Correlation
I noticed a correlation between my last two posts on the lack of women at Ajax Experience and the seeming lack of RDF or semantic web applications. Both are based on perennial questions: Where are the women in technology? Where are the semantic web applications?
Next time I'm asked either, I think I'll answer that the women in technology are off building RDF-based semantic web applications. Yeah, that's the ticket.
The women in technology are off building RDF-based semantic web applications. It works better than answering yes, there are women in technology but we're still not as visible as we should be, and yes there are semantic web and RDF-based applications, but they're still not as visible as they could be—both of which evidently don't play well in the dominant technical culture, because the same damn questions keep getting asked, again and again.
Comments
Shirley,
I think this problem comes down to one of two things: "cognitive dissonance" or digital autism :-)
We have a global financial crisis that is one of the great demonstrations of what happens when we don't connect the dots, or incorporate the implications of the dense collection of dots (i.e., global village), into our decision making.
Kingsley
Similar conversations in the edublogsphere. While I'd like to think women in education are off educating, some initial research points to linking habits of men vs. women, and genre (filter blogs vs. journal blogs). I'm not sure about the technology blog ratio of men to women. It seems there is a respectful number of women blogging vs. men (in the education area) but still, the A lister's are old white men. It's a duplication of societal norms online - an environment once touted as a great equalizer. Humph.