Held Tuesday, October 12, 1999
Summary
Notes
- I'm returning (nearly) everything I have from you.
- I seem to be missing a bibliography assignment from Mr. Lentz
- I haven't graded all the redos of the citation exercise.
- Everything else will be returned after break.
- Spend some time during break thinking about what courses you'd
like to take next semester and what you might choose as a major.
- Unfortunately, most majors would like you to have taken at least
one course within the discipline during your first year.
- Plan to take at least one course in each division.
- Meetings this week are optional. Please let me know if you plan
to meet with me.
- I'm hoping to set up some ``stuck here during break'' activity
If you're interested in participating, please let me know.
- I'd like another set of two questions from each of you by 5pm
tomorrow.
Our focus today will be some or all of the following questions. If
we find that discussion is not successful, we may decide to institute
formal roles in the discussion.
- Maso and Spender use very different techniques for ``arguing'' their
points. Is one more effective than the other? Why or why not?
- Is Carole Maso a progressive writer, or is she frustrated with her
publishers?
- Maso and Spender reach very different conclusions about the
impact of computer technologies. What accounts for these
differences?
- Davidson: If most computer programs and web pages were designed by men, would
that also alienate women from using the Internet or many computer programs?
Are the different ways that Herring says men and women interact reflected in
the programming/web design being done?
- Are the different views that the Interent further democratizes or divides the
country and/or world reflective of where the person who is conducting the
study or writing the article is coming from?
being pointed out (passive voice, I know, I know). Does this early
realization make it possible to rectify the discrepancies or has White
Upper-Class Man already staked his claim?
- Both Spender and ??? claim that because an environment was created
and populated by one gender/culture first, that environment is
uncomfortable for others and leads to lack of use/participation from
the others. What evidence is there for this assertion?
- Because Maso uses such a nontraditional style, it wasn't easy to
tell what she was claiming. What was her claim and how valid was it?
- In Black Struggles in Cyberspace, the Internet-use demographics statistics
do not seem to incorporate the fact that different races make up different
percentages of population. How can we believe these data?
- All the statistics given in the articles pertain to adult usage of the
Internet. With increasingly more children and teenagers signing on, how does
this affect the gender and race stats?
- I believe that it's difficult to gather information on pre-adults
without parental consent, making such data difficult to obtain.
-
http://www.npd.com/ might have some information.
- What method does the GVU Center of Georgia-Tech use to monitor and collect
information about the different kinds of web users?
- See their Web site for information. They tell you in the introduction
to each report.
- Basically: lots of banner ads, cash ``lottery''.
These are interesting questions, but I'm not sure how we can use
the readings to answer them. We may discuss some of them.
- What is the general feeling of the class with regards to sex divisions
in computer mediums? Do people see as concrete divisions as are
prestented in the sociology reveiw?
- In the current sociology piece they give an example of historical
gender bias (p142-3) Where does this mind set that Females are less
technologically minded than males came from and how can it be fixed?
- Judging from your personal WWW experiences, do you believe the presence of
hate groups on the Web is as violently oppressive as Beckles describes? If
this is in fact a reason for "cyber-segregation" what--if anything--can be
done to ameliorate the situation?
- The WWW is still in its infancy but racism and sexism are already
- In the Beckles piece he says, "With the advent of relatively easy to use
internet...users can now benefit from access to larger amounts premium
quality information..." Is this an accurate statement?
- I've heard often that people feel like computers will farther separate
the upper clases from the lower classes. We've even gone so far as
making mention to this in our discussion at one point. Is this really
a factor, though? I feel like as computers become more accessible
they will grow like the television, something commonplace to a large
portion of the world's population. What does everyone else think?
- Perhaps others have noted that our class, consisting of twelve people
(including instructors), has eight men and four women. Does this tell us
anything about female involvement in the Internet or in computers in general?
- In order for the percentage of African-American Internet users to rise,
should we impose censorship on the violent racist Web pages?
- Elections or other such events that require the opinions of groups of
people could take place through the Internet. Then the age, gender, or
race of the candidates to the election is unknown. How would this
affect the way people vote?
- Simon: Why would someone buy Blam! or want to use it?
- How can there be opinions so different on such a young and new topic?
- Dale Spender in her article "The Position of Women in Information
Technology - of Who Got There First and with What consequences" claims
that "the absence of women from cyberspace in the western world says
more about the technology, and the culture, as it has been created by
men- than it does about the abilities of women." What does this
exactly mean?
- Spender describes an interesting experiment in which she switched
genders in a story and found that the motivations ascribed to girls
remained consistent (as did those ascribed to boys). That is, it
didn't matter what boys did, it was always for one reason.
- When scientists (natural, social, etc.) read such claims, they often
say ``Hmmm ... interesting. Can I replicate the results? If not,
why not?''
- Do we want to conduct a similar study?
History
Monday, 22 March 1999
- Created as a blank outline. (Can you tell
what I was doing during Spring break?)
Monday, 11 October 1999
- Filled in student questions.
Tuesday, 12 October 1999
- Added late student questions.
- Added some introductory notes.
- Distributed.