Month: October 2018

Reflections on the People’s March: changing attitudes to Brexit

Tim 1It was a great experience marching through London yesterday along with around 699,999 other people in support of another vote on whether or nor Britain should leave the EU.  The organisers had originally expected some 100,000 marchers to be there, and  yet final estimates are that around 700,000 people participated. This was equivalent to more than 1% of the total British population, and it was the second largest march ever held in the UK (second only to the Stop the War march in 2003).  People from very different  political persuasions, of all ages, from many parts of the UK, and from varying ethnic backgrounds were all there. While I wish there had been greater ethnic diversity among the marchers (the majority seemed to be rather white and middle-aged) it was great to listen to the very diverse Chuka Umunna, Sadiq Khan, Vince Cable, Caroline Lucas and Anna Soubry all united in their support for the people to have a final say on whether or not Britain is to leave the European Union (EU).

The march wended its way from Park Lane, along Piccadilly, down St. James’s Street, and then along Pall Mall to Trafalgar Square, before turning into Whitehall,  and concluding at Parliament Square.  By the closing speeches the last marchers had only just left the start on Park Lane!  Throughout, the march was good humoured, but full of determination and passion.  It was peaceful, and although monitored from on high by several police helicopters, the visible police presence on the ground seemed light and friendly.  As the pictures below show, there were some great posters and costumes!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

I left with one overwhelming conclusion: we must all do very much more to understand why those still advocating Brexit do so.  Unless we understand them, we cannot change their minds and their opinions.  No-one on the march had any doubts about why we were all marching in support of a new referendum, and most also seemed to believe that we should remain in the EU.  However, very few seemed to understand why what we take as being so obvious was not understood by all those still wanting to leave the EU.  In short, those of us wanting to remain have to do very much more to convince those wanting to leave that they are wrong.  Part of the challenge is that those wanting to leave usually do so primarily on the basis of emotion, whereas those wanting to remain do so mainly in terms of logic.  This was very much brought home to me on the way back on the train when I had to put up with the abuse of some of the passengers, shouting out “Brexit is Brexit”.  No amount of logic would work; they couldn’t even say what Brexit actually meant.

Tim 2Prime Minister May is so profoundly wrong when she says that there will be no second referendum on the grounds that it would be a gross betrayal of our democracy.  This march was democracy at work.  Tbis is the voice of the people.  Whatever the outcome, politics in Britain is not going to be the same again after March next year.  It is time we create new structures through which elected officials truly serve the people rather than their own self-interests.

The gendered language of ICTs and ICT4D

I have long pondered about writing on the gendering of language in the field of ICT for Development (ICT4D), but have always hesitated because of the sensitivity of the subject matter.  However, I feel that the time is now right to do so following the recent launch of our initiative designed to change the attitudes and behaviours of men in the ICT/tech sector (TEQtogether).  This post may offend some people, but I hope not.  It is an issue that needs addressing if we are truly to grapple with the complexities of gender in ICT4D.

The way we use language both expresses our underlying cognition of the world, and also shapes that world, especially in the minds of those who read or hear us.  My observation is that in the ICT field most writers and practitioners have been blind to this gendering of language, and thus perpetuate a male-dominated conceptualisation of ICT4D.  Four very different examples can be used to highlight this:

  • The gendering of electronic parts. For a very considerable time, electronic parts have been gendered.  Take, for example, male and female connectors.  This is summarised graphically in the populist but communal Wikipedia entry on the subject: “In electrical and mechanical trades and manufacturing, each half of a pair of mating connectors or fasteners is conventionally assigned the designation male or female. The “female” connector is generally a receptacle that receives and holds the “male” connector … The assignment is a direct analogy with genitalia and heterosexual sex; the part bearing one or more protrusions, or which fits inside the other, being designated male in contrast to the part containing the corresponding indentations, or fitting outside the other, being designated female. Extension of the analogy results in the verb to mate being used to describe the process of connecting two corresponding parts together”.  Not only are different electronic parts gendered, but such gendering leads to an association with heterosexual intercourse – mating.  Interestingly, in digital systems, it is usually the male part that is seen as being “active”: keyboards and mice (male) are the active elements “plugged into” a female socket in a computer.  Yet, in reality it is the processing IMG_3261power of the computer (perhaps female) that is actually most valued.  Moreover, the use of USB “sticks”, often phallic in shape, can be seen as a clear example of this male/female gendering associated with heterosexual sex.  The use of such sticks to infect computers with viruses can also, for example, be likened to the spread of sexually transmitted diseases in humans.  The shift away from the use of such male and female connectors to the increasingly common use of WiFi and Bluetooth can in turn perhaps be seen as one way through which this gendering might be being broken down, although much more research needs to be done to explore the gendering of all aspects of digital technologies.
  • The use of language in ICT4D.  Far too often the language associated with the use of technology in international development carries with it subconscious, and (hopefully) usually unintended, meanings.  In the light of the above discussion, the DIGITAL-IN-2018-003-INTERNET-PENETRATION-MAP-V1.00widely used term “Internet penetration” is, for example, hugely problematic.  The “desire” to increase Internet penetration in poorer parts of the world can thus be interpreted as a largely male, north American and European wish sexually to “penetrate” and “conquer” weaker female countries and cultures.  Whereas normally countries are “seduced” into accepting such Internet penetration, the forceful and violent approach sometimes adopted can be akin to rape, an analogy that is occasionally applied to the entire process of imperialism and its successor international development when considered to be exploitative of “weaker” countries or economies.  The implication of this is  not only that great care is needed in the choice of particular words or phrases, but also that the complex subconscious and gendered structures that underlie our understanding of technology and development need to be better understood.   For those who think this too extreme a view, why don’t we just talk about the spread of the Internet, or Internet distribution?
  • Digital technologies represented by male nouns. At a rather different level, languages that differentiate between male and female nouns often consider ICTs to be male.  Thus, a computer is un ordinateur in French, ein Computer in German, un computer in Italian and un ordenador in Spanish.  Likewise a mobile phone is un téléphone portable in French, ein Handy in German, un cellurlare in Italian, and un celular in Spanish.  Not all ICTs are male (it is, for example, une micropuce for a microchip in French), but it seems that in languages derived from Latin the majority are.  The implications of this for the mental construction of technologies in the minds of different cultures are profound.
  • Computer code: bits and qubits.  Computer code is usually based on a binary number system in which there are only two possible states, off and on, usually represented by 0 and 1.  Binary codes assign patterns of binary digits (or bits) to any character or instruction, and data are encoded into bit strings.  The notions of male and female are similarly a binary distinction.  However, it is now increasingly realised that such a simple binary division of gender and sexuality is inappropriate.  The recognition of LGBTIQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and questioning) identities challenges the traditional notions of binary distinctions that have long held sway in scientific thinking.  In particular, it can be seen as being closely isomorphic with many concepts of quantum computing, most notably the use of quantum bits (qubits) that can be in superpositions of states, in which any quantum states can be superposed (added together) to produce another valid quantum state.  This fluidity of gender, paralleling new notions in quantum computing, is particularly exciting, and may be one way through which the traditional maleness of ICTs and digital technologies may be fragmented.

These are but four examples of how the language of ICTs can be seen to have been traditionally gendered. They also point to some potential ways through which such gendering might be fragmented, or perhaps changed.  For some this will be unimportant, but let me challenge them.  If a largely male ICT or digital world is being constructed in part through the way that it is being spoken about (even by women), is it surprising that it is difficult to engage and involve women in the tech sector?  If we want to encourage more women into the  sector, for all the undoubted skills and benefits that they can bring, then surely we can all rethink our use of language to make the world of ICT4D less male dominated.

Finally, it is good to see that some of these issues are now being considered seriously by academics in a range of fields.  For those interested in exploring some of these ideas further, I would strongly recommend that they also read papers on gendering robots such as:

See also the following interesting article from a UK civil service (Parliamentary Digital Service) perspective on gender and language:

And thanks to Serge Stinckwich for sharing this interesting link from the BBC:

 

Why we shouldn’t use terms such as “bridging the digital divide” or “digital leapfrogging”

Writing a short encyclopedia entry for a revised edition of Elsevier’s International Encyclopedia of Human Geography has provided me with an opportunity to write very succinctly about something dear to my heart – why we should not use terms such as “bridging the digital divide” and “digital leapfrogging”.  These are part of the problem and not of the solution.  Our use of language really matters.  So, here is the draft:

“The latest technologies are almost always designed for advanced markets and the rich who live in them, and are well beyond the means of the poorest.  Hence, if these technologies do indeed have benefits associated with them, these will accrue disproportionately to the rich.  Poor countries and people are either left to pick up the scraps of remaining older technologies, or have to purchase inferior products at the lower end of the market.  The Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence are going to be used in the so-called Smart Cities of the developed world long before they are used at all widely in remote rural villages in Africa or Asia; big data are going to be used by large corporations with the expertise to analyse them, long before they are understood, let alone, used by people in the poorest countries of the world.

This is why terms such as “bridging the digital divide” or “digital leapfrogging”, although widely used, are so inappropriate.  When the rich are designing and implementing technologies in their own interests, to move them further ahead of their competitors, the gap or divide between rich and poor becomes yet more difficult to reduce, or bridge; the horizon is always moving further and further into the distance…  Moreover, the notion of a “divide” generally implies a binary divide, as in the gender divide, whereas in reality it is complex and multifaceted; it is not one divide, but many. The notion of leapfrogging is also problematic, since it implies benefiting from someone else; using a person’s back to lever an advantage ahead of them.  Whilst poor countries have indeed not had to spend their limited resources on outdated technologies, such as copper cable for telecommunications, they generally cannot afford the latest generation of ICTs.  If anything, rich countries are leapfrogging ahead of the poor, by benefiting from the expanded market and lower labour costs that they provide.  The low rates of taxation paid by US corporations such as Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon from the profits generated in poorer countries, are but one instance of such practices…”.