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Following is a rant, written in response to the special "Future" issue published in 1995 by WiReD magazine. I posted this to Fringeware, an online mailing list and print magazine. I'm told my rant was subsequently distributed in WiReD editorial meetings. The highlighted text is my response both to my own rant, and the many responses I received from posting to Fringeware.com and the Women in Multimedia mailing list.
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WIRED publishes a special edition addressing the "future of the future."
Of the 10 authors and contributors listed on the cover, not one is a woman. Interestingly, the one author in the table of contents who is not featured on the cover is the lone woman contributor. Apparently WIRED has never heard of, or perhaps more accurately chooses to ignore Maggie Morse, Joanna Russ, Avital Ronell, Denise Caruso, Alluquere Rosanne Stone, Pat Cadigan, Donna Haraway, Dee Dee Hallock, Shirly Turkel, Kathy Acker, Sueann Ambron, Kristina Hooper, Brenda Laurel, Constance Penley, Karrie Jacobs, Veronica Hollinger, Theresa deLauretis, Vivian Sobchalk or any of the many other women who are producing insightful, innovative and compelling texts about technology.
No, women just aren't as exciting. Perhaps women writers, authors, theorists and pop culture celebrities aren't as exciting because they are concerned with the social implications of technology. Sticky issues of access and economics detract needlessly from the utopian hallucinations of the techno-future this issue so naively creates.
[In retrospect, this was an unnecessary and inaccurate comment, as one quick browse through the old masthead indicates that the president and at least half the editors are women. I'm told that at least ten minutes of EVERY editorial meeting are consumed with despairing over the difficulty of finding women writers, and conjecturing about possible solutions for this apparent vacuum of women writers-as if women writers were lurking in the corners, shying from view, hiding names and email and texts, avoiding all publishing solicitations.]