1. Today’s Plan
• mid-term feedback
• digital natives vs. digital immigrants
• Ginsburg’s critiques of digital divide
• BREAK
• return to technofeminism
• design activity
• Wrap up and what is coming next

2. Mid-Term Feedback
As a learner, what has been working for you so far
in this class?
– 2 readings per week, weekly reading assignments and
blogging/commenting
– discussions in class; being led instead of free-for-all
– examples and media
– group work ok so far
– visuals and lecture slides posted on website; summary
of each week
– feedback emails

3. Mid-Term Feedback
As a learner, what do you need more of?
– more structure with lectures – more slides with
info (but maybe just for core theory classes)
– skim through main points of authors without
really grasping what they are saying
– hand out defining certain terms; clarifying
terminology that may be unfamiliar
– more visuals

4. Digital Natives vs Digital Immigrants
• Today's students have not just changed incrementally from
those of the past, nor simply changed their
slang, clothes, body adornments, or styles, as has happened
between generations previously. A really big discontinuity has
taken place. One might even call it a "singularity" - an event
which changes things so fundamentally that there is
absolutely no going back. This so-called "singularity" is the
arrival and rapid dissemination of digital technology in the last
decades of the 20th century.
• today's students think and process information fundamentally
differently from their predecessors.
• Our students today are all "native speakers" of the digital
language of computers, video games and the Internet.

5. • So what does that make the rest of us? Those
of us who were not born into the digital world
but have, at some later point in our
lives, become fascinated by and adopted
many or most aspects of the new technology
are, and always will be compared to
them, Digital Immigrants.
• http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-
%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf

6. Digital Immigrant Accent
• turning to the Internet for information second rather
than first … reading the manual for a program rather
than assuming that the program itself will teach us to
use it
• printing out your email (or having your secretary
print it out for you - an even "thicker" accent);
needing to print out a document written on the
computer in order to edit it (rather than just editing
on the screen); and bringing people physically into
your office to see an interesting web site (rather than
just sending them the URL)
• Today's older folk were "socialized" differently from
their kids, and are now in the process of learning a
new language. And a language learned later in
life, scientists tell us, goes into a different part of the
brain.

8. Test Yourself
Consider this quote from Warschauer
(2002): “technology and society are
intertwined and co-constitutive … so any
assumption of causality problematic.” This is
indicative of which of the following
approaches?
a) Social construction of technology (SCOT)
b) Domestication
c) Social shaping
d) Technological determinism

9. Tools from Warschauer
• Not one type of ICT access but many
• Meaning and value of access varies in
particular social contexts
• Gradations of access not have/have-nots
• ICT access = education and power
• SOCIAL INCLUSION: we must work to enhance
the social, economic, political power of
communities

10. Tools from Ginsburg
• Who has the right to control knowledge?
• We should consider the power relations that
determine whose knowledge is valued
• Notion of time as an important factor
• Digital technologies can be used in many
different ways; ‘on their own terms’
• Need to keep listening to the unwired side of
the so-called digital divide

11. Using Ginsburg to Critique Warschauer
• Access based on ownership or availability
• TV ownership in US almost universal among rich and
poor
• BUT Warschauer says there is more to it than that:
total cost of ownership
• Barriers: differences in knowledge and skills,
differences in attitudes towards using them,
inadequate online content for low-income citizens,
especially in diverse languages, government
controls/limitations
• How might Ginsburg respond?

12. Using Ginsburg to Critique Warschauer
• “re-orient the focus from that of gaps to be
overcome by provision of equipment to that
of social development to be enhanced
through the effective integration of ICT into
communities and institutions”
• How might Ginsburg respond?

13. Wajcman and Technofeminism
#mencallmethings
• Promise of cyberspace
– Open to anyone
– Non-hierarchical,
democratic space
– Old divisions of class,
race, ethnicity and
sexuality dissolved
– Free women from Sady Doyle of
constraints of their sex TIGERBEATDOWN.com

14. Wajcman and Technofeminism
• Common notion: women as technically
incompetent or invisible in technical spheres
• Hegemonic form of masculinity strongly
associated with technical prowess and power
• Is femininity incompatible with technical
pursuits?

15. Wajcman and Technofeminism
• Should we reject technology as oppressive or
uncritically embrace it as liberating?
• Will mass digitization sever the link between
technology and male privilege?
• Have new technologies (like social media)
undergone a sex change?
• Have existing societal patterns of inequality
simply become reproduced in a new
technological guise?

16. Wajcman and Technofeminism
• Technology and society are MUTUALLY
CONSTITUTED
– Source and consequence of gender relations

20. EXERCISE
• Come up with examples of products designed
particularly for women or men.
• Pick one and re-design it!

21. Week Seven: Inclusions and Exclusions
• Gilbert, Eric, Karrie Karahalios and Christian
Sandvig. 2008. “The Network in the Garden: An
Empirical Analysis of Social Media in Rural Life.”
CHI. (M)
• Kennedy, H., Thomas, S. and Evans, S. 2011. “Can
the Web be Accessible for People with
Intellectual Disabilities?” The Information Society
27(1):29-39. (M)
• Lam, Shyong K., Anuradha Uduwage, Zhenhua
Dong, Shilad Sen, David R. Musicant, Loren
Terveen and John Riedl. 2011. “WP: Clubhouse?
An Exploration of Wikipedia’s Gender
Imbalance.” WikiSym.