Day 9: Making technology safe | Dream of a tool

There are many motivations that drive the development of information and communication technologies (ICT); whether it’s to increase productivity, efficiency, profits, or the capacity to transcend physical, cultural and social boundaries, and so on.

However, existing gender disparity in this field – especially at higher and decision making levels – means that evolution of tools, platforms and paradigms pays lesser attention to the specificity of women’s lives, especially women who occupy multiple marginalised positions in society.

For example, while global positioning system (GPS) devices can help us to find our way in strange city by telling us exactly where we are on a map through satellite technology, it can also help domestic violence abusers to track and monitor their partners. At the same time, there have been legislative proposals for domestic violence offenders to wear GPS tracking devices if they violate restraining orders. What would it take for GPS to be useful without neglecting its vulnerability to abuse?

We need to actively engage in this field to know what advancements in technologies are, what their potential impact may be, and to inflect and affect their development and subsequent use.

It might not be easy at first to swim through the technical jargon and try to understand what some of these things might be, but it can also be incredibly empowering.

  • Design your dream of an ICT tool, device, platform or gadget that would keep you safe.
  • Spend 15 to 30 minutes browsing through online magazines, journals, encyclopedia or the technology section of your local newspaper.
  • When something strikes your interest, spend some time thinking about what its potential impact could be on women and grrls, especially in relation to VAW.
  • Think of alternative ways that it could be developed, or a totally different tool that can address the risk that you’ve discovered.
  • Be creative, rowdy and outrageous in your thoughts. Let imagination break through the constraints of reality. Anti-rape umbrellas, wifi dildos, stalker-recognition software, anything goes!
  • Doodle it, write a description, share your vision.
  • Leave a comment, or make it into a postcard.

Take back the tech. Have fun and play. Dream of technology that is transformative for everyone.

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Make Game Boys and Nintendo DS games harmless

Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 12/05/2007 - 17:19.

My daughter thought of one way we can reduce the way technology gadgets like Game Boys, and Nintendo DS games can be harmful to children ,especially young boys. You'll see the link with women now. These games immerse the boys in a world of constant fighting and of purely sexual visions of women basically wearing a bar and underwear.. ;-) They're also harmful to them because addictive and cut off from the world, making them more prone to have violent behaviour towards all, among them women. Currently there are absolutely no safety mecanisms to prevent their addictive effects nor any efforts to make them portray a more nuanced vision of the world and of women.

One simple approach my daughter (9) though of to address the issues above is the following: to play these games, the children should answer correctly 2 or 3 math or other types of questions, and the games would stop automatically after 20 mn, asking more questions to be able to use them again.
Of course women should be present to design those games so that they project a much more positive world vision.

Caroline, in France

sanfranciscoconsult.com/editorials/eng
internationalparents.net

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