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As an industry we've indulged in the rhetoric of cyberliberation -- our ecstatic mantra: "Computers will changes our lives in real, revolutionary, radical ways." But the computer itself is merely a device, a plastic box of circuits, chips and boards, a tool for production, for communication, for seduction. The uses to which we apply these tools is largely a function of how we present them, and more importantly IMAGINE them.
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Redundancy of imagery in software packaging is a dilemma of vision, a direct by-product of our own myopic view of the definition of success. Beyond discrete feature sets and specific functionality, be it image manipulation or project management, all software is sold on the basis of the same promise: success, as embodied by the image of our ubiquitous white male buddy.
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The grinning irony of software representation is, of course, that despite strong social bias suggesting the computers and "technology in general" are really a boy thing, a casual stroll through any encampment of corporate cubicles will reveal a power user demographic (especially for administrative tasks) comprised largely of women.
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If western culture's dominant archetype dictates that "strong, white, male" (not necessarily in that order) is the symbolic equivalent of success, and therefore the source of non-inclusive software representation and interface, then it is an atrophied imagination, a crisis of creativity that perpetuates this redundancy.
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