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Third Quarter Feedback

2009 April 5
by Mista Jay

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

That they all portray some sort of dystopia that includes skewed relationships between the two genders: For example, the Handmaids and Commander’s machine-like relationship, Laurie’s relationship with Dr. Manhattan, the (creepy) Maria-cyborg in Metropolis made by the scientist for the eyes of men. Each couple/pairing also happens to exhibit a mechanical, or artificial type of quality to it.

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

That when gender is turned into technology, it has the potential to get out of hand and possibly form a dystopia. Perhaps, we need to strive for a more positive (healthy?) relationship with technology ( regardless of gender) in order to combat this, though seeing as how works such as Watchmen and The Handmaid’s tale are based on our own societies, maybe we’re already heading down that road to a dystopia? Then that leaves me with the question of what exactly is a “healthy relationship” with technology? Is it our version of a technological utopia? Even if we can’t reach a technical utopia, maybe aiming for it can pull us out/help us avoid a dystopia? Hmm…I think these works gave me more questions than answers…


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 really liked working in small groups, though I don’t much like writing on the board. I have an idea though: Since we have some really good artists in class (as seen on the blog), maybe for one class while we’re having our big group discussion, a few of us (on a volunteer basis!) could graphically facilitate our discussion on the blackboard? I’m interested to see how it would turn out! Then we could take pictures of it and proudly display it on the blog =)


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

None that I can think of.


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

I have had no problem with posting. The on-line commenting is fine as well, however when I paste my paper into the text box and then click on “preview this page” I have this massive amount of text (such as: <!– /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Wingdings; panose-1:5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-charset:2; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font”; …..and it just goes on and on.) at the top of the post, before my actual paper starts. I later have to edit the page and delete it all out, which is okay, but is there any way to avoid this happening in the first place?

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