I wrote a short post back in 2018 on the gendered languages of ICTs and ICT4D, and partly in the light of this I was very kindly invited to contribute to the fascinating collection of essays edited by Domenico Fiormonte, Sukanta Chaudhuri and Paola Ricaurte on Global Debates in the Digital Humanities, recently published by the University of Minnesota Press.
The short chapter is divided into two parts. The first on language, gender and digital tech is based on the premise that in the broad field of digital technologies, most practitioners have been blind to the gendering of language and thus perpetuate a male-dominated conceptualization of ICT4D. It addresses: the gendering of electronic parts, the use of language in ICT4D, digital technologies represented by male nouns, and computer code: bits and qubits. The second part explores some of my thoughts on the use of the term “frontier technologies”, building on another 2018 blog post.
I’m delighted that the publishers have now shared a copy of this with me, and have also given me permission to share it here. The chapter is only seven pages long, but I hope that readers may find that it challenges some of their existing thoughts about aspects of gender and digital tech. I would be delighted to carry on the conversation with anyone who mght be interested…
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