boobs + computers = crazy!
So in true form, I'm reading a book that I bought for a college class several years ago. I never read it for class but still toted it around with me as I relocated hither and yon. Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet by Sherry Turkle. But the funniest thing about that title is that the book was written in 1995. So I'm actually getting more enjoyment playing the ideas and statements in the book off of how things actually turned out. For example, there is a lot of discussion about role-playing through MUDs (multi-user dungeons, text-based interactive networks with varying themes). Now, given that I'm hooked on World of Warcraft and MMORPGs are the norm, I can relate to a lot of the points Turkle is trying to make but in a different context.
But now to the point of the subject of this post: as all female academics seem to do, Turkle has decided the the computer is a Tool for Oppressing Women or something like that. She has plenty of stories of wonderfully creative little girls who are practically angels without wings and have minds that rival that of Einstein, yet the Evil (Male) Computer Science Professor yells at them for trying to write programs that read like poetry. I suppose I'm on the side of the fence that Turkle is berating, the side that looks at computers and wants to program them with solid syntax and strict structure. I enjoy the fact that there are Rules, but apparently the (female) psychologist considers having computer programming rules a bad and restricting thing. I'm trying to struggle through the rest of the book to see if she has any valid or interesting points down the line, but overall I'm frustrated with her approach to the computer. Contemplating it right now though, I think my life in tech support has convinced me that 90% of the population views the computer as some Mystical Box, to which they must routinely make human sacrifices or it will get angry, that they neither understand nor want to understand yet are completely dependant on. So to write a book deconstructing the Computer as an "object-to-think-with" (stupid academic-talk) is pointless since no one wants to think with the computer, they want to ignore it as much as possible.
Now I'm hoping that Turkle gets into the idea that computer software and networking capabilities entice creativity and communication and all that psychology-stuff. Websites as new forms of creative design, blogs as new forms of writing (current events reporting, personal reflection, commentary, humor, etc.), Photoshop as the new canvas, digital cameras (still and video) as the new film industry. In fact, I had barely gotten through the introduction to this book and was already wondering if there was an updated edition or any new work by this author (update - amazon.com doesn't show anything else by her except her older works... oh well).
In other news: I find this comic to be very amusing... even though I never played Megaman. In fact, a lot of vgcats is amusing as heck, I was giggling to myself at work today.... I mean... I was working very hard and not reading online comics, no sir...
correction! There's nothing more amusing that bathroom humor
But now to the point of the subject of this post: as all female academics seem to do, Turkle has decided the the computer is a Tool for Oppressing Women or something like that. She has plenty of stories of wonderfully creative little girls who are practically angels without wings and have minds that rival that of Einstein, yet the Evil (Male) Computer Science Professor yells at them for trying to write programs that read like poetry. I suppose I'm on the side of the fence that Turkle is berating, the side that looks at computers and wants to program them with solid syntax and strict structure. I enjoy the fact that there are Rules, but apparently the (female) psychologist considers having computer programming rules a bad and restricting thing. I'm trying to struggle through the rest of the book to see if she has any valid or interesting points down the line, but overall I'm frustrated with her approach to the computer. Contemplating it right now though, I think my life in tech support has convinced me that 90% of the population views the computer as some Mystical Box, to which they must routinely make human sacrifices or it will get angry, that they neither understand nor want to understand yet are completely dependant on. So to write a book deconstructing the Computer as an "object-to-think-with" (stupid academic-talk) is pointless since no one wants to think with the computer, they want to ignore it as much as possible.
Now I'm hoping that Turkle gets into the idea that computer software and networking capabilities entice creativity and communication and all that psychology-stuff. Websites as new forms of creative design, blogs as new forms of writing (current events reporting, personal reflection, commentary, humor, etc.), Photoshop as the new canvas, digital cameras (still and video) as the new film industry. In fact, I had barely gotten through the introduction to this book and was already wondering if there was an updated edition or any new work by this author (update - amazon.com doesn't show anything else by her except her older works... oh well).
In other news: I find this comic to be very amusing... even though I never played Megaman. In fact, a lot of vgcats is amusing as heck, I was giggling to myself at work today.... I mean... I was working very hard and not reading online comics, no sir...
correction! There's nothing more amusing that bathroom humor