New Learning Technologies: Promises and Prospects for Women

Friday, March 21, 1997

Friday Morning

The conference opened Friday morning at 9:00 a.m. with a Keynote address from Heather Menzies. Heather is a writer and activist based in Ottawa who has given considerable time and thought to issues raised by new technology and its impact on women's lives. The full text of Heather's speech is included in the appendix of this report.

Woman-Centred Learning in the Digital Universe
Heather's presentation focused on the ownership and development new technology and on what purposes technology serves. It is extremely important for women to question the uses of any human development, particularly if it is created by a homogeneous minority of the population. Using Marshall McLuhan's sexist phraseology, Heather warns of new technology becoming, literally, "the extension of man," and, by extension, the retraction of women.

Most advances in technology have been developed by men who are English speaking, of European descent, non-disabled, and whose interests lie primarily in the profit-making private sector. This has resulted, for example, in the creation of text-messaging software and communications technology that is English-dependent. Some languages, such as French, do not transmit well and others, such as those based on another alphabet, do not transmit at all. It has also meant the elimination of many service-related jobs traditionally held by women, such as telephone reception and banking services, or the transfer of such work into the home where workers are employed on contract, constantly monitored through their telephone or computer, responsible for their own overhead and insurance and offered no benefits. Women who work in these conditions find they have little reason to go out during the day or be concerned about their physical appearance. A result, Heather cautions, is the disappearance of women as social beings.

In a "globally networked digital universe," Heather identifies the digitization of work and learning which also allows for de-institutionalization. The "machine" is all around us, in wires that run through the walls and floors, telephone lines that surround our homes and workplaces, and in transmissions from satellite to satellite over our heads. Less and less do we need to be in the same place to take the same course or work for the same company; less and less is there a need for humans to be involved at all. Instead of being used to extend what people already do, machine intelligence is replacing human intelligence, human judgement and involvement.

Heather described two models of learning and education: an ecological model based on the living world and its processes of communication and growth, and a transmission model based on production and measurable results. Though new technology has so far served the production model to a much greater extent, it can also be employed in an ecological model where women's ways of learning, of connecting, networking and communicating, are respected. The challenge is to ensure access not just to participation but to meaningful participation, and to evaluate the quality of the communication accessed.