Even though I managed to fall off the wagon just as the month was ending, I feel compelled to post tonight anyway. So... happy end of November!

Well, pickles. There goes my perfect record for NaBloPoMo. *sigh*

I made it through the day without entering a single retail facility other than Trader Joe's today. Yay! (I never really plan to shop on the Friday after Thanksgiving, but I usually end up going somewhere with my mom. Not at 5 a.m. or anything, but at some point. So that is one upside to not having spent Thanksgiving with family. Another one would be the *three* separate turkey dinners I will have consumed by the end of the weekend.)

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Things to be thankful for (other than the obvious):
1. My heater works again!
2. We got off work ~3 hours early today.
3. Cough drops and warm tea.

I think I speak for almost everyone here in the US when I say: Just one more day, I only have to get through one more day of work.

Why Feminine Technologies Matter, part e (I was wrong on the last one)

I think that the point of this section was to point out that even technologies that don't seem, on the surface, to be feminine, might have embedded in them the work of females. The example used was the change in men's collars and how they were a cultural shortcut to determining a family's respectability. Before washing machines graces most middle class homes, the existence of certain collars denoted that a man was well off enough to employ servants (washerwomen) or, later, commercial laundry facilities.

It was sort of a meh section for me. I don't disagree that the fashions purported to reveal something about the man and the family. But the author again threw out some statements unsupported in this chapter (although supported elsewhere, not that she directly footnoted anything because the statements were rather vague). Also she ended with "Although our culture generally applauds cleanliness, we are made uneasy by its pervasiveness. How can we tell whose homes our children can safely visit? Who can we trust in front of our classrooms?..." Maybe it is because I live and work in Silicon Valley where how someone dresses is seldom related to their wealth what with the casual dress code of most computer/Internet companies. Maybe it is because of a greater awareness that even those families who look pristine on the outside can hide ugly secrets (um... have I mentioned that I read a bunch of brain candy books - Jodi Picoult and the like among them). In fact, when I think of being made uneasy by the pervasiveness of cleanliness, I am more apt to go to the weakened immune systems aspect than the unable to make social judgements place. It is these little throw away lines that annoy me the most about this chapter. Say it and support it or don't say it at all. Or admit that you are just trying to find provocative things to say regardless of how reality-based they are.

I sincerely hope that the sore throat I started to get this morning continues backing off. I threw copious amounts of warm tea, grapefruit juice, and rest at it. We shall see. I so very much do not need to spend the Thanksgiving holiday sick. I plan to sew curtains then - a feat which I have never attempted before...

I *hate* shopping. It takes forever and even then I rarely even find what I went shopping for. Today I was out and about from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m. Mostly. I was home in the middle for maybe half an hour. And I spent an hour eating lunch and reading and about 30 minutes at the library. So I was shopping for maybe 6 hours. For all that? I ended up with the fabric, thread, etc. necessary to make curtains, curtain rods, and... that's it. In SIX HOURS. Ugh. Granted I spent an inordinate amount of time picking fabric because I didn't have a strong idea of what I wanted going in. I also made short useless forays into Sports Authority (foam rollers much less expensive elsewhere) and Nordstrom Rack (walked out after 5 minutes because I didn't even want to contemplate trying on clothes). That is not 6 hours worth of activity. It just isn't. Where did my whole day go? Plus something about the lights or the air or the shopping experience makes me go brain dead and glassy eyed and tired even when there is no reason whatsoever that I should be tired since it was only 10 in the morning!

I'm not going to pretend that what I have written has been in any way scintillating, but I am proud of myself for, so far, posting every day. When I tried this last year I failed miserably. By day 3 or something like that... I have no new or exciting thoughts today because it is Friday and my brain is both fried and frozen. But next week I get the pilot light lit for my old inefficient wall heater, so that will solve one problem.

Okay, the blinds which have been precariously balanced in my bedroom window (I'm fairly certain they are the wrong width for the window - by only half and inch to an inch - so my landlord had jury-rigged a "solution" but they were always wobbly and couldn't be raised or lowered easily, etc.) gave up the ghost tonight. For now I have used thumbtacks and an old fitted sheet to cover the window. This weekend I get to look into alternate solutions.

Calling the landlord to ask him to do it would be a solution. But 1. it isn't really worth bothering him for something so small, 2. I am pretty sure he'd just put the same blinds up but even if he didn't, 3. I don't exactly trust any of his fixes. So far he has approached things with a sort of "least possible effort / money to get the job done, and by done I mean, at best, adequate" mindset. Which I can't exactly blame him for. But if I manage some curtains on my own it will be easy, I can make sure they actually fit the window, they could even keep the room warmer, and when I move out I can put the old jury-rigged blinds back up. Win all around for doing it myself.

Why Feminine Technologies Matter - part [whatever letter we are up to - f?]

I had much more to agree with in this section. First the author went through the history of our home storage habits as they changed through time. Short version - only rich people had 'stuff' that needed to be stored; then more people had 'stuff' so specialized storage came about; then people without servants had 'stuff' so storage moved around a bit so stuff was stored near where it was used and in closed off spaces instead of in the open. (Here's where it gets... iffy.) Women as housewives learned an efficient "filing system" for the family 'stuff' and so when businesses started needing to file papers women were pre-trained by life in general and thus the work could be called unskilled work and women could be paid very little to take on this professional role.

Honestly, I buy the "women were pre-trained by their roles in the household" argument a bit more when it came to sewing and other clothing-related jobs because I can see the direct comparison. I find it hard to make too strong of a connection between "filing" dishes in cupboards and towels and sheets in linen closets and filing papers in an office environment. The concepts are related, but not super strongly. In any case, the section ends with a charge that it is the invisible nature of women's mastery of the household filing system that makes it so difficult for the domestic duties to be split more equitably between spouses even today. I find that hard to relate to as well since my mother was no more likely to know where a certain item was in our house than my father was and I never really heard the whole "honey where is the [insert household item]" as a big part of my growing up years.

It might be interesting to look at this further as stuff has proliferated and overwhelmed us and some storage has moved out of the family's residence (sheds, rented storage spaces) and as in house storage has become so decorative and commercialized. The mere existence of something like The Container Store and the success of entertainment in the form of Clean Sweep, etc. says something further about our relationship with our 'stuff.' Of course, I find this interesting apart from any conclusions we might want to draw about gender although I am sure that would be a small part of it.

I promise I will get back to the STS stuff. Soon. But I am currently busy trying to avoid doing laundry for one more day (and what with the whole ushering tomorrow night I may even succeeed again!).

Scheduling problems are annoying. In the extreme. There are two things I would like very much to do this summer. It appears that it may only be possible to do one of them. Grrrrr... (And I seldom even bother trying to plan this far in advance so the fact that I am running into problems? Double-grrrr.)

I watched a high school production of Almost, Maine today and it was great. The play is a bunch of vignettes of various relationships in the town around 9 p.m. on a normal Friday night. It did seem like a bunch of relationship drama for one very small town (not even a town because to be a town you have to organize). But it was by turns sweet and touching and funny and sad. I really really liked it. Yay Paly Drama Department!

Also, I went because I know someone who was in the cast, but it doesn't just have to be parents and friends in the audience at high school productions. This would have been great for any member of the community.

Okay, just how hot, humid and mosquito-ish is Istanbul towards the end of June, beginning of July? And how does that compare to the weather near Barcelona? I have decisions to make...

I need to find recipes for persimmons since the tree in my yard has some that appear to be ripening. I have never really used them for anything because I didn't know what to do with them. Perhaps I will play around with recipes tomorrow. Assuming that the photo scavenger hunt fails to materialize like I expect it to...

It turned cold here recently. And by cold I mean wimpy California-level cold. (Look, I know it isn't cold, cold. But I also have only space heaters and single pane windows and drafts around doors, and tiled / stone floors and I rent so there is not much I can do to change any of that.) Right, so, my point. Cold = coughing = cough drops = minorly annoyed esophagus/stomach = Tums = coughing = ... My warm tea intake has soared. My tissue use likewise (cold also = runny nose). *Sigh* welcome to the 5 months of the year where I feel constantly off. And yes, I do see a doctor every year when this happens even though I feel stupid complaining that "I'm... coughing? And my nose runs..." because - hello - winter. Said doctor will prescribe another inhaler, which will work. In March.

Having complained here, perhaps people will be spared my whining in real life. Although, actually, people who see me in person pretty much expect this from me by now and monitor the start of the hacking.

TV and Math

I just have to get this off my chest (yes, such things bother me, I'm a nerd) -- Last night on NCIS: Los Angeles they said that Callan had been in foster care from when he was 5 until he was 18 and had changed houses every few weeks and sometimes every few days. And that his longest stint in one house had been 3 months. And that he had been in 37 homes. And the impossibility of all of those facts being true distracted me for the rest of the show.

Even if you assume he was almost 6 and aged out of the system on his 18th birthday, that is still 12 years. Which is about 3 homes a year (12 x 3 = 36). Which means his average stay had to be around 4 months. Which means there is *no way* that his longest stay was 3 months. And that is with me fudging the numbers and estimating and just using the "does that sound plausible" test - not even doing any actual calculations. Which one figures a television show writer might do. So, of course, instead of paying attention to the rest of the show I sat there thinking "maybe the script said 137... that sort of works" (average stay is then slightly more than a month). Or "maybe in between homes he was in an orphanage/group home and they aren't counting that, wait, did they say he stayed at each place on a few weeks or that he moved every few weeks because if it is the second one that nixes my group home theory..." I'm just saying. It was incredibly distracting.

Random fact:
8:15 on a Tuesday night is a *wonderful* time to visit Costco. No lines, employees seem happy, and the food court might even make you a fresh turkey wrap.

Why Feminine Technologies Matter - part c

I agree with many of the points that the author tries to make in this section. I just find her supporting evidence and method of argument non-convincing. Of course feminine technologies matter. And of course you can consider something like a bra a technology. And of course people take mass produced goods and select or modify them to suit individual needs.

McGraw starts by arguing that calling the invention and use of a bra "progress" is dubious, and that bras are not necessary, but merely a preference. I do not know what women used before the invention of the over-the-shoulder-boulder-holder but I will state that I view a decent bra as close to a necessity as possible when considering any sort of exercise. If we're going to call "not being in pain when walking up or down stairs" a preference, fine. I have minor quibbles with the thesis, but we'll go with it. So that is our starting point - bras are a technology, they are a preference instead of a need, and serve a cosmetic rather than a functional purpose.

She then argues that by studying this feminine technology, we might call into question the way we view other technologies such as cars, research labs, and the electrical grid. For example, she asks whether cars might serve a cosmetic purpose "associated historically with enhanced masculinity." She asks whether they "in fact provide the freedom and speed of travel often considered as their function, or merely the illusion of freedom and speed." Wha...? I can state with complete confidence that cars do in fact move faster than a horse and buggy. Now the freedom point you could argue (were we more free when we lived and worked in the same space and didn't have a daily commute...), but speed? Yes, yes, cars do, in fact, provide faster speed of travel than the preceding technology. Are there cosmetic and cultural purposes that cars also fill? Sure. But cars do have a definite functional purpose. McGraw also asks exactly how light our offices and houses need to be - how much light is cosmetic vs. how much is functional. I'm not saying that we couldn't survive with candles and lanterns and the like, but go ask a surgeon that question. There is a definite functional advantage. I think my hang up here is that she posited that bras were 100% preference and non-necessary and is trying to have us believe the same about other technologies. Had she tempered the original argument (bras are largely cosmetic, but do have some functional advantages) I would make this leap with her more easily.

Her second point is that since bras don't fit perfectly, women have built up a well of expertise in knowing which brands and styles work and in adjusting the technology to their personal needs and that applying such expertise constitutes an "area in which their labor is economically and socially invisible." I agree with her main point - many times women's work is economically and socially invisible, or downplayed. But because they figure out a way to deal with not 100% perfectly fitting bras? Really? I must admit that I was unaware that jock straps were individually fitted to each man. Or perhaps the wives are altering them as part of their "economically invisible" labor. I don't think either gender corners the market on altering or adjusting mass produced goods to meet their individual needs.

To recap: I do not disagree with her main points. Technology *is* about the cosmetic as well as the functional. (Well, she posits that "although we usually associate technology with utility, it's actual role is often decorative..." - where I would say most technology serves *both* a functional and aesthetic role.) And secondly, "apparently functional technology in inherently flawed... [and] goods are made serviceable through women's invisible bodies of knowledge." Which... I think the work and expertise is spread a little more equally between the genders. I also don't see it as some huge flaw in the system; it is simply the way that mass produced goods work.

No actual thought in today's post - I'm on a Firefly watching marathon. It's not wrong to watch 10 hours of a TV show in a day, is it? (I never watched it when it was on. So I borrowed some DVDs and am watching the whole series at once. If I don't finish today than I will sometime this week.)

This morning as I was trying to avoid getting out of bed, I had all sorts of thoughts about the reading. Tonight? I find myself disinclined to type them out. Plus I need to change and get ready for my ushering gig tonight.

Why Feminine Technologies Matter - part b

Fast because it is near midnight.

The author studies the bra as a feminine technology and draws some general principles out of the cursory study which she claims can be applied to other technologies. I'm not 100% on all of her points or her original observations, but no time for that.

* cosmetic purpose vs. functional
* because there is no perfect fit, women build up a base of knowledge on how to choose and adapt what is available
* "The central problem with this feminine technology goes beyond issues of capitalist exploitation of the consumer or patriarchal disregard for women's concerns..." Yeah, she lost me there.
* Bras are an attempt to suit the mechanical to the biological

So that was a very quick synopsis. I don't agree with it all, but there are some good points.

Why Feminine Technologies Matter - chapter 1, part a

This is not the main point of the chapter, but the author, Judith McGraw, observed that when we say "technology" today, we think of electronics and computers and massively complex objects and systems (say, the Internet). And because such things are complex and take special knowledge to master, we assume that we do not know enough to participate in technological decision-making. We assume it is best to leave such decisions to "the experts."

That is, in my opinion, a ruinous attitude to have. Everyone who will be interacting with a technology and everyone whose life will be affected by it should have input into decisions. And though it is not the point of this particular chapter in this particular book, I recommend Richard Sclove's Democracy and Technology as well as the writings of Neil Postman. You don't have to know how to build a computer to be interested in how it will be used and how it will affect your daily life. And truth be told? The experts? The ones who can build it? Probably aren't the best people to be making some of these decisions. Many, many of them will be so excited by what can be accomplished that they will not pause to ask what ought to be done.

Thus endeth the mini-STS soundbite of the day.

It turns out my original idea (do one class session's worth of reading per day) was stupidly, stupidly optimistic. I hadn't really even put it into those terms; had I done so I would have realized that the planned pace was even faster than the class pace would be. And all while fitting in the rest of life around it - job, chores, etc. I was not thinking clearly.

That being said, I will jump in today on Gender and Technology. I have no plan on exactly how I will approach each day, but for today it will be quotes from the book's introduction and my response.

"Social beliefs and practices and technological developments reciprocally shape each other, often with unexpected outcomes, as humans debate and negotiate the alternatives and the constraints." (pg. 7) Agreed! And this is what I was trying to get at in one of my notes on the outline yesterday. It is not a one way street.

"... we must recognize also that both gender and technology are about power: social, cultural, economic, political. " (Also pg. 7) I'm not sold on this. I'm not saying that gender and power or technology and power are completely unrelated, but framing them as primarily concerned with power seems off to me. Too simplistic. Maybe as I read further I will be convinced, but I doubt it. By placing the concept of power in the center, you have defined it as the one thing that is most important. That seems needlessly restrictive. And I'd disagree in any case.

So this post is mainly cheating. Because I did the reading and wrote the summary more than a year ago. But I have updated it a bit. And I re-read the article.

Outline of readings:

We* can illuminate possible new research directions and gain new insight by paying attention to gender in the history of technology. Gender assumptions may shape technology, but they also shape how we write the history of technology.

1. We have accepted gendered differences without substantiation.
- 19th century idea of “separate spheres”: women as nurturers, emotional, passive, pure, pious; men as rational, aggressive, hard-hearted. Should not only question the ideology, but also ask how that ideology affected the actual behavior of men and women.

2. In studying the history of technology, we have tended to study women as women and men as people. This leads to us having an incomplete history of gender and technology. To study the history of gender and technology we must study both the masculine and the feminine.
- Keep in mind that source materials may not give a completely balanced picture.
- Men and women frequently worked in different locations so in studying how a technology or industry developed you are likely to look at only men or only women instead of comparing both genders.

3. We have tended to view women as passive - reacting to technology, and men as active -shaping it.
- Research has asked “How has technological change affected women?” vs. “How has society shaped technology?” **
- The home and other 'feminine' domains (consumption, nurturance, piety) did shape technology. For example, the type of work that most girls were taught while growing up gave women the skills to be “unskilled workers” in paper mills (and others, I'm sure, but that is what McGaw studied). The ready availability of such labor shaped what types of work could be mechanized and how it was mechanized.

4. Views of what it meant to be "masculine" affected what and how technology developed too.
- For example, machines for factories were not necessarily designed to be particularly safe, probably/possibly because of gender ideology of the time.


* I'm using 'we' here as shorthand for “researchers and scholars in the history of technology.” Not that I consider myself either one of those, but the author is and it was easier to use her terminology.

** I'm going to have to disagree here. Not just because I read Ruth Schwartz Cowan's writings way back when, but also because in all of my undergraduate studies we never limited ourselves to studying how society shaped technology. In fact, the tension between technological determinism (TD) and the social construction of technology (SCOT) was one of the main points of STS 101 and it remained a theme through the entire curriculum. People who write in support of TD (to some degree or another) – Marx, Neil Postman, Langdon Winner, Marshall McLuhan. SCOT advocates – Bruno Latour, Trevor Pinch, Thomas Hughes. Supporter of SCES and IDUAR (which sort of combines the two) – my advisor, Robert McGinn. This discussion can take us off onto a wild tangent, but there you have it. (This could be a difference between looking at the History and Philosophy of Science / History of Technology literature and the Science, Technology and Society / Science and Technology Studies literature. I don't know. I was just confused at her argument.)

Having defended private universities and the concept of paying tuition, I will also admit that I do enjoy those learning opportunities that are available for free as well. I have long meant to complete an entire course's worth of work as described on MIT's Open Course Ware website. Unfortunately, I am not so great about consistent follow through. So that is what I am going to tackle this year for NaBloPoMo.

The main problem I have with completing the OCW stuff is also what I saw as the main benefit of college - peers. I need some back and forth, someone with whom to converse, when I am in a class. Sitting by myself and reading is all well and good, but peers keep me on track. Plus it adds a ton of value to what I read. Discussing the readings for a class makes me think about them in more depth, consider angles I hadn't even thought of, and engage more with the material. (None of which is to diminish the value of professors - I had some of the best profs ever in college - men and women who were willing to go way over their published office hours and gave their students all of their attention. Including a professor who had a Nobel prize in physics. Well, I was in his class the year before he actually got the award. But still - he was the most enthusiastic freshman physics teachers I had out of the three courses I took.)

Which all boils down to: I'll be using NaBloPoMo to semi-go through the material for an STS class listed on the OCW site. I'm doing a class that wouldn't be my first choice simply because the first time I tried this I had a small group of online friends who all claimed they were going to read along with me. Real life intruded so that part never happened. But I already have many of the course materials so the Gender and Technology class wins by default.

To start this post I'm going to have to admit that I watch Gossip Girl. *And* that I then read the recaps on TWoP for Gossip Girl. Which take the show way more seriously than I do, but it is fascinating to see what the author reads into the show. (Some of what he says is probably what the show writers intended. Some of it seems to come from the recapper. It is the same uneasiness that I always felt when studying stuff in English - at a certain point the themes and points and insights that supposedly come from the text seem much more, to my thinking, to come from the analyzers.)

So, the point. In one of the least appealing roles I have ever seen Gina Torres play, she spouts off that she "[doesn't] believe in private universities" because "knowledge should not be for sale." In addition to hating the rudeness inherent in the time and place she chose to share this philosophy, I disagree with her in so many ways.
1. Pet peeve the first: doesn't believe in them? As in thinks they do not exist? Learn to say what you mean.
2. Last I checked public universities charged tuition too.
3. The recapper also made a claim elsewhere that private universities serve to keep the rich rich and the poor poor. Well. Perhaps *some* private universities who refuse to even publish their legacy numbers do have that effect. But many private universities have excellent financial aid plans. So much so that the truly poor can attend them for free assuming that they have the academic credentials to be accepted. I attended such a university before today's more generous financial aid methodology came into use and I still recieved a generous grant that paid for much of my schooling based on my "demonstrated financial need."
4. As someone who attended a private university, perhaps I am biased. But I did not pay for knowledge.

• I paid for the time and attention of my professors. And while it is all well and good to say "knowledge shouldn't be for sale" it is not in any way ok to say that just because someone has knowledge they should be compelled to put their time and energy into spreading that knowledge and not be compensated.
• I paid for access to hundreds of thousands of books in the university library. Books which anyone off the street is welcome to walk in and peruse. But the money to purchase and care for these books has to come from somewhere. Just because they contain "knowledge" does not obligate construstion workers to build the library without being paid, nor librarians to work there without being paid, nor the utility companies to donate the energy required to maintain the proper temperature / humidity.
• I paid for the buildings in which I lived and learned. I paid for the computers in the computer clusters on campus on which I completed my homework. All of which were, perhaps, necessary to my studies and none of which materialize out of thin air merely because they would be involved in the pursuit of knowledge.

I also disagree that the purpose of any university, public or private, is merely the transmittal of knowledge. But that is a different topic for another day.