[iDC] One Laptop Per Child - MIT/Negroponte Initiative

[Sam Ladner]

Sigh. Okay, okay. More detail? Alright.

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 Hello,
Central?: *Gender*, Technology, and Culture in the Formation of *Telephone *
Systems<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>,
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.

Re: tech is not neutral. See, for starters,
MacKenzie, D., & Wajcman, J. (1999). Introduction. In D. MacKenzie & J.
Wajcman (Eds.), The Social Shaping of Technology (pp. 2-27): Open University
Press,

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.

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.

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.

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.).

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 ;-)

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).

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.

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.

And just to be a jerk, but a thorough jerk, here are few more references to
back up what I'm saying:

*Technology is subordinate to the political:*
Barney, D. (2000). Prometheus Wired: The Hope for Democracy In The Age of
Network Technology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Winner, L. (1986). The Whale and The Reactor : A Search for Limits in An Age
of High Technology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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.

*Technology is not gender neutral:*
Burris, B. (1998). Computerization of the Workplace. Annual Review of
Sociology, 24, 141-157.

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.

Noble, D. (1992). A World Without Women: The Christian Clerical Culture of
Western Science. New York: Alfred A. Knopff.

Menzies, H. (1996). Whose Brave New World?: The Information Highway and the
New Economy. Toronto: Between the Lines.
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