Tags: feminism

The timelessness of The Ballad of Halo Jones, the girl who got out | FactorDaily

The Ballad Of Halo Jones is 35 years old this year.

Where did she go? Out.

What did she do? Everything.

What History’s Female Internet Pioneers can Teach us about Tomorrow on Vimeo

The terrific talk from Beyond Tellerrand by Claire L. Evans, author of Broad Band.

As we face issues of privacy, identity, and society in a networked world, we have much to learn from these women, who anticipated the Internet’s greatest problems, faced them, and discovered solutions we can still use today.

Who Does She Think She Is?

The internet does not hate women. The internet doesn’t hate anyone, because the internet, being an inanimate network, lacks the capacity to hold any opinion whatsoever. People hate women, and the internet allows them to do it faster, harder, and with impunity. It’s developed into a form of relaxation after a hard day of being ground on the wheel of late-stage capitalism. Melvin Kranzberg’s statement that “technology is neither good nor bad, nor is it neutral” holds true here: The internet lets us be whoever we were before, more efficiently, with fewer consequences.

Bots | A Working Library

Absolutely brilliant stuff from Mandy (again). A long hard at today’s tech industry’s narrow approach to bots and artificial intelligence compared to some far more interesting and imaginative approaches in fiction:

• Ann Leckie’s superb Imperial Radch series,
• Kim Stanley Robinson’s Aurora, and
• Alex Garland’s Ex Machina.

So in addition to frightening ramifications for privacy and information discovery, they also reinforce gendered stereotypes about women as servants. The neutral politeness that infects them all furthers that convention: women should be utilitarian, performing their duties on command without fuss or flourish. This is a vile, harmful, and dreadfully boring fantasy; not the least because there is so much extraordinary art around AI that both deconstructs and subverts these stereotypes. It takes a massive failure of imagination to commit yourself to building an artificial intelligence and then name it “Amy.”

The Vuvalini | A Working Library

The best description of Mad Max: Fury Road. Read.

Jessica and I went to see Mad Max: Fury Road at the Dukes At Komedia last week. We both thoroughly enjoyed it. There’s the instant thrill of being immersed in a rollicking good action movie but this film also stayed with me long after leaving the cinema.

This isn’t really Max’s movie at all—it’s Furiosa’s. And oh, what a wonderful protagonist she is.

Max’s role in this movie is to be an ally. And for that reason, I see him as a role model—one who offers a shoulder, not to cry on, but to steady a rifle’s aim.

Mike Davidson: Who Would You Be... If You Were A Woman?

Mike follows on from his original question "who would you be?" by adding the subclause "if you were a woman". My answer: Hedy Lamarr.