Re: Human-Computer Interaction

Timothy Koschmann (tdk who-is-at cs.colorado.edu)
Tue, 19 May 1998 13:18:30 -0600

Jay Lemke wrote:
>Probably this work is well known in HCI, but Sherry Turkle has a lot of
>interesting things to say in her work about the contrasting styles of what
>one might call a work- vs. play-orientation to computer programming and
>computer use.
>
>I have been reading some of this work in connection with ideas about how
>many men partly construct their sense of a masculinized identity through
>their professional discourse and practices, and Turkle notes that there
>seem to be at least culturally favored dispositional differences between
>men and women in terms of whether they interact with the computer in a
>predominantly analytical and planned-in-advance, structured fashion or in a
>more "intimate" and quasi-interpersonal way. There is much more to the
>contrast than this, and I think there is definitely an element of gender
>distinction to it.

Jay, why do you view this as a particularly feminine way of interacting
with technology? I haven't read much of Turkle's work, but when she
discussed this in a keynote that she delivered at Educom last fall she
didn't seem to be describing this as a gender-based difference. She
referred to the play-like orientation to computer use as "the triumph of
the tinkerer" and traced its origins to the early hackers and to video game
players, two communities that tend to be predominantly male.

BTW, a streamable video of her keynote address was available over the web
for a while. I'm not sure if it is still online, I tried to access it just
now and I got the message "The webcast is temporarily unavailable, check
back soon." I thought that it was a very interesting talk. The website
is: http://www.educom.edu/conf/97/webcast.html

---Tim

_________________________________________________________________
Timothy Koschmann
Temporary Address (9/1/97-5/31/98)
Dept. of Computer Science
Campus Box 430, ECOT 734
University of Colorado at Boulder
Boulder, CO 80309
+1-303-492-2233 (voice)
+1-303-492-2844 (fax)

webpage: http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~tdk
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