Look now!

Ergebnisreader der internationalen Fachtagung zum Thema Frauen und (neue) Medien im November 95 – in englischer Sprache.

aus dem Inhalt

Introduction
Karin Spaink (NL)
The Cyborg exists! –
Images of Women and the Media in the Nineties
Sabine Stampfel (FRG)
A Place for Women –
Women and New Media
Jurriënne Ossewold (NL)
http://www.The_Lady_Electronic.nl/
Internet-flirtations. Don’t hype the beliefs!
Elisabeth Klaus (FRG)
Melodramas versus Sports? –
The Gendered Use of Media
Monique Volman (NL)
Outsiders and Experts –
Girls, Boys and Computers in Education
Dea Koert (NL)
From Picture to Stage –
Multi Media Performance
Sonia D’hondt (B)
Stereotypes, Myths and Herstory in Media
Ute Gerhard (FRG)
Us and Them – Collective Symbolism,
Racism and Gender Stereotypes
Marga Miltenburg (NL)
›In 1984 the Time was right‹ –
Ways of Women in Broadcast
Ute Remus (FRG)
Walk through the Institution Broadcast –
Integration versus Autonomy?!
Rita Polm (FRG)
Multiplying Media – Opportunities for Women? Possibilities in German Broadcast
Authors
Commission of Women‘s Studies in the
Netherlands & Northrhine Westfalia (1998)

Leseprobe

http://www.The_Lady_Electronic.nl/Internet-flirtations
Don’t hype the beliefs!
by Jurriënne Ossewold
1 Introduction
In November 1995 I wrote in my abstract for the conference LOOK NOW on which this book is based: »For women, a proven minority in the ›old media‹-world, the development of new media is an opportunity to become an actor and jump on the train before it starts speeding«. This book has been published in 1998 and the train has started speeding. But it has to slow down again soon due to overload; too many people jumped on it. At least verbally. They just jumped, desperate to be on it. No matter where or how. Disregarding all the critical questions that have arisen. Not taking ethical and esthetical discussions into consideration. They just jumped. The internet has already taught us that an overload can become an overkill. All this jumping is dangerous for new media. It has to wrestle to free itself and to keep it’s specific and unique character, which makes this digital invention worthwhile.
The result of it’s current popularity is the image of new media as a huge themepark. Where 40 year olds feel young again and men can be women and women can be men. All this hyping of new media, however, does not automatically mean that the investments are an analogue of the praise. In the Netherlands, government and industry are still flirting with new media avoiding a serious relationship, which would require full commitment. ›Don’t belief the hype‹, militant rappers Public Enemy sang in the eighties1. I would like to add ›don’t hype the beliefs‹!
In this article I’ll discuss the specific character of new media which is based on the notion of ›interactivity‹. Because of the fact that new media are interactive media they add something very significant to media in the traditional sense – here I try to avoid the word ›old media‹ – and that is ›design‹. New media are not just a new kind transmitters of content, as is often suggested, but they are ›designed‹ transmitters of content. How does this affect the relation between designers and users? The related notions of interactivity and design are the scaffolding on which the still vulnerable ice-palace of new media is based. Both designers and users are responsible or should at least be concerned with this scaffolding. I’ll connect this responsibility to the notion of pro-activity, a term I will introduce in this article.
2 Characteristics of new media
First of all I will attempt to define new media, look at ist characteristics and place it in a context. New media is a collective noun for offline and online digital media. Currently new media appear in two forms: on disk (cdi,cdrom, cd+, etc.) and on the net (internet, intranet, telecommunications). The main difference between them is that diskmedia are offline and the net is, of course, online. Another term for new media which is often used is interactive multimedia which includes both online and offline applications. The term that is used most of the time specifically for networks (internet, intranet) is ICT: information & communication technology. A term which focusses more on network technology and its possibilities than on content or structure of the mediamessage2. Despite the fact that interactive multimedia is still a multidisciplinary and immature field we can distinguish some constant characteristics: multimedia, digital, interactive.
Multimedia means using several, already existing media -sound, music, animation, graphics, texts, video, photographs- in one programme, at the same time on one screen and not in a lineair, non interfering, order. By using media in this way the information on the screen appears in layers. Creating a multimedia programme means that a designer has to ›reduce‹ all the media he uses into the same language/entity. This means digitalizing the material. Digitalisation is creating an universal language. This digitalisation results in the possibility to program the material (write a specific code with this universal language), so that an interactive structure can be created. This structure makes it possible for the user to go through the information in an order of his own choice. And, if the design makes this possible, to manipulate and change the programme. But there is more to say about this new kind of media.
3 Context
There never has been a scientific, cultural or social development that happened just like that, like falling out of the blue as a ›deus ex machina‹ to guide and save us. There, of course, is always a context which embeddens a development in time and place. This embeddedness gives it a history and a future and makes it possible for us to observe it in both these contexts. In this time we can see a configuration of scientific developments. An important part of this configuration is certainly the development of Information and Communication Technology, also described as media-technologies or communication-technologies. As always at the ›fin‹ of a century, especially a millennium, developments seem to be enwrapped by fatalistic or promising airs. As if all of a sudden the Fades are the guides of science. Maybe that’s one of the reasons why ICT is seen as part of a greater technological plan, that will have and already has, as visionaries say, an unchangeble effect on our society. In other scientific fields the technological developments are as surprising and farreaching as in media and communication. And in all these developments we can see a pattern: as if there is a longing to take the material world beyond the time and place that defines it. I see this as an ambiguous longing to create a new material world that exists physically but also is virtual in the sense that it cannot really exist because there is no material being beyond time and place. Maybe we can call it a simulated world. It would go too far to reflect on simulated or virtual worlds in this article but I’d like to name a few technologies which put ICT in the context of a configuration of our society in this decade.3 For instance medical technologies that concentrate on DNA-research and neurological research. The most hidden parts of human somatical existence are seen as the most influential. Specifically on pro-creation. An example of creating a simulated world are all the techniques focussed on artificial pro-creation. A medicine related science which also relates to new media is cybernetica. In psychology there is a science which concentrates on thinking outside the human body: artificial intelligence. In new media we can find in a lot of applications the creation of artificial worlds, based on the rules of artificial intelligence. In fashion there is a focus on the creation of smart fabrics, fabrics that don’t need natural elements. There are a lot more examples, but it would go too far to name them all. Let’s go back to media and communication.
4 The second media age
One of the characteristics of the twentieth century is the introduction of communication systems enabling a distribution of information from one place to another on a large scale. This means an increased communication capacity ignoring time and space.4 The first step was made by the ›electrification‹ of analogue messages as radio, telephone and television. The second step is made by digitalizing the transport of information and the information itself. Some theorists see in this development a great democratic potential while others see it as a threat of our freedom.5 The communication model that belongs to radio and television is the broadcasting-model: one sender to many receivers in an one way communication.6 With the internet a complete new model is introduced: a many to many or decentralized communication. Historian Mark Poster sees in the possibilities of this new mode of communicating a ground for announcing »The second media age«. In this new age we’ll have to redefine the relation between technology, culture and politics (Poster 1995).
As a result of new media technologies we are forced to also redefine our ideas about what media are and what their functions are. Besides that, already existing media are redefined: next to film interactive film appears, next to television interactive television, etc.
We’re talking about a new area which is indicated as new media but actually means a new division of our society, a new way of communicating and a new social organization. New media technologies have a fundamental influence on the organization of our society, the way we relate to ourselves, to others and to our society. An example of this influence is for instance teleworking. Teleworking can very well contribute to the solution of a various range of problems like polution, transport-overload, working full time and taking care of children etc. But when our physical workstation becomes a virtual one a lot of things change. Being a part of an organization and communication with colleagues for instance. But also more formal things like fixed working hours. Our working hours are tuned to work that needs to be done between darkness and darkness. If that is not needed anymore all kind of organizations can start using other opening hours: shops, libraries, schools etc. One can imagine the consequences. Besides these there is another, more personal, consequence. Everyone will have to define their own time and place for every action. There’ll be no need to do certain things at a certain time in a certain place. You can buy your groceries whenever and you can buy them physically in a store or order them by using the net.
This is only an example to show that the use of communication technologies has an enormous impact also on the organization of our personal lives and, therefore, on our experiences and imagination. Besides this we can notice something else happening: the notion media is stretched to almost everything that deals with communication: from telephone, radio, fax, television, film to internet, teleshopping, installations in a museum etc. It is obvious that, when we speak of new media, a lot of aspects and therefore discussions come together: media, communication theories, computer technology, human- computer interaction, art, design, transport and distribution, to name a few of them. New media is an absolute multidisciplinary discipline, in which the several disciplines are scarcely integrated.
The influence of digital technology, however, goes further and is more drastic then we are aware of at this moment. Especially the worldwide computer network which seems to generate the possibility of creating a worldwide standardization, globalization7, in all kind of areas: economics, trade, financial transactions, but also architecture, design, language, imagery. Information and communication technology affects the industry, the organization of our society, the way we relate socially, the way we form and define communities, the way we see ourselves, and the concrete organization of our daily lives: work, housing, recreation; the way we define and launch our bodies, the way our senses function, and our brains. The actual situation is complex and still obscure. That digital technologies influence and affect our entire environment and thus the way we live, is the only clear conclusion we can draw. Full implementation will take a long time and is currently still decelerated by a ›social brake‹. This is however a necessity; it’s a coping strategy of our society to deal with the endless innovations. As Brian Winston states in ›Technologies of seeing‹:
»(…) the transformation that covers the move of the invention out into the world is conditioned by a social brake not an accelerator. New technologies are constrained and diffused only insofar as their potential for radical disruption is constrained or suppressed. That is the brake. The technologies are made to ›fit‹ into society by this last transformation. This can therefore be named ›the suppression of radical potential.‹« (Winston 1996: 7)
This suppression of the radical potential of new technologies which is a social way of surviving the endless innovations doesn’t discharge us (and I mean everyone) from our responsibility to get informed, use the technologies and make them fit. As technologies force us we can force technology. I’ll elaborate on that later on. Félix Guattari writes:
»(…) today’s communication and information machines do not merely convey representational contents, but also contribute to the fabrication of new ›assembleges‹ of enunciation, individual and collective.« (Regimes, Pathways, Subjects. In: Zone 6: Incorporations 1992)
New media presses us to create new ways of communicating, which demand new virtual-social capabilities and etiquette. But it also demands a new way of living together physically and, with that, a new architecture and town and country planning. New technologies as new media force us to redesign our physical and virtual surroundings. (Mitchell 1996; Postman 1992)
I now come to my central question of this article: how does new media affect the relation between the designer and the user. Specifically when we look at women as users.

5 Interactivity
In the beginning of this article I have described the characteristics of new media: multimedia, digital and interactive. The main characteristic however is ›interactivity‹. What does interactivity mean? There is a variety of explanations for this notion. Nowadays the term is very often used in a somewhat degenerated way. Because of the hype almost everything is called interactive: from a phone-in radio programme to call-tv. For Interaction Design8, a discipline I work with on a daily basis, however interactivity is a complex relation between content, structure, behaviour and functionality, between action and reaction, between designers, computers and users, between hardware and software. New media theorist Derrick de Kerckhove said in 1996:
»The word interactivity didn’t exist ten years ago. Now everyone uses it. But what does it exactly mean? Interactivity is that which is specified by the hardware that links the physical reality of man to his digital environment.« (de Kerckhove 1996: 15)9
Timothy Leary, media guru, comes close to this definition in an article from 1990:
»The evolution of the notion of interactive, as it is used by computer interface designers, parallels the evolution of the notion of interpersonal in the field of psychology. Both concepts are related to very wide and deep and irrevocable changes in the way people relate to the world.« (Leary 1990: 230)
Jenny Preece, an Interaction Design theorist, defines interactivity as interaction between users and computers (Preece 1994: 261 e.v.). Very often the focus is on the relation between man (user) and machine (computer). I’d like to describe interactivity as a human to human interaction in which the computer is a moderator (interface).10 This interaction is always a designed one, designed by both communicators, the designer and the user.
6 Interactivity means design
The designer of an interactive programme not only designs the content, structure and appearance of a programme as in ›old media‹, but also the possible actions of the user. This implies that an interactive programme is never finished and that it literally differs for everyone. Some theorists link interactivity to postmodernism, more specifically to the poststructuralist conceptions of the open text. Roland Barthes describes his idea of ideal textuality: ›in the ideal text the networks are many and interact, without any of them being able to surpass the rest‹. This is exactly what happens in an interactive structure as for instance hypertext; text composed of blocks of words (or images) linked by multiple paths in a never ending electronical environement. Barthes idea that each text has two interpretations: a writerly text -as inter0preted by the author – and a readerly text – as interpreted by the reader –, seems to become true (Barthes 1992). When we look at an interactive programme we can see an interactive structure that as a whole is designed by the author. But every user will create his/her own path through the fragments of it. Which means that every user creates literally his/her own programme. Looking more specifically at the net, I would like to add that we can find here the best examples of how an interactive programme is never finished (van Burgsteden/Ossewold/Rijken e.a. in: SIGCHI-bulletin 1994, No. 3).11 A website, for instance, is not like a book, a film or a painting, which are finished pieces when they reach the audience. And unlike a book etc. a website is only present when a user starts using it. It only then shows its possibilities and by the manipluations of the user it will grow and evolve. That’s why the internet is called a virtual (information)environment, like a building is called a physical environment. It’s an environment which slowly evolves, like the road-system. It also is an open environment which moves continouisly and changes all the time, like a city. Internet is a dynamic environment. This implies that it differs fundamentally from the ›old media‹, which exist of static ›things‹. This means that in new media there is a new role for the user. A website is meant to reach an audience and it only exists if the audience reacts on it. This indicates a metamorphosis of the audience into ›users‹, into ›co-creators‹. Designers no longer make ›things‹ that are finished when they meet the public, but they create evolutionary environments, open systems, in which the user co-creates the content. What implications does this have for our notions of ›designer‹ and ›public‹? What does public mean, when for instance it becomes a part of the design. There is a direct physical dialogue between the user and the programme, and with that there is an indirect virtual dialogue between the user and the author/designer. Without participation of the user there is no such dialogue. And that’s why I call interactivity a human to human interaction.
7 Design as ›pro-action‹
Design implies creation and to design implies taking the position of a creator, a designer. In other words taking the position of the subject. A notion I would like to use despite of the fact that it is philosophically disputed.12 I want to emphazise the position of experience, the experience of daily life, of being tied to time and place, being tied to a context. This being doesn’t change by fumbling with a term or by shifting theoretical disputes and standpoints, however interesting and valuable they may be.
By abstracting the position of experience it is very well possible to come to a more general insight. Let me name an example: ›Bureau Beeldvorming m/v‹ – a bureau which does research on the field of gender and television – van de NOS -the Dutch Broadcasting Foundation- has done research on the image of women in informative television programmes. As a conclusion they point out that minority standpoints are neither official nor theoretical standpoints. Minority standpoints are the standpoints of ›experience-experts‹. In talk shows we can see a lot of these experience-experts. The value claim of their opinions is based on their experience: »I’ve been there, so I know what I’m talking about«. Experience positions are formed by and based on actions. In every handbook or course on how to write a film scenario you can find this ›rule‹: action is the central notion, without action there is no narrative, without action there is no character. Character is action (Egrt 1960: 93). One can only take this ›active‹ position if one takes his own experience-position seriously and if one is able to put this into a context and a tradition.
Using interactive media a user acts from his experience position. His reaction on an application is based on recognition and experience. This implies that a user-friendly design is based on the supposed recognition of the user. When a user recognizes at least some elements of a programme (or an interface) he will start using it. He will use his experience position and his curiosity to navigate through the programme and, in the best case, to try to manipulate the programme.
For a designer this means that he should involve in his design possible experiences of the target group and the possibility for the users to manipulate the programme. To put it literally, he will have to share his design and his position as designer. For the user this means that he shouldtake a more than active attitude. That he is willing to co-design the programme he is using. This willingness to co-design and manipulate the design, is what I would like to call, introducing a new term in this context, ›pro-active‹.
Design implies for designers and users to take up a pro-active attitude. Where ›old media‹ talk about an active audience, this will not be sufficient for new media; here the audience will have to be pro-active.
8 The lady electronic
What can we say when we look at the position of women as designers and users specifically? Are women pro-active when it comes to new media? New media is still seen as a technological innovation and is still not an equivalent, like television, for entertainment or, like the telephone, for a personal communication-tool. A possible explanation of the relative absence of women in new media, as designers and users, is its technological character. Carol Stabile points out in her book ›Feminism and the technological fix‹ that in feminist theory there are two positions towards technology: ›technomania‹ and ›technophobia‹. She states in her introduction:
»As struggles over definitions of femaleness intensify, impelled largely by technological advances in areas such as reproductive technologies and genetic engineering, feminists have either withdrawn into reactionary essentialist formations (what I call technophobia) or equally problematic political strategies framed around fragmentary and destabilized theories of identity (what I call technomania).« (Stabile 1994: 1)
Technophobia, as for instance in ecofeminism, implies a rejection of technology as a male invention that excludes the feminine essence. While technomania, as in cybernetics and cyborgpolitics, problemizes the status of men and women, race, sexual identity and body and sees in technology a possibility to go beyond gender, race etc.13
I would like to point out that both positions, technophobia and technomania, are victim positions in the sense that they are re-active. Both positions, essentialist as in technophobia and anti-essentialist as in cyborgpolitics, are a re-action on the social and cultural position of women. This re-active attitude is opposite to what I called before a pro-active attitude – in the sense of creating and manipulating. The re-active positions can also be found in the practice of new media. For instance a lot of websites made for women, whether they are designed by men or not, are ›magazine style‹-sites. Which means that they are based on the familiar concept of the hard copy (glossy) magazine. When we take a look at the cosmopolitan site14 for instance we’ll find an online copy of the existing magazine, without the attractive glossiness. But also more ›radical‹ sites like Women’s Wire15 fall back into a well known familiar style. As if they expect all women to be technophobic. Contrary to this a pro-active initiative is the FeMiNa-site16, a site that lists ›women-friendly‹ sites. This pro-activity, however, is more based on content then on the way the interactivity is designed. That is also the case in the endless list of newsgroups for women. Those online meeting-points and communities created by women for women are based on content rather than design. But again, looking at the interactivity, almost all the sites are online copies of existing products. Which might be seen as an attempt to ›de-technolize‹ them. Another example of a technomanic or technophobic attitude are the books written specially for women who want to get wired. They vary from mania to phobia. The American ›SurferGrrrls‹ for instance, which is actually a very informative and well written book, uses a real hyped tone to evoke women to use the net:
»Calling all cyberchicks, wired women and girl geek wannabes (…). Bust you free from the shackles of technophobia(). So plug in, log on, sign up, and have fun!«. (Gilbert/Kile 1996)
The book tries to evoke a technomania with the reader. A Dutch book for women ›Internet ABC voor Vrouwen‹ (van den Boomen 1996) starts with addressing women on their supposed technophobia. The author praises women for their practical sense that prevents them from following the technological hypes. Her next step then is to show women how practical the net is. Internet is more a language then a technique, she states. In this book the technophobia of women is reaffirmed and the solution is found in declaring the internet as non-technological. Despite of the still blooming technophobia the amount of women using the net is increasing. The number that is named is that women make up 32 percent of all internet users.17
And how about designers? Liz Sarginson, Production Director at Webmedia, states in an interview with Internet Today:
»As a designer, for instance, you have to develop a new way of thinking, and women are just as capable of that as men«
but also
»the barriers women face take two forms-those imposed by ourselves and those imposed on us. Women tend to be more practical in the sense of seeing computers as just another tool rather like a car. Women aren’t generally interested in taking a car apart or worrying how it works, they just want to get from A to B. It takes time to understand what computers can do beyond computation and word processing, and women want to see positive results rather than technological tinkering.(…) This is all to the common good, but we still have a long way to go to actually engage women’s interest.« (Internet Today 1997/30)
New media especially provides the opportunity for active participation because of the possibilities of interactivity and the interweaving of designers and users. The opportunity for a pro-active attitude instead of a re-active. The result of a pro-active attitude will be the appropriation of these technologies. As a user one can enforce the position of a co-author. For women this means the possibility to appropriate new media.


9 Interactivity as responsibility
A designer, as stated before, designs our -physical and virtual- environment. This makes her among others responsible for the functionality and esthetics of this environment, which implies an implicit responsibility for the wellbeing of human beings in this environment.
This responsibility of the designer is necessary considering the exploding growth of digital technology and its consequences. The designer should take as a starting point the human centredness of technology: a technology focussed on liveability and sustainability, a technology that takes the human experience as a starting point. Philosophers (on technology) already stress the importance of reflection on analogue technologies. (Achterhuis 1992)
But is this only the responsibilty of the designer? I want to stress the fact that users are as responsible as designers. Of course the designer of interactive media is the creator, the author of interactive programmes as such. But – when this is done well – the user has the possibility to navigate through the programmes on her own judgment, to manipulate it, to change it. Interactivity means, as stated before, a human to human interaction, a dialogue, moderated by a computer. A dialogue always comes from both sides, in this case designer and user.
To put it in more radical terms, users can force designers to create real interactive environments. The only way to do that is by being pro-active and demanding, forcing space. And not by being re-active, hiding behind phobia or mania. By using the net users can manipulate it. Because the net is based on free access for designers and users, you can go everywhere. That is why you have influence as an user. If you don’t like a site you can go elsewhere. The net provides you with enough choice. The actions of users can create awareness with designers and the other way around. Awareness means taking responsibility. Designers by sharing their design, i.e. by creating interactivity. Users by a pro-active attitude.
The question is why a lot of users take up such a re-active attitude and why a lot of designers fail to deepen their knowledge of and insight in interactivity. It almost seems like it is easier, more comfortable, to take up a re-active attitude. This is not only the case with women, also a lot of male users and designers hide behind a range of stereotype reactions. That differ from ›internet gives us an entire new identity‹ to ›internet turns our society into an asocial one‹ to ›we put all educational material on cd-rom, so we need no teachers anymore‹ etc. What happens here is what I prefer to call the ›hyping of beliefs‹. Which actually means for the hyper that he/she doesn’t have to get informed and doesn’t have to judge because that is already done for her/him. It means taking assumptions as a starting point.
When women and others, who feel excluded, want to be part of the development of new media and use it for the better, they’ll have to change their attitude. They’ll have to be pro-active and design their own media.

New media is not a hype
it’s not a belief
it’s not a theory
it’s not a wet dream nor a nightmare,
it’s not a revolution nor a religion.
It’s a matter of design, of technology.
It’s one of the realities we live in.
And above all it’s a tool.
Use it.