texter sample | w i r e d w r a n t

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w i r e d w r a n t
texted by gabriella marks

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.

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.]
All of that dialogue about community and access and education. All of those disruptive and radical implications about how technology reveals breakdowns in gender roles and biological definitions. All of those provocative suggestions that technology is merely a means to an end; that it's not how much RAM you have, but what you can say or do with it. All of those women who propose a more critical understanding than simply "technology as boy toy."
"Dear Wired One," the insert letter begins, at once condescending and congratulatory, reminding the reader of her membership among an elite so-called Wired crew....
...Well, actually, you and the countless others who will have the opportunity to buy this issue well into the next year, according to the fine print on the cover instructing shopkeepers to "keep on the shelves until January", please enjoy the 6 month's efforts of "dozens of our finest contributors." Dozens? Well, actually, judging by the cover and the table o'contents, lets touch base with the teeniest hint of reality. A dozen. A dozen men. A dozen of the same contributors, spouting the same rhetoric, only this time the pages are conspicuously appointed with 40 point type, allowing only 20 lines, with approximately 5 words each. Most of the articles are typeset this way, 100 words to a page, in toxic metallic ink, indicating to you, dear wired one, that not only is the future fabulously wired and woman-free, it will also exist in a world unburdened by trees, as demonstrated by this shameless waste of paper. No resource, they seem to suggest, is too precious to waste, as they recite their tired rants to an adoring audience, preaching to the converted crew while in search of a clue.
Ultimately, WiReD is bound by no quotas or even interesting and compelling editorial policies. Their own self-perpetuated hypocrisy, "egalitarian democratic chatter completely zippy unhindered by social issues cauz we're all wired anyway" is a uniquely white male privilege, and their own badass business. What burns me is their failure to take advantage of the opportunity to do some progressive (it doesn't even have to be radical) publishing, and get some off center and crucial insights out there about technology . It needn't be rhetoric of technology demonized, naturalized or organic-ized, no, I happen to hate that muck. No, I'm just suggesting more than a cursory glance at the excellent out-there unheard of things women are thinking and doing with technology.
Time for a wireless magazine.
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