technology

Fatherhood 4.0: iDad Applications Across Cultures

annette — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 08:00:00 +0000

From the outset, I was behind author Dalton Higgins’ endeavor in Fatherhood 4.0: iDad Applications Across Cultures. As an African-Canadian of Jamaican decent, Higgins writes to and for dads like him—multicultural, technologically and culturally current thirty-somethings figuring out how to parent in their contemporary Canadian society. And wouldn’t you know it, apparently he has quite the audience to speak to. Citing numerous Statistics Canada numbers, Higgins makes a case for Canada’s new generation of dads—racially and ethnically diverse, many being partners in mixed marriage couplings, and hardly any (just seventeen percent in 2006) mirroring the nuclear family image. He also notes an upswing in fathers taking advantage of the nationally available five weeks paternity leave, as well as an increase in stay-at-home dads. Alongside these paternal shifts, Higgins is hyper-aware of and interested in the role Internet, smartphones, and pop culture saturation has on influencing twenty-first century fatherhood.

But, this is not a self-help or how-to book. It is much more about voice and self-representation. Largely a patchwork of Higgins’ own writings on parenting within the black community, from hip-hop to absent fathers, as well as an incorporation of his interviews with Canadian public figures on their being fathers, Fatherhood 4.0 attempts a lot. Towards the book’s end, there are also quite a few essays on fatherhood trends within Canada’s indigenous population; a transgender man’s experience getting pregnant, and more musings on seeking (positive) representations of fathers of color in the media. However, despite a lot of the book’s promise, I found much to be desired.

As a writer, I felt that Higgins was too casual in language and analysis of his subject matter. Yes, I understand that he is a blogger, a pop culture/hip hop expert, and supportive of using contemporary slang and lingo to reach the younger generation of fathers he is targeting… but still. You can talk about Snoop Dogg and tweeting and fatherhood, and still do so at an authoritative and exploratory level. The splices of Higgins’ segments throughout repeated much of the same kitschy popular references, statistics, and general themes without ever developing any of them—at least to my satisfaction. And although Higgins interviews showcase stories from a diverse range of “media-savvy, multi-culti dads,” they all read rather stale. To be fair, I know very little about contemporary Canadian culture, and had to Google all of his interviewees, save for Broken Social Scene’s Charles Spearin. This, I am sure, considerably affected my lack of engagement with each man’s narrative. But, I also think that as an interviewer and framer, Higgins could have delved deeper. Although there were narrative similarities, I struggled to latch onto the unique aspects of each father’s circumstances in light of being a person of color, technologically inclined, or both.

My two favorite contributions were sandwiched at the book’s end—a segment written by Dr. Jessica Ball, entitled “Fathering in the Shadows: Indigenous Fathers and Canada’s Colonial Legacies” and excerpts from trans father Syrus Marcus Ware’s “Boldly Going Where Few Men Have Gone Before.” Although brief segments, I found myself most engaged here, as both not only presented fatherhood narratives foreign to me, but also followed through in their presentation as informative sources.

Overall, the book’s organization was off-putting, as I could never really understand Higgins’ intention. At one moment seemingly focused on various contemporary efforts to promote fatherhood within the black community, and another addressing technology and culture, this book lacks focus—and unfortunately, the multi-faceted narratives, and all that could be discussed, suffer from it.

Written by: Alison Veith, February 20th 2011

Mass Destruction: The Men and Giant Mines that Wired America and Scarred the Planet

admin — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:56:00 +0000

By Timothy J. LeCain

Rutgers University Press

In Mass Destruction, Timothy J. LeCain carefully examines the industrial open-pit mining industry in America, and its technological, social, and environmental impact on our modern world.

Full disclosure: Books like this have a tendency to take my enviro-angst to a whole new level. I consider myself concerned with environmental issues, but I clearly have not yet reached Colin Beavan (a.k.a. did-not-use-toilet-paper-for-a-year-man) levels of environmental virtue. I would say that I have a moderate to high level of "impact guilt"; I carpool, but feel bad for not owning a hybrid or taking the bus. I recycle, but feel remorseful for buying food with lots of packaging. Mass Destruction took me from a vague kind of guilt when throwing my towels into the dryer straight to an appendicitis-like pain when thinking of all the copper wiring that has made my lifetime of electricity use possible.

If you have never seen pictures of the Bingham Pit Mine outside of Salt Lake City, Utah, its scope will definitely take your breath away. Measuring two and a half miles wide and three-quarters of a mile deep, the mine is one of only two man-made objects that are visible from space. LeCain sees this as fitting, “given that the astronauts’ technological home away from home in space would most likely contain copper, aluminum, gold, and other metals mined in open pits.” However, LeCain argues convincingly that the rise of technological innovation and efficiencies that sent Americans to the moon has also created the potential for the worldwide depletion of natural resources and irrevocable damage to ecologically important areas. LeCain describes the proliferation of “dead zones,” which are areas near pit mining operations that have been so besieged and exploited that they essentially become sterile, and even poisonous.

Even more alarming is LeCain’s assertion that as developing countries takes on American-style production and consumption habits, the environmental crises created by open pit mining will grow exponentially. Yet, in the fair-minded style LeCain uses throughout the book, he argues that America should not ask the rest of the world to abandon their lucrative mining operations due to environmental impact. Now that we have benefited from the mineral riches we have extracted, we cannot hypocritically expect the rest of the world to sit by and pass up the opportunity such technology provides to its people. The obligation of America, according to LeCain, will be in scientific advancement: finding ecologically sound methods for mineral extraction. His hope is that these advancements will provide an increased quality of life for people around the world.

I fervently hope LeCain is right that our future is one where technology and ecology coincide. However, barring the simultaneous worldwide vaporization of every iPod, Hummer, and coal-fired power plant, I have trouble believing humanity will ever be able to use earth’s resources with anything remotely resembling sustainability. But that could just be my enviro-angst talking.

Written by: Jennifer Wedemeier, November 4th 2009

©ontent: Selected Essays on Technology, Creativity, Copyright, and the Future of the Future

admin — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 16:39:00 +0000

By Cory Doctorow

Tachyon Publications

He’s been dubbed the “William Gibson of his generation,” but Cory Doctorow is more than a cyberpunk novelist or futurist. He’s an activist, a Creative Commons advocate, tech blogger, and journalist. I don’t come to Doctorow’s non-fiction work by way of his sci-fi novels. In fact, I only know the Doc as a gizmo and copyright guru famous for sites like Boing Boing and essays in Wired and Salon.

A book like ©ontent is an excellent case study in the impermanence of information. In a world where technology can evolve in a day, Doctorow’s work is both informative and outdated. The book begins with multiple essays about the failures of DRM—digital rights management, which is that obnoxious anti-piracy copyright code that makes it impossible to share downloaded files—but anyone who follows headlines about the issue knows that in the past year, the DRM battle has largely been won by laypeople; Apple has ceased selling DRM tracks in iTunes, for example. That isn’t to say Doctorow’s analysis isn’t useful. His now two-year-old essays serve largely as historical information in an era of meteoric technological and ethical shifts.

Doctorow is often too much of a technophile, incompatible with my own neo-Luddite tendencies; but I nevertheless respect his outlook and options. I suspect his work is most accessible to folks already engaged in analysis of copyright and new media. I’m most fond of his love of relaxed copyright regulation—though whether or not I think his theories are plausible is another matter. As a man who gives away his own ebooks, his early distaste of Amazon.com’s Kindle is charming. When he spends four pages defending fan fiction, it is in part because of his own history writing the genre. I love anyone who practices what they preach.

Doctorow also makes one sizable contribution to misinformation that I’d be remiss to not mention. In his essay “Why Is Hollywood Making a Sequel to the Napster Wars?” he mentions in passing that YouTube was founded by “two guys in a garage.” One of the largest myths of tech start-ups, the men in the garage story is not only an overused cliché; in this case, it is categorically untrue. YouTube was founded by three San Francisco PayPal veterans, supposedly at a dinner party, but despite widespread reports to the contrary, the idea grew over time and was not conceived in one evening of eating and drinking with friends. It may seem small, but when it comes to avoiding such blatant fact-checking mistakes, I expect more from an expert like Doctorow.

His largest contribution as a writer—both as a freelancer and a novelist—is his unrepentant championing of free books. ©ontent has been simultaneously released as a free ebook, so while I held a hard copy in my hands because I don’t personally believe tangible books are a dying medium, I respect Doctorow’s commitment to accessible media. I also happen to believe people like him when they say, “Giving away my books has made me a bunch of money.” Making yourself valuable and indispensable, in whatever form, is something for which we can all strive.

Written by: Brittany Shoot, July 23rd 2009

Terminator Salvation

admin — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 19:13:00 +0000

Directed by McG

Warner Bros. Pictures

The story behind Christian Bale’s casting in the latest installment of the Terminator franchise is as follows. Director McG approached Bale to play the role of Marcus (the role that eventually went to up-and-coming Aussie actor Sam Worthington). Instead, Bale asked to play John Connor and insisted that the storyline be so airtight that it would hold up without special effects.

In that regard, Terminator Salvation succeeds. I couldn’t find any plot holes in this two-hour installment. However, Salvation takes itself a little too seriously, lacking much of the fun of the previous installments.

The film, which serves as both a sequel and a prequel, is set in 2018, fourteen years after the events of Terminator: Rise of The Machines. We are introduced to a thirty-three year old John Connor. A mid-ranking officer in the human resistance, Connor is viewed as the fulfillment of a messianic prophecy by some, and a delusional fake by others. He spends much of his time reaching out to far-flung members of the resistance via radio.

Meanwhile, a mysterious stranger, Marcus, wanders around in the wasteland that used to be Southern California. He encounters two lone members of the Los Angeles based resistance, a teenaged Kyle Reese (an absolutely adorable Anton Yelchin) and a mute Star (an even cuter Jadagrace). While they make their way to John Connor’s camp, Kyle and Star are captured by Skynet, which is holding large numbers of humans as hostages.

While Marcus makes his way to the Resistance, he crosses paths with Blair (Moon Bloodgood), a resistance fighter who gets shot down during a dogfight with Skynet. They hike for two days in order to reach camp. I can’t give any more plot details without revealing the ending, but let’s just say that there is a lot more to Marcus than originally meets the eye.

I wanted to like—no, love—this movie. After all, I am a huge fan of the Terminator series, and I have nursed a crush on Christian Bale since I first saw him in the satirical, but incredibly controversial, American Psycho. And I did like the fact that the movie dealt with heavy existential questions on what it truly means to be human.

However, the film never thrilled me. Salvation is too flawed for that. In fact, I found myself fidgeting in my seat despite the lean 130-minute runtime. The opening sequence gave away too much information about Marcus, which allowed me to make a fairly accurate guess at what his role in the story was. If McG had dealt with Marcus’s back story in flashbacks, the plot twist that occurs near the end would have packed much more of a dramatic punch. The cinematography is downright boring—you can only sit through so many shots of a barren sun-scorched landscape. The movie is often overpowered by Danny Elfman’s blaringly dramatic score. The dialogue is leaden in numerous spots with Bale using his creepy Batman Begins voice one time too many; several actors (Bryce Dallas Howard, Common, and Jane Alexander amongst others) are wasted. The CGI cameo of the Governator himself inspired yawns, not gasps of surprise. And, in my not-so-humble opinion, not allowing John Connor to die at the end of the movie was a cop-out.

That said, only check out this film if you are a fan of the series and are eager to see which loose ends do and don’t get tied up. Otherwise, skip it.

Written by: Ebony Edwards-Ellis, June 1st 2009

Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat: New Perspectives on Gender and Gaming

admin — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 10:36:00 +0000

By Yasmin B. Kafai, Carrie Heeter, Jill Denner, Jennifer Y. Sun

MIT Press

As I opened this collection, I had just finished shaking my head at a picture a man I know well posted of himself grinning vividly, arms around a young woman clad in a chain mail bikini top at a gaming conference. This “booth babe” photo rests comfortably within the confines of his MySpace page. I cracked the spine of this volume considering how I felt about the girl, the picture, the medium, and my own experiences as feminist scholar who is also an avid gamer. This book, I realized, is a timely addition to a conversation that ended too abruptly, and continuing from the first watershed edition of this conversation is very relevant at this particular moment in gaming culture.

I often felt guilty that I took on a “typical” female character in World of Warcraft. I do not play a warrior; I play a hybrid character that engages combat from afar and heals others. Although I love my character, I constantly feel un-feminist when gaming from such a culturally feminine position. These are the sorts of questions and conversations we are ready to have rather than simply an analysis of the demographics in gaming, and Beyond Barbie and Mortal Kombat moves us in this direction.

The editors rightly explain that the impetus for the collection is to go beyond the gaming analysis that evolved in the early ‘90s and the simple attention to both how many women were playing and how many women characters were bikini clad within the games. The moment of clucking a tongue at the buxom Lara Croft has passed us and gaming; gaming culture and its impact has reached a far more complicated moment in need of analysis, and this volume attempts that discussion.

In their introduction, the editors argue that a more complete discussion of the multi-billion dollar industry as a whole is an important element to a full analysis of the phenomena and impact of this cultural entity. This includes not only how many women play games, but what sorts of games and how the industry has responded to them—not just as players, but as designers or those who provide input into the industry.

One important element the book covers is that with the rise of more complex gaming is the rise of gaming communities, opening a clear avenue for a more enlightened and nuanced discussion of gender in gaming. (A conversation my online gaming community has frequently addressed in our private forums.)

This book would make an excellent text in a multi-media classroom as it deftly handles the past research, includes contemporary scholars who are the top of the field, and carefully paints a comprehensive picture of not simply game design, game players, and plot lines, but also of the industry as a economic whole, one that employs a wide range of labor. The book takes on hearty conversations of where gender plays into that labor and as a result, reinforces the gaming industry as a cultural staple and microcosm of larger social theoretical space.

The book also does well to not rely solely on quantitative research for its evidence or argument, and a collection of interviews with references to authors from the past research the book seeks to add to helps to paint a more qualitative conversation of the industry that is often solely measured in profits, percentages, purchases, or players.

Written by: Dr. Julie E. Ferris, April 16th 2009

Digital Media and Democracy: Tactics In Hard Times

admin — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 10:45:00 +0000

Edited by Megan Boler

MIT Press

Brittany: I came to this collection with a lot of skepticism, mostly because I’ve grown quickly weary of the narrative about cyberactivism as a fun, accessible substitute for real-time work. I didn’t grow up with a particular activist model, but working as a communication and media scholar in recent years, my response to technology has been lukewarm at best, particularly when it is touted as a surrogate for working with people. Almost immediately, I was pleasantly surprised to find this collection of essays balanced and thorough, with an emphasis on media literacy as a necessity for successful activism and a rather open-ended approach to using certain media tools depending on the context. The range of articles could appeal to a wide variety of activist folk and media minds, so while dense, I’d recommend this collection to anyone with more than a passing interest in media activism.

Allyson: One of the things that really caught my attention was the repeated references to Jodi Dean's chapter, "Communicative Capitalism: Circulation and the Foreclosure of Politics." I was fascinated by her focus on the problems of social media: the way signing online petitions makes us think we’re doing world-changing activist work, the way reading selected blogs from an RSS feed means that we’re possibly limiting our access to other news and opinions we wouldn’t know of otherwise, the ways in which the massive amount of information available can actually inhibit access to said information, the ways in which online forms of “activism”—such as blogging—can distract us from other forms of work that might be more meaningful and effective.

It seems to me that a lot of the contributors to this collection disagreed with Dean's views, or that they found them too pessimistic. While I agree that Dean's article is pessimistic, I don't disagree with her. In fact, it's the sort of thing I think I needed to read, and it's the chapter in this collection that stands out in my mind above all the rest. Dean's article was a real wake-up call for me to think about how I approach technology, activism, and feminism. At the time I read the chapter, I was already working with ways to have a stronger offline feminist presence. I was getting my offline activism together, and Dean's chapter helped me get going. Her writing is pessimistic, but in a way, it's also inspirational. I think it depends what you take from it. Since I was already looking to expand my activist work, I was preconditioned to be receptive her ideas, and the piece really resonated with me.

Brittany: For me, the most resounding piece was Robert Deibert’s essay on the militarization of the Internet, tiered connectivity services, and the OpenNet Initiative. One of my greater frustrations—both with myself and other activists and media makers with whom I have worked—has been a lack of understanding of how the Internet was developed, the infrastructure behind it, and the myth of the web’s openness. In my view, it’s like any other system you want to use to benefit yourself and others: you have to understand the backend, who’s in charge, and who enables your work so that you also know who could effectively shut it down. I don’t think it’s an article for everyone, but it does speak to issues about how Internet access is blocked in certain countries and daunting user agreements many of us (myself included) have been known to sign for certain software that makes much of how we’d actually utilize the product illegal.

The article also has a nice, if too short, section on hactivism, the idea of staging digital sit-ins, and doing a sort of civil disobedience in a virtual space. I wondered if others would read about these tactics and find that normalizing technology and the social web makes those things less daunting and, ultimately, more successfully utilized by activists.

Allyson: Reflecting on these essays, and the ways in which I define my feminism and my activism, I realize that blogging, in fact, led me to activism. That is, getting involved online inspired me to get involved with the offline world. There is something about authoring a blog that is narcissistic and narrow, especially because smaller blogs with a limited readership don’t get a whole lot of debate in the comments. But oddly enough, that was sort of the thing I needed. I needed to have a space to write, and just be in my own thoughts. Yes, that could have been accomplished by a regular paper journal, but while a blog is somewhat self-centered, it also has a social component, even if that social component is somewhat limited. Blogging provided me the kind of balance I needed to both write and put myself out there. And by having a space to get all those thoughts out, it helped me (and still helps me) refine my feminism, to figure out my motivations and what I want to do. It’s because of blogging that I decided what kind of feminist volunteer work that I wanted to do.

These essays got me thinking much more not just about being an offline activist, but about the depths of my activism. Various authors in this book discuss tactical media, which is an idea I never encountered before. We see the positives and the negatives of tactical media described in Digital Media and Democracy, so I really started thinking about my own practices, and whether I was being "too" tactical or not—that is, I was focusing on one issue at a time, as it happened, without any sort of deep commitment or ideological foundation. After reading this book, I recognize the value in tactical media, and I have also reshaped my activist approaches to combine tactical approaches with more sustained commitments.

Brittany: I think we both came out of reading this book with a lot of renewed hope and some new ideas about how to take academic lessons and apply them to our personal, everyday politics. Again, a dense read, and I still think that the essays, offered together, provide a much-needed overview of the sometimes-awkward marriage between activism and media, as it exists today.

Written by: Brittany Shoot, Allyson Whipple, October 14th 2008

Bitch (Issue #39: Wired)

admin — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 09:54:00 +0000

B-Word Publishing

Having never read an issue of Bitch, I found myself apprehensive when beginning my read of "The Wired Issue." The word "bitch" conjures a menagerie of intimidating persons to mind, and my expectation was that the content would be something similar. While I encountered a few impassioned articles and editorials, the majority of the issue's content was exploratory, explanatory, and thought provoking.

The magazine describes itself as the "feminist response to pop culture," and its content covers a range of topics including technology, the media, music, and film. "The Wired Issue" explores feminism in the digital age—from the affects of coffee on women's systems to misogyny in the blogosphere and "Bionic Betties." Enlightening? Most definitely.

While some readers might leave the issue feeling as if the writers are all under the impression that it's "us" against "them," the majority of their observations are overwhelmingly true. For instance, when was the last time you heard about a male blogger being threatened with rape and the kidnapping of his children? Also published in this issue is an article on how to spot bunk reporting, a skill we could all use in a world of aggregators and recycled leads.

Ultimately, I discovered that Bitch provides perspectives from men and women of varying ethnic backgrounds on topics you won't find anywhere else. I am particularly fond of the "Bitch List" column, which is described as "an annotated guide to some of our favorite things." Without it, I know I never would have heard of drag king trading cards or the crocheted uteri doll.

Even if you can't find "The Wired Issue" I recommend investing in a copy of Bitch. Its illuminating content may turn the time you devote to casual reading into something a bit more fulfilling.

Written by: Lizz Clements, June 11th 2008

She's Such a Geek: Women Write about Science, Technology, and Other Nerdy Stuff

admin — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 12:40:00 +0000

Edited by Annalee Newitz, Charlie Anders

Seal Press

A collection of essays by women geeks? What can self-professed geeks share with the rest of women about what it means to be female? A heck of a lot, whether you measure it in decimal or binary.

She's Such a Geek is a wonderful affirmation of what it means to be a geek and to be a woman (sometimes even feminine!) without falling into the trap of sounding bitter or obnoxiously over-assertive. I loved it. From essays like Kory Well’s “Really Good for a Girl” to Violet Blue’s “The Hacker’s Guide to What’s in Her Own Panties,” these essays explore the beginnings of geek culture with hard drives that had less memory capacity that floppy disks to the growing field of teledildonics – with musings on how cool it would be to have a vibrator that plugs into your USB port for cybersex.

These women think about logic and intuition and how male/female stereotypes apply to the worlds of geekiness. But geeks, of course, aren’t defined by computers. “To me, a geek is someone who is passionate about something,” Jessica Dickenson Goodman says. These geeks are obsessed with computers, chemistry, astronomy, history and (I would add) life. There are worse ways to live than being passionate about learning. Let these women introduce you to obsession, or validate your insecurities about your own passions.

Written by: Janine Peterson Wonnacott, March 9th 2007