Reading Response #6

In Cynthia Selfe’s “Least We Think the Revolution is a Revolution” Selfe writes about how people look at advertisements about technology and how this affects people as a whole. She states many popular views and thoughts on advertisements and cultural backgrounds as well as her own views on such things. Selfe states that only focusing on the positive changes that technology can bring may mask how social forces work to resist such changes. The third narrative that Selfe covers is about “The Un-gendered Utopia” and “The Same Old Gendered Stuff” in which she compares specific gender usage of technology in 1990 to that of social narratives of the 1950’s. “A third potent narrative that Americans tell ourselves about technology and change focuses on gender- specifically, this story claims that computers and that computer-supported environments will help us to create a utopic world in which gender is not a predictor of success or a constraint of interaction with the world” What this narrative is basically saying is that advancements in technology will make it so that men and women will both be able to use computers successfully without being thrown into social classes based on gender. Selfe most clearly disagrees with this popular narrative. “Computer games are still designed for boys; computer commercials are still aimed mainly at males; computing environments are still constructed by and for males…computers are completely socially determined artifacts that interact with existing social formations and tendencies…” So in other words, Selfe believes that the complete opposite is happening than what America wants to believe, or that our social classes haven’t really changed from the 50’s.
I disagree with Selfe’s view that technology is playing into social formations because she seems to overlook the fact that people change and adapt to what is new and important. Her countering of the popular narrative of the un-gendered utopia does not completely hold up to today’s standards, eleven years later. Computers are not something that are dominated by males, why just the other day I saw a dell commercial selling a computer specifically designed for the working mom. I think that Selfe was being small minded when she said “It is clear that fewer girls use computers in public secondary schools than do boys, especially in the higher grades.” This is certainly not true today. There are just as many girls on the internet as there are boys, maybe even more so on social networking sites. I just don’t agree with Selfe mainly because I don’t believe that her article really has much meaning in the now.