Haraway
Reflections on alternatives, commons and communities by Massimo De Angelis
Zeros + Ones by Sadie Plant
How We Became Posthuman by Katherine Hayles
Xenofeminist manifesto by Laboria Cuboniks
The Future Looms: Weaving Women and Cybernetics by Sadie Plant
When Computers Were Human by David Alan Grier
Close to the machine: technophilia and its discontents by Ellen Ullman

User:Artemis gryllaki/Annotated Bibliography

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