Error in "What do you think?" (long)

["Virginia J. Link" <LINKVI -at- MAIL -dot- STATE -dot- WI -dot- US>]

Whoa Nelly!
The Dale Spender snippet in the "What do you think" post is an example of
how things quoted out of context can be misinterpreted.  (Dale Spender, is,
by the way, a woman, not a "guy," as assumed by one responder: <"Is this guy
left over from the Stone Age? What a sexist and racist comment!!!! I believe
that very few people are computer-phobic these days compared to 10 to 15
years ago." >)

The people reacting to the paraphrase of Spender's thoughts would not have
assumed she was being racist or sexist if, I believe, appropriate context
had been included. The techwr-ler who included the Spender paraphrase gave
us no context for Spender's opinion (and no citation, either, by the way...)
within which to analyse her statement.  Thus we have accusations that
Spender's comment was sexist and racist (and anti-computer), when, most
likely, she was trying to analyse why the industries associated with
computerization were/have been/are white/male dominated (<ducking!>)

(Spender does have a book out called "Nattering on the Net" -- I did a
little research -- so her original quote might have been in there; we don't
even know what she *really* said.  The techwr-ler quoted material
*paraphasing* Spender).  I know Spender's political perspective,
herstorically speaking.  She was probably trying to address historical
gender-, race- and class privilege in the computer-related industries by
analysing the roots of computerization.  That's what radicals do: try to get
to the ROOT of the perceived problem....

I recommend "surfing the net" and reading the text of Ms. Spender's speech
"Creativity and the Computer Education Industry"
(at http://www.acs.org.au/ifip96/dales.html), delivered to the International
Federation for Information processing in Canberra, Australia in September,
1996, for some interesting ideas on how computers are affecting the present
and future of education.  There's even a tie-in to tech-writing:

<snipped from the website:
"Some of the most useful educational information of the last decade has come
from an advertising agency which was interested in understanding how
Generation X processed information.

Apart from the finding that you would never sell anything to them if you
relied on print, or made use of manuals, there was the interesting result
that even narrative text on a screen is accessed by the computer generation
as a data base. Concepts of beginning and end, of 'following an argument,'
and proceeding in an ordered and disciplined manner -- all fundamentals for
decoding print -- were not valued by the cybergeneration. "  Dale Spender>

Virginia Link
linkvi -at- mail -dot- state -dot- wi -dot- us
===================================================================
<snipped...
<Q2: What do you think of the word "forbidding"?

"Computers and networks are, as Dale Spender (1995) notes, an
environment of privilege-created by privileged white men and used
mostly by them-and those environments are quite often forbidding to
women and people from disadvantaged groups."

This paragraph scares me. It's a perfect example of the many subtleties of
this thing called writing. On the surface, this statement is true, from a
certain point of view, and may seem quite innocuous. BUT, the insidiousness
of the subtext, its tone and voice can leave an impression that could be
harmful or even inflammatory. It frightens me that this kind of statement
could get into a college textbook to be read by
impressionable young people. I would lay a major rewrite on this paragraph
that would still get across the basic idea but in a more objective way.  end
snip>

end snip>

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