April/May 1983 RAIN Page 23 WHAT IF: Women and Future Technology by Patricia Logan and Lisa Yost We have been thinking about technology. Two ideas have guided our thinking: “ Technology is both good and bad. ® We as women have to imagine our future, confront technology, if we are to control and shape our future. We have not defined technology here, except by exploring examples. Rather, our thinking has been a synthesis of the work of others and of each other, pulled together in a new way. In the text, the regular typeface is the voice of the present, of existing technology, of what is. That text in italics is the voice of future possibilities, both good and bad, of what could be. We want to talk about women and the future. It is hard to, but try. Try to imagine. Imagine a future. Telecommunications By 1986 nearly 47% of the U.S. television homes will use one or more new electronic media (NEM) devices: cable, pay cable, satellite!cable, two-way TV, video-cassettes, and videodiscs. By 1989 some 7% will use two-way television. By 1991 about 56% will have some NEM technology. Media Science Newsletter The first true modem computer, ENIAC, dimmed half the lights in Philadelphia when it was switched on at the University of Pennsylvania in 1946. Its 20,000 vacuum tubes filled a room. Once the technology switched to transistors, then to integrated circuits in the 1960s, computers became smaller and more manageable. Entrepeneurs got rich quick selling programs and the business grew. Then the silicon chip — 64,000 bits of information contained in something the size of a baby’s fingernail — catalyzed the second computer revolution. Computers are now linked by satellite communications so that a signal can be sent up from New York and bounced via satellite to San Francisco. The satellite receives microwave signals from push-button telephones, television transmitters, and computers. Direct satellite-to-home communications means we can have multibeam satellites providing ninety channels to be picked up on a normal TV set with a fourteen-inch diameter antenna. Replacing copper wire with optical fibre for cable transmission will produce twenty times more channels. This new technology allows linking of computer systems, electronic mail, shared mailing lists — the ultimate networking. Home computers are now available for $600 or less. Large corporations are experimenting with electronic mail, and some communities, like Columbus, Ohio, have begun using two-way TV that allows viewers to "interact” with their sets. What if the women’s movement had a central computer connected by satellite that local women’s groups around the world could tap into for contacts and information^ What if women had their own TV station, news service, legislative hotline? What if mailing lists could be constantly updated and shared? What iffeminists could see and talk with each other, any time, immediately, via satellite? Imagine: a world linked by telecommunications. With touch tone telephones and centralized computers, entire libraries are accessible from home. Newspapers and mail are replaced by video display terminals. What is done at the office can be done at home, through a home terminal. People shop from home, bank from home. Both men and women stay home, work shorter weeks, share childcare, have more time for themselves, friends, lovers, and community. Populations decentralize, at the same time the most rural areas are no longer remote. More leisure time, more time spent on political activism and grassroots communications, less time spent on survival responsibilities, means faster social change. The world becomes more equal, more just. One reality: the conservatives are using computer technology very effectively to promote their own programs and ideas. Richard A. Viguerie, electronic wizard of the right wing, presides over some 300 employees, two round- the-clock computers, and a direct mail list of more than 15 million names. His technology has generated more than 100 million letters and up to $25 million a year for far-right candidates and causes.. .Viguerie calls his computer room (which gets a new combination lock every few days) "the most important room in America for conservatives.” —Dana Densmore Another reality: computer technology puts people out of work, particularly women in pink collar jobs. A 1978 report to the president of France projected that by 1990, 30% fewer workers may be needed to produce a given volume of work in the banking and insurance industries. A German multinational projected that 40% of all office work could be automated by computers. The long-term career secretary will be obsolete.. .At the same time, workers in Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan assemble the circuit boards for computers for 22 to 80 cents per hour. —John Murkoffand John Stewart Another reality: computer technology invades privacy and allows political control. The Committee for the Liquidation or Deterrence of Computers (CLODO) in France carries out search and destroy missions on computer systems, saying, "We are computer workers and therefore well-placed to know the present and future dangers of computer systems. Computers are the favorite instrument of the powerful. They are used to classify, control and repress.” Members of CLODO and other anticomputer guerilla groups are being busted through a campaign centered in West Germany which fights crime with sophisticated centralized computers. —Newsweek Another reality: computer technology has not been made available to women. In 1977-78 the National Women’s Agenda worked at linking women’s groups via satellite as part of an overall plan to connect public interest and community groups through an advanced telecommunications system. They wanted to do audio-teleconferencing, establish a news service, do facsimile transmission, and establish a computer databank for women. The project failed when male government engineers refused to plug the women’s system into the satellite if the women persisted in discussing "all the issues,” including lesbianism and abortion. —Jan Zimmerman Because women have functioned as unpaid labor, surplus
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