FemTechNet and Gender in Public Lab?

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sara wylie

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May 24, 2012, 10:52:37 AM5/24/12
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This effort to create "a Massively Distributed Collaborative Learning Experiment (MDCLE) on the topic of feminism and technology to be offered in 2013" might be of interest to the feminists in our midst (see call below)! 

Also I have been thinking about the gender balance in Public Lab recently. Is anyone else wondering about this? I'm wondering how engaging the site and projects are to women involved in environmental health and justice issues? And conversely, how engaging are the environmental justice and health issues to the men involved in our technology development projects?

It is hard to tell from the staff side of things--we're pretty unique in that we have an almost gender balanced staff of 3 women to 4 men. 

Public Lab is bridging two very different communities both of which have historically (with exceptions of course) been somewhat polarized in terms of gender:

EJ issues have traditionally been lead by women: frequently the community organizers around EJ issues are home-makers whose close contact with their children and community children's health gives them insight into how health issues might be systemic. Notably many of the scientists leading advocacy efforts around toxics are women.

On the other hand, with their roots in engineering and computer science, it is often common for tech communities to be mostly male and lead by men. Public Lab differs markedly from these two communities in that Public Lab style tech projects have been inspired by work of remarkable women like Natalie Jermijenko (Natalie perhaps you have some thoughts on Public Lab tools and gender thus far?), and Beatriz da Costa whose work blends art/science and community activism to make social/technical critiques.

I'm interested to see Public Lab continue to be part of transforming these historically gendered distinctions in order to improve our ability to attend to environmental health questions. My sense is that we are productively blurring the boundaries between these two communities? What do you all think?

Cheers,

Sara

----- Forwarded message from c.dunba...@gmail.com -----
    Date: Wed, 23 May 2012 16:55:19 -0400
    From: christina dunbar-hester <c.dunba...@gmail.com>
 Subject: Fwd: FemTechNet

---------- Forwarded message ----------

We are writing to introduce you to a global project to activate
networks of feminist artists and scholars of science and technology.

We seek international participants in a linked set of courses
tentatively called: "Feminist Dialogues on Technology” to be held in
the between September and December of 2013.

The networking project is currently called:  FemTechNet.

The first phase of this project is to activate the networks for the
purposes of creating the first version of a Massively Distributed
Collaborative Learning Experiment (MDCLE) on the topic of feminism and
technology to be offered between September and December of 2013.

We are seeking around 10-20 international partners who are willing and
able to teach one of the networked courses during the latter months of
2013.  There are many details to plan to facilitate and establish the
technological and institutional infrastructure for such a radical
endeavor, however we are certain that the time has come for a bold
initiative that manifests the histories and continued relevance of
feminist work in science and technology.

We seek your creative contribution to ongoing discussions and to help
us engage embodied courses across the globe.  Please send this
invitation to your broadest network of feminist colleagues.  If you
are willing, when you send the invitation, please add your name as one
of the contact people for the project

Conversations and small group meetings (both virtual and face-to-face)
are being organized to plan the effort. These and other project
announcements and updates on FemTechNet activities will be posted and
archived on the digital platform:

FEMBOTcollective.org

Please visit the site to join the FemTechNet list-serv.  Once you
join, we would ask you to post an introduction to yourself and your
interests. Below, please find a longer and more detailed description
of the project attached as a Word document.

Anne Balsamo:  anneb...@gmail.com



DETAILS



FemTechNet:

A Global Project to Activate Networks

of Feminist Scholars of Science, Technology, and Media



From:

Anne Balsamo:  anneb...@gmail.com and




We are writing to introduce you to a project to activate global
networks of feminist artists and scholars of science, technology and
media.   We seek to activate this network to participate in a global
learning experiment tentatively called: "Feminist Dialogues on
Technology.”

During the past year, we have participated in several conversations
with feminist colleagues in different locations throughout the world
about a collective need to establish a readily available network of
feminist scholars and a digital archive of materials on feminism,
science, technology, and media.   Having both recently published new
work that not only addresses topics of feminism and technology but
also engages new technologies of scholarship and activism, we are
acutely aware of how difficult it is to build and sustain
conversations and communities around this work.  To this end, we have
begun to contact colleagues around the world who are doing research
and teaching courses in the topics of Feminist Science, Technology and
Media Studies.   From these initial contacts will grow more networked
connections.



The networking project is currently called:  FemTechNet.

The first phase of this project is to activate the networks of
feminist thinkers for the purposes of creating the first version of a
Massively Distributed Collaborative Learning Experiment (MDCLE) on the
topic of feminism and technology to be offered between September and
December of 2013.



Unlike a MOOC (massively open online course), where a course is
organized and disseminated from a single educational institution, the
FemTechNet effort seeks to engage a network of instructors at many
different kinds of educational institutions in planning and offering
the first version of this course.  The course structure and topics are
now being discussed by a distributed group of feminist thinkers.  We
seek to engage feminist colleagues from around the world in this
discussion so that we can move into the planning and structuring stage.



The two organizers, Anne Balsamo and Alex Juhasz, will serve to
facilitate and coordinate the efforts of participants around the world
in the planning, infrastructuring, and delivering the course.  This
coordination effort includes spearheading fundraising efforts
(grants), setting up the technical infrastructure, and facilitating
communication among participants.

The following list describes the initial plans for the first iteration
of the Massively Distributed Collaborative Learning Experiment (MDCLE):



·      The FemTechNet MDCLE would take place sometime during the
months of September through December 2013.



·      The structure of the FemTechNet MDCLE might take shape as:

o   8-12 weeks

o   2 organizers:  (Balsamo and Juhasz)

o   20 campuses across the world that offer embodied classes

o   16-24 featured discussants

o   100 instructors (located across the world):  blogging, submitting
questions, offering other materials for consideration

o   400 students enrolled in embodied courses

o   1000 students participating as “self-directed learners”

o   1000+ people watching the video discussions, accessing the
materials, participating in locally relevant discussions



·      Our goal is to have at least one embodied course offered in
every major global region or continent.  The embodied courses would be
taught by faculty members at educational institutions around the world
who teach courses pertaining to feminist science, technology and media
studies and are supported through their own institutions to teach the
course.



·      Participants can join “as students” in different ways:



o   by enrolling in a class at a particular educational institution—
where credit is given for the course by that institution in
collaboration with the faculty member,

o   by finding an instructor to serve as a mentor and guide for an
“independent study”

o   by engaging with the materials and contributing to discussion as a
“self-directed” learner.



·      Members of FemTechNet will create a suggested 8-10 -week
curriculum on topics pertaining to the feminist science, technology
and media studies.



·      The curriculum would feature a series of conversations among
feminist scholars on specific topics. These discussions, featuring two
or more prominent international feminist scholars, researchers, and
artists, would be recorded a week or so in advance at their home
institutions.  NOTE: We do not YET know how we will structure or
record these conversations.



·      These featured discussions would serve as a common set of
materials to link all courses.  An online-forum space would provide a
site for discussion among all participants.



·      The curriculum would also include other materials prepared in
advanced, such as short “video primers” featuring feminist scholars
providing brief overviews of key books, topics, keywords, and
questions; bibliographies of relevant work; and an archive of digital
images, video clips, and other media.



·      Course materials and weekly conversations would be housed at a
common-open online (soft) space.



·      Faculty and instructors would be encouraged to organize a
specific curriculum for their embodied courses, using (remixing) the
materials made available on the common-open online space.



·      One of the COMMON activities that we would like to build into
the course is called:  “Storming Wikipedia.”  As part of this
exercise, course participants will conduct a “feminist inventory” of
Wikipedia  (or the online encyclopedia most relevant to a particular
area) to determine the places where feminist scholarship in science,
technology, and media should be referenced and included in the digital
archive.  Based on this inventory, participants will select Wikipedia
articles to amend or to create with the objective of getting feminist
scholarship into the world’s digital archive.



·      After the 8-10-week event, the entire proceedings would be
archived for later viewing, and would serve as the beginnings of the
creation of a digital archive of feminist scholarship on science,
technology and media.  Iterative offerings of the MDCLE and the future
development of the digital archive will be pursued in later phases of
the project.


There are many details to plan to facilitate and establish the
technological and institutional infrastructure for such a radical
endeavor, however we are certain that the time has come for a bold
initiative that manifests the histories and continued relevance of
feminist work in technology.

To plan this course and activate an international conversation about
possible course topics and important participants we started a
conversation with a small group of people located in the United
States.  This was, as discussed above, a project that was activated
during meetings with feminist colleagues in Australia, Canada, and
Europe.  So that although the INITIAL planning efforts were launched
in the US, to demonstrates its most “radical impact,” this effort
cannot be limited to US or North American participation.



Please help expand the conversation and planning activities to include
our colleagues across the globe.   A series of information and
planning meetings are happening at the following upcoming conferences:



International Communication Association:  Phoenix, Arizona, US:  May
21, 2012



Visual Culture Now Conference:  New York, New York, US:  May 31-June
2, 2012



Console-ing Passions: Boston, Massachusetts, US: July 19, 2012



Social Studies of Science and Society (4S/EASST) Conference:
Copenhagen, Denmark:  Oct 17-20, 2012



            American Studies Association:  San Juan, Puerto Rico: Nov
15-18, 2012



Project Announcements and updates on FemTechNet activities will be
posted and archived on the digital platform:  FEMBOTcollective.org



The FEMBOT collective is a collaborative group of faculty, graduate
students and librarians promoting research on gender, new media and
technology. As of Spring 2012, the Fembot community spans North
America and Asia and encourages interdisciplinary and international
participation.



Carol Stabile (US)—one of the founders of FEMBOT—posted a report from
the initial FemTechNet planning meeting:




This is an invitation to participate by joining the conversations and
small group meetings (both virtual and face-to-face) that are being
organized to plan the effort.



For more information please contact:

Anne Balsamo (US):  anneb...@gmail.com

Alex Juhasz (US): Alexandr...@pitzer.edu

Micha Cárdenas: micha.c...@usc.edu


--
Christina Dunbar-Hester, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor of Journalism & Media Studies
Affiliated Faculty, Women's & Gender Studies
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

It would be great if people could throw out examples that come to mind around on this topic--particularly as we're going to be redesigning our site over the next few months.

Cheers,

Sara

AAR

unread,
May 24, 2012, 12:22:25 PM5/24/12
to publicla...@googlegroups.com
Thank you for raising the gender issue, Sara. I feel like I could write a book on this topic, which more generally addresses women & technology and the applications of tech. I will try to compromise by sharing some background and giving some specific responses. I've been involved with tech since 1966, when I became involved with EAT. The gender issue has been a consistent barrier which occasionally wanes & then settles back into a familiar place with the young guys (boys with toys) crowding out the more tentative women & often the more content concerned (EJ in this case). I say this with the greatest admiration for the achievements of the guys and even more for the girls who can keep up and would wish we were further along. A 3 to 4 on staff is impressive. Speaking for myself, as an almost 67 year old woman with some health & other limitations, who has been keenly interested in GISc since 1999, I can say I went thru a trajectory which began with great enthusiasm for the goals & projects of this group, which has dramatically dissipated to the point where I rarely read all the posts. I have worked on a GIS certificate at Lehman College but got bogged down in the software & stuck with Mac issues. That alone, has slowed me down about both my enthusiasm and my hopefulness about engaging with you all or initiating independent projects with relevance.

The reasons I've pulled back are simple. I just don't see easy points of entry which bridge the divide you reference. I don't have time or interest to build out the kits. I've never been good at mechanicals (despite doing some electrical engineering in graduate school at Cal Arts) and am not in a position to go traipsing around the countryside to gather the data. I think that is partly a question of logistics but also about the emphasis here on the physicality of the projects, which privileges active young men on the IT side, as you pointed out. What had initially excited me about this work was the possibilities for creating and interpreting new data, in innovative ways, with political and environmental repercussions. What I'd like to suggest as a remedy, might be some collaborations which are more balanced between process, content, strategizing etc without a hierarchy of valuation or even entry. 

I'd love to explore this more deeply. On the ideas side, more specifically I'd like to invite whomever this interests, to participate with me and some climate environmental scientists in a webcast/ whiteboard session of "Gulf to Gulf," to discuss how we might integrate the means you are all exploring with some other people's ideas about tracking changes in Gulf systems caused by extraction and global warming (EJ). Please contact me directly if you want to participate and I can send you dates. The completed raw sessions are posted on vimeo and often generate spin off material. Perhaps this might contribute to some productive new avenues for some in the group and even better, a way for me to find some new partners to move my own environmental work forward.

"What the world needs is a good housekeeper," Aviva Rahmani
Affiliate with the Institute for Arctic & Alpine Research, University of Colorado at Boulder

Candidate for Ph.D.
University of Plymouth, England in collaboration with Z_Node, Zurich University for the Arts, Switzerland

214 Riverside Drive apt 614
New York City, New York 10025
Box 484, Vinalhaven, Maine 04863

www.avivarahmani.com
www.ghostnets.com
ghos...@ghostnets.com

sara wylie

unread,
May 30, 2012, 12:13:42 PM5/30/12
to ghos...@ghostnets.com, publicla...@googlegroups.com
Thanks for your thoughts on this, I apologize for my delayed response! It would be great to hear design ideas we could test out to create some easy points of entry into projects as you recommend? Below I've listed some projects afoot to increase accessibility and get away from a hierarchy of valuation, it would be great to hear your thoughts on those.

"What I'd like to suggest as a remedy, might be some collaborations which are more balanced between process, content, strategizing etc without a hierarchy of valuation or even entry."

Your thoughts physicality of the projects are very interesting. For some background on that: the intent of the physicality of Public Lab approaches is to get people involved in making so that making becomes less alien to those of us (like myself) who come from cultures that focus on consumption rather than production and value knowledge work over making. Given that focus on hands on activity we have been very cautious about crowdsourcing approaches that might inadvertently make people into mechanical sorters of data. In our efforts to generate tools that allow individuals to generate their own data, it maybe we have unwittingly made the projects harder for others to access?

I agree with you, a focus on homemade data doesn't mean we can't figure out and equally value other ways to get involved in developing the projects. Such as you suggest here:
analyzing the data,
developing strategies for what, where, when to gather in terms of data
how to act on the data.

Some immediate ideas come to mind for enabling other modes of engagement:
1. increase the practice of speculative design in our community: a number of research notes are just drawn out ideas that others can take up and act on. The interaction between Jeff's hamster ball concept and Byeongwon's work picking up that design is a good example of this kind of exchange....we could increase the traffic of people just drawing out ideas as a point of entry?



One project in the hopper to help with this is the design of a "sandbox" for sharing in tool ideas, would be great to have in put and help from anyone interested in getting involved in this


2. increase the practice of writing research notes that describe personal experience with environmental problems.  Rather than focusing on design of tools, we could encourage people to submit design problems or descriptions of environmental health issues?

The home testing for endocrine disruptors is still really in the state of proposing a serious environmental health problem that needs to be addressed:

3. creating more space for collaborative discussions of designing research projects and analyzing resultant data. Could we figure out ways to call out for a planning session around a project or hold collaborative data interpretation sessions? There are also redesigns afoot for people's dashboards, with the idea that we can promote skill sharing.


4. increase the ability to get involved in web and software development projects. Or in community publishing activities--Mat has been working on templates for the grassroots mapping forum so we can distributively publish this magazine. It is another site for getting involved in building the community that doesn't involve making tools.


Thanks again! Looking forward to talking more about this,

Sara



Quoting AAR <ghos...@ghostnets.com>:

Thank you for raising the gender issue, Sara. I feel like I could write a book on this topic, which more generally addresses women & technology and the applications of tech. I will try to compromise by sharing some background and giving some specific responses. I've been involved with tech since 1966, when I became involved with EAT. The gender issue has been a consistent barrier which occasionally wanes & then settles back into a familiar place with the young guys (boys with toys) crowding out the more tentative women & often the more content concerned (EJ in this case). I say this with the greatest admiration for the achievements of the guys and even more for the girls who can keep up and would wish we were further along. A 3 to 4 on staff is impressive. Speaking for myself, as an almost 67 year old woman with some health & other limitations, who has been keenly interested in GISc since 1999, I can say I went thru a trajectory which began with great enthusiasm for the goals & projects of this group, which has dramatically dissipated to the point where I rarely read all the posts. I have worked on a GIS certificate at Lehman College but got bogged down in the software & stuck with Mac issues. That alone, has slowed me down about both my enthusiasm and my hopefulness about engaging with you all or initiating independent projects with relevance.

The reasons I've pulled back are simple. I just don't see easy points of entry which bridge the divide you reference. I don't have time or interest to build out the kits. I've never been good at mechanicals (despite doing some electrical engineering in graduate school at Cal Arts) and am not in a position to go traipsing around the countryside to gather the data. I think that is partly a question of logistics but also about the emphasis here on the physicality of the projects, which privileges active young men on the IT side, as you pointed out. What had initially excited me about this work was the possibilities for creating and interpreting new data, in innovative ways, with political and environmental repercussions. What I'd like to suggest as a remedy, might be some collaborations which are more balanced between process, content, strategizing etc without a hierarchy of valuation or even entry. 

I'd love to explore this more deeply. On the ideas side, more specifically I'd like to invite whomever this interests, to participate with me and some climate environmental scientists in a webcast/ whiteboard session of "Gulf to Gulf," to discuss how we might integrate the means you are all exploring with some other people's ideas about tracking changes in Gulf systems caused by extraction and global warming (EJ). Please contact me directly if you want to participate and I can send you dates. The completed raw sessions are posted on vimeo and often generate spin off material. Perhaps this might contribute to some productive new avenues for some in the group and even better, a way for me to find some new partners to move my own environmental work forward.

"What the world needs is a good housekeeper," Aviva Rahmani
Affiliate with the Institute for Arctic & Alpine Research, University of Colorado at Boulder

Candidate for Ph.D.
University of Plymouth, England in collaboration with Z_Node, Zurich University for the Arts, Switzerland

214 Riverside Drive apt 614
New York City, New York 10025
Box 484, Vinalhaven, Maine 04863

www.avivarahmani.com
www.ghostnets.com
ghos...@ghostnets.com
e-community: www.ecoartnetwork.org

On May 24, 2012, at 10:52 AM, sara wylie wrote:

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