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non_trivial
written for Wench by gabriella marks
I confess to participating in the exuberant embrace of cyberspace, the lovely and ludicrous suggestion that digital dialogue has the capacity to become the locus of unmitigated identity hacking: that somehow through tappity-type text in a faceless telnet window, I can shed my "always already" socialized biology. And to my defense, identity as constructed through this electronic medium does unravel the seemingly seamless concepts of naturalized identity like "gender" and "race," revealing them to be socially constructed variables of infinite malleability.But really. This is an ideological indulgence, an exploration that somehow fails to acknowledge or account for the conditional economic and social circumstances of electronic conversation -- such contingencies as access to computers, modems, phone lines, basic operating knowledge, literacy and leisure time, for instance.
From academic considerations of virtual communities to the media hype that has generated the mass popularization of computing (from nerdy to trendy), such conditions are a given. There is an unspoken, unconscious assumption regarding the identity of computer users that is reflected in representations of the digital domain/new media/computer world: from print advertising and software packaging, to the over-the-anchor's-shoulder graphics on tv news, to website navigation elements and the icons on your desktop.
The visual vernacular used to represent the world of new media and its inhabitants is dominated by no singular image, but rather composed of a collection of images that we have come to associate with "all things cyber": hands on a keyboard, a bespectacled face awash in the glow of a monitor, two arms extended and caught in mid-handshake. It's as if everyone working in software packaging and advertising were using the same well-worn, limited collection of clipart. Were we to piece together a few versions of the computing body as described by our corpus of "wired" signifiers, we would find our laboratory crowded with a computer club that was predominantly male and overwhelmingly white.
Rummaging through the shelves of your local computer software source, flipping pages in your trade rag of choice, recurrent themes emerge. Put the POWER of cool new tool XBRAND 3.0 to work for you. TAKE CONTROL of your website / database / career, with built-in SUCCESS processing. Newer faster stronger easier than anything ever before. In the language of fetish and consumer idenfication, software promises purchasers such intangible treats as strength, success, leadership, confidence and control.
The images employed to convey these qualities are considered visually synonymous -- the handshake, the steely square jaw, smug smiles, even the occassional bulging muscle. The caricatured knight on Norton's Disk Doctor claims you'll save the day, perhaps even that cute confused blonde receptionist-cum-princess with this special tool. Make your multimedia project a movie set and command the screen with the masculine authority of Director (at left). This ubiquitous suited white man-wonder is capable of extraordinary feats, as he shields computers from viruses with SAM, pulls paper from monitors with the aid of Adobe Acrobat, juggles multiple tasks as Web Arranger, triumphs over spreadsheets for Microsoft Works, scales the stairway to heaven into the 4th Dimension. Occassionally his alterego superhero storms on the scene, wielding the pen-as-sword for FreeHand (at left).
Women surface only occasionally, stranded over in the scanning, monitor and image production corral, where their image is used to illustrate the artistic features of the product. In the lexicon of computing signifiers, women do not represent the computer users, but are rather relegated to the role of photographic model or the object of design. The filmic fragment of choice is the female eye, cropped within the control palette, as if to suggest that the accommodating image (dare I say subjectivity) of "woman" is infinitely tweakable ... and furthermore, through purchasing this product, you'll get to look at pix of hot chicks all day!
The female eye featured in Photoshop's opening frame is embossed on film, establishing the (female) eye as belonging to the design element, rather than the designer. The painterly impression of the white woman introducing Adobe Illustrator (below) is clearly not the artist. Advertisements and interfaces for scanners present images of women as the benchmark of scanning quality -- like the naked kneeling woman in the Scantistic splash screen or the submerged swimmer, lips caught mid-pucker-kiss, selling the Polaroid SprintScan. And who could forget the topless brunette framed with Live Picture?
The constant theme that distinguishes the anonymous computer user, independent of such variables as gender, illustration style and Photoshop filters, is faithful adherence to caucasian coloring. White hands of indiscriminate gender abound, pressing buttons, shaking other white hands, displaying client-server solutions, holding the shiny new tool, pointing towards the future, balancing the world on a fingertip. Even on my computer desktop, my libertarian, progressive Power Mac of the people, a small white hand is the icon of function, used to represent everything from QuarkXPress to Eudora to the Find function and sticky notes.
"Non-trivial" is a term used by programmers to describe a system malfunction or software glitch that will require considerable time and energy to rectify, a problem whose solution is not immediately obvious. In the domain of all things digital, representation is non-trivial. Knowledge of computers is increasingly becoming the key contingency which controls access to jobs, information, and power. The refusal or (to give the benefit of the doubt) inability of software producers and the media to recognize and acknowledge a user base more diverse than a single white male reinforces the marginalization of those already on the periphery of power.
The invisibility of gender and ethnicity in representations of technology, the assumption that the default term "computer user" refers to a white man unless otherwise modified, reinforces the cultural bias that women and people of color make no contribution to computing, lack role models in the industry, aren't a sufficient consumer market to warrant attention.
Before the collective defensive reflex of the developers and designers in the audience kicks in, understand that I'm not making accusations of direct racist and misogynist intent. After working in design, I have a hunch concerning some of the circumstances that produce this remarkably redundant idea of the computer user. The modus operandi of many in-house design departments and independent design studios is determined by the abundance or scarcity of resources, time and talent. The typical design project is almost always under a tight, inflexible deadline, the design "concept" must meet the multiple agendas of a clueless client or misinformed management and the hefty cost of professional photography and illustration sends many designers straight to scanning stills from stock photo books.
The representation of esoteric concepts like "internet" and "collaboration" is a challenging task regardless of financial or time constraints. Once a standard has been established -- an image of the earth infused with a blue glow, and small networked computers surrounding the periphery suggests internet, for example, or the two strong hands clasped evokes collaboration -- then the path of least resistence, that of repetition and imitation, defines the visual vocabulary for the concept. In tracing the origin of the problem, sheer lack of imagination is a likely suspect. With respect to ethnic diversity of representation, few firms seem prepared or willing to engage in the production of images with multiracial identities. Our cultural climate is one which is wary of any discourse concerning race, firms shy from dealing with race as such, sticking with the so-called neutral ground that is supposedly void of ethnic tension -- white.
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.
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.
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.
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.
As daily users, content producers, new media maniacs, we are responsible for defining, imagining, envisioning what we can do with computers, and what we would like them to be. And I'm not just talking about the frayed fringe in the limnal periphery, I'm talking about mainstream commercial applications, their icons on the desktop, the pictures on their boxes, the images in the animated banner ads, the sales copy in the catalog.
The metaphors and attendant imagery that we use to describe "computing" function beyond perfunctory packaging of the goods, they frame our perceptions and understanding of the tool. The actual tool in question, "the computer," is really orthogonal to the challenge I'm posing. Of greater relevance are the abstract and concrete goals for which digital media are merely means--by goals I mean to implicate everything from financial success, idea generation, market innovation, artistic creation, communication, to getting a date and getting a paycheck.
I end, as a I began, with a confession. I'm a web drone. I probably spend more time facing my computer than another person. I negotiate the imbalance between addiction and alienation with this piece of machinery, and previous to that I theorized about its potential. I've invested many a MG of meaning into this medium, and I have certain visions of what I'd like to see it become, how I'm interested in manipulating the relationships we have with our technology. And I view the representation of that relationship, whether through imagery or text, as a mode of exploration for both defining and rupturing that connection.
Situated from a feminist perspective in the sticky socio-political matrix of culture, the generic representation of computers and computer users is socially reactionary and limiting. From a designer's point of view, the common cannon of computer imagery is dead boring and borderline pathetic. In texting this rant, my intent has been to draw attention to those images we take for granted, that we no longer even "see" because they are such familiar props. Recognize that their meaning is far from trivial, and imagine how you might go about exploiting the icons for your own digital devices.
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