A Digression - Reading Philosophy

Bad Writing:  "we can 'double double unthink' the mind fetters by which patriarchal thought binds women" (70)

What is being said here?

"Assertiveness is, for example, something else again: a special, learned behavior that does more than merely combine attributes of passivity and aggressiveness.  Assertiveness is an unthinking and a transcendence of those common, control-oriented behaviors." (70)

What is being said here?

"The tech-fix is the belief that technology can be used to solve all types of problems, even social ones." (71)

Compare to Postman's Technocracy

The Problem: "... the tech-fix ... and the public policies on which it is based are no longer working." (71)

"like all generalizations, this myth is true -- at least partially.  Technology has decreased hardships and suffering while raising standards of health, living, and literacy throughout the industrialized world." (72)

But the tech-fix is "not without problems." (72)

E.g., "Social welfare programs based on the old male model of poverty do not consider the special nature of women's poverty. ..." (McKee, quoted on p. 71)

"technology is neither wholly good nor wholly bad." (72)

Note her agreement with Postman: "To believe that technologies are neutral tools subject only to the motives and morals of the user is to completely their collective significance." (72)

What Bush thinks is needed is a feminist critique of our thinking about technology.

"A feminist critique of the public policy debate over technology should ... unthink the tripartite myth that sees technology in simple categories as tool, triumph or threat." (73)

'Male thinking'

Thinks of distinct, separate individuals as the basic components of society.

(This is sometimes called an atomistic picture of people - individuals are the atoms that make up the smallest units of society.  Note:  this metaphor makes more sense if you think about atoms as the Ancient Greeks (who invented the term) did.  For them, an atom was the smallest possible thing, something that couldn't be divided up into anything smaller)

Views men as rational, women as emotional & needing protection.

"Don't worry your pretty little head about it." (73)

"women are idealized as culture carriers, as havens of serenity in a heartless world" (76)

Feminist Thinking

Stresses our inter-relatedness & our mutual dependence on one another

(This is sometimes called a relational picture of people.  Individuals are only understood in terms of their relationships to one another.  We might say that, unlike the atomistic picture, for feminists the relationships create the individual, not the other way around.)

Undermines the idea that women are less rational than men.

[A side note:  it's actually a pretty bad idea to talk as though there's some single position that all feminists hold.  Not all feminists would accept what's just been said.  It might be better to think about the above as some common feminist ideas.]

The Context of Technology

Bush wants us to stress the context in which technologies operate (paying particular attention to how women are affected by particular technologies.)

1. The Design or Developmental Context  - "includes all the decisions, materials, personnel, processes, and systems necessary to create tools and techniques from raw materials." (74)

2. The User Context - "includes all the motivations, intentions, advantages, and adjustments called into play by the use of particular techniques or tells." (74)

3. The Environmental Context - "describes nonspecific physical surroundings in which a technology or tool is developed and used." (74)

4. The Cultural Context - "includes all the norms, values, myths, aspirations, laws and interactions of the society of which the tool or technique is a part." (74)

Bush claims that we tend focus on #1 and largely ignore the rest.

"Perhaps no one could have foreseen that the aerosol sprays we used to apply everything from paint to antiperspirant would degrade the earth's ozone layer, but no one seems to have asked." (76)

Bush wants to use these ideas about context to develop what she calls an equity analysis approach to technology.  We must consider technology from the point of view of all of these contexts.

"equity analysis of an innovation should focus on benefits and risk within the contexts in which the technology operates" (79)

Equity analysis will reveal the weakness of the tech-fix approach.  Not all problems can be solved by technology.  Some technologies actually make the social situation of women worse even if they attempt to make it better.

E.g., refrigeration makes women's lives easier in one way, but it also takes away a small source of women's power (e.g., a special sort of expertise they once had)

Bush makes similar remarks about many other technologies, e.g., automatic washer, farm machinery, etc.