Third Quarter Feedback

1. what connections have you seen among all the imaginative representations of gender and technology that we’ve looked @?

In all of the stories we have looked at recently, technology has pretty consistently been a bad thing. Its either been the tool used to change society in a bad way (handmaid’s tale), or perhaps been the cause of the negative change in society (metropolis, watchmen). Similarly, gender seemed to me to have a negative role, women either weren’t really present/not counted (metropolis/watchmenish) or were oppressed (handmaid’s tale).

2. how do these works contribute to your understandings of gender, technology or the relations between them?

I don’t think this contributed much to my understanding of technology, at least on its own. I think the concept of technology as dangerous is a pretty obvious one. I think seeing how women were left out of watchmen and metropolis really made me realize how much women are often left out of the action in books and movies, and that has left me wondering what that maybe does to society, and what it means. I’ve always thought of technology mainly as a way of empowering people, including women, and now I am reexamining that idea.

3. any other feedback about how the class has been working the past three weeks, w/ all the small group work we’ve been doing? are there other things you’d like to be doing in class that we haven’t done yet, or that you’d like to do more of?

I like the small groups, but I think having the same small groups wasn’t as useful as having new groups. I think it would be interesting to have a new way to form groups, but I’m not sure what it would be. Maybe interests, or having people support different arguments?

4. what concrete suggestions do you have in particular about wordpress functionality? (Laura and Anne have started a log here….)

I don’t have any new ones.

5. what has your experience been with posting and receiving on-line commentary on your papers?

I really like it! For the papers its not so helpful, mostly because other students don’t do much with the papers. but its really nice for the postings to have the opportunity to express incomplete thoughts and ask questions, and have people respond.