Re: [oldboys] re:HAL JO HO HO

[Amy Alexander <plagiari@plagiarist.org>]

On Tue, 10 Jul 2001, dsolomon wrote:

>
> reConnie:
> >what most women feel when they are entering the hacking scene (without
> boyfriend hacker who brought her >there) is >an uneasiness and feeling
> uncomfortable, because the hacker scene is purely male. THIS IS STRANGE.
>
> Not that strange actually. Guys simply are more interested in the
> MECHANICAL workings of things in a fiddly-blinder sort-of-way. I know this

hi - interesting point!

i've seen this observation in discussions of male vs. female geeks
on boards like slashdot, etc....  often someone will observe
that men tend to be more interested in that fiddly-blinder aspect
of hacking - i.e. hacking for the pure beauty of hacking, whereas
women hackers tend to be more goal oriented. (i've noticed this in
my personal dealings with male and female geeks myself, including
me... i tend to be more goal-oriented though at times i do have
fun with just hacking for the hell of it. )
men usually seem to see this difference as a superiority of the "male-style"
(hacking for its own sake, cuz exploration is what makes
for progess), but i sure don't see anything wrong with the goal-oriented
approach!  and i think that's important. hacking is a very powerful thing;
you can make work with it that you can't do other ways. so i'd hate to
see anyone be put off by the ambience of blind geekdom, because that stops
people from possibly getting involved with something that will allow
them to do useful work.

btw, i think this may be influence so much open source software is
user-unfriendly (yes, i know a lot of times it's because it's done for
free - i've written some myself so i know that time constraints
are a real consideration. ) but anyway, it reminds me of a some toy
racecars i had when i was a kid, which broke down often and came with
a troubleshooting kit so kids (boys?) could have fun fixing them. my
dad told me it was because boys enjoy tinkering, though i wished
i could spend more time racing them and less time fixing them. open
source software often expects lots of tinkering. and much of it doesn't
actually perform a specific function; it's a library for building
something else... and from the slashdot discussions, a lot of people
have commented that it's because that building a tool is considered
a higher calling than building a utility. i can understand that point
of view, but of course building a utility that anyone can use, *is*
a tool for them! that gets lost.

so of course, there's plenty of overgeneralization in what i've
written above; and it's not to say that male hackers can't accomplish
a goal or that women can't or don't hack more abstractly... obviously
that's not really the case, but, for whatever reasons
(probably socialization), there might seem to be these tendencies.

my point finally: since both approaches have their merits, i think
it's important to recognize the existence and value of goal-oriented
hacking, so that no hacker or potential-hacker feels put off from
getting involved with it because they feel they don't fit in.
but also, i think it's important to recognize the value of blind-geekdom,
aka abstract hacking.  because from fiddling comes new ideas, or
an awareness of possibilities that can be used toward goals.
(in other words, blind-fiddling is the fingerpainting of hacking.)

-@

--
plagiarist.org
Recontextualizing script-kiddyism as net-art for over 1/20 of a century.




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