Images of men and women computing
photos of men computing tend to be them engaged. very few where they are posing for the camera.
joanne verplank has appeared in two issues in a row in photos (wearing same outfit), getting in car and sitting with a machine perhaps. need to dbl check.
how is it that all those women letters appeared at once? did they save them up or something?
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what I need are tools of analysis
look at "making technology masculine"
closed world
examine metaphors of technological thinking (reread!) and what kinds of metaphors are visible in PCC newsletters for computers, computer users
for how people use the computer together in drawn images
Historical/Political context of PCC
Images in PCC
Roles in the PCC
Why did publications like People's Computing, Recreational Computing go away?
Increasing feminization of fields, then economic downturn as eric said and those roles got eliminated?
I thought it was really interesting that Liza Loop viewed programming as the feminized occupation and thus imagined that more women are participating in that realm.
coders users coders users coders users
Feminist ideologies of technologies - shulamith firestone: women as users rather than builders even there.
sketch of an argument:
PCC was a site informed by feminism, though not explicitly feminist in its goals. bob as evidence of this.
tried to accomplish this through inclusion in iconography, mythologies
The first computer, inclusion of girls in photospread
however, role segregation at PCC
- men as hackers
- women as teachers, users
- iconography analysis again, photo analyses, backed up by the words of dennis allison, etc
- can i connect this or echo it with role segregation in the counterculture?
- can I support this idea of women's relations with technology with feminist readings at the time?
as computing exploded, so did subfields
- fissure of PCC into Dr Dobbs, Homebrew, People's Computing and then Recreational Computing
- these publications and organizations show the sex segregation at work
what was demise of these publications in the 1980s? seems to match reduced levels of women in computer science. my hypothesis is that hardcore pubs stuck around while teachy pubs lost audience. didn't appeal to "computer people," didn't appeal to "teachy" people.
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