The Nerdette

A while ago Newsweek ran an article on a new breed of nerd: the nerdette. The nerdette is a girl nerd. These nerd girls are a growing group of young women who make the term nerd their own. They subvert the negative stereotype of the nerd either by not seeing it as derogative at all or by creating a new, more feminine version of the nerd. Instead of being social outsiders, they are social, enjoy networking and are often fashionable and stylish. And counter the stereotype of the nerd, they are not male. The male image of the geek, nerd or hacker seems to be outdated with this young generation of women who have grown up with new technologies. These young women take technology by storm whereas the few women who broke the glass ceiling in the tech industry - like Meg Whitman or Carly Fiorina - are slowing exiting as a recent article lamented. However there seem to be many women in the starting blocks to take on leading positions in technology if we are to believe Business Week or USA Today.

From academic research we know that what I have called ‘reprogram stereotypes’ is one way of overcoming stereotypes. Reprogramming stereotypes means to give them a different meaning. This meaning should not be a radical departure from the original meaning but a playful reinterpretation. This is exactly what the term nerdette does. It uses the stereotype of the nerd giving it a new meaning which is that women can be nerds too. Instead of conforming to the masculine undertones of what it means to be a nerd, being a nerdette gives you license to be feminine. The article mentions things like having been a cheerleader or wearing pink pumps as examples of this femininity. These are traditional qualifiers for being feminine. It shows that women do not have to be masculine to be a nerd/ette and can endorse traditional feminine attributes. However these attributes are feminine stereotypes in themselves.

The problem with stereotypes is that it restricts who can count as a certain type of person. Traditional nerds were defined on the idea that they are not women and therefore this definition excluded women from being nerds. The nerdette definition now includes women but only those who fulfill traditional expectations about femininity like being a cheerleader or liking pink heels. Nothing wrong with this per se, but many women might not want to use these classifiers of femininity - and might prefer flat shoes.

I also see another problem with this over-feminisation. This over-feminisation goes hand in hand with certain expectations of being sexy and available to men (this piece seems to suggest that nerd girls are particularly appealing to certain men and their main characteristic it to be beautiful, to wear glasses and to attend Star Trek conventions –Seven of Nine is of course their role model). However we know that if a woman is too sexy in the workplace, she generally is not seen as competent. Sexualising being nerd might therefore not necessarily be a beneficial subversion of a stereotype.

However the Newsweek article suggests that most of these nerdettes do not rely on over-feminisation but rather combine being a nerd with being a woman as part of who they feel there are. Being a nerd is now chic. At least to be a female nerd.

Honey I shrunk the Mac

My Asus EEE. I love it. Its cute. Lilliputian. Compact. And most importantly it fits perfectly into my handbag. The Asus EEE has taken the market by storm (PC Pro, Gizmodo). I've already put my order in for the next upgrade which will arrive tomorrow (eee 901 with increased storage and CPU upgrade). Even Dell have recognized that the micro-laptop is the next big - their Dell E series looks like a flattering imitation of the original EEE. Dell seems to have gone all out for copying asus, even down to bundling a Linux operating system instead of Microsoft Windows which has been a compulsory feature of just about every Dell sold in the last ten years. There's even a new name for this kind of dinky laptop: "mobile internet device" or (MID).

But not everybody loves these new gadgets: One female friend of mine claimed that she loved it, however she told me "at the end of the day, still not a mac." I explained that it was a 10th of the price of a Mac and not ten times inferior from a performance and usability perspective. But what ever I said, I could not convince Sarah. To quote Carrie Bradshaw,

"this was not about logic, it was about LOVE."

(cheesy quote I know but reflective of the whole film)

"My Baby is old now. Arthritis has worked her spine for a while, but she is still going strong. Her memory is remarkably good considering all the strange things I have introduced her to. I love my Baby.. I can’t be mad at her. When her metallic voice speaks out “It Is _Not_ My Fault…” all I can say is: “I know, Baby… I know. I gave you a bad command, and I’m sorry. Let’s try again.”

Whilst I agree with neurologists, people are approx 20% rational and 80% emotional, I am left feeling that the love for Apple seems misplaced when there are so many better or equitable products on the market. But perhaps that's part of the joy of owning the EEE - the technology you buy makes a statement.

With the near ubiquity of Apple's products in the creative industries, these high-end laptops are no longer about "Thinking Different" and are more a sign of conformity to cultural norms, wheras carrying around an unusual laptop, especially one which runs entirely different software marks you as an outsider. Those rival icons of computing, the Thinkpad and the Powerbook (or Mac Book) represent your tech-tribal affiliation.

I feel emotional about my Asus. I feel emotional about my Tangent Quattro Internet radio. I feel emotional about my Blackberry. But show me a better, cooler, smaller, cheaper, more useful product and I will be promiscuous. With technology changing so fast, can we afford to be loyal to one particular brand. And quite frankly is any brand (even Apple) brand deserving of such unconditional love?

Facebook Fatigue

Recent research from the Future Foundation, presented at the Women & Technology seminar shows that whilst the frequency of Internet usage of men and women is similar, women & men use the internet for different things in different ways. For example, women are more likely to have uploaded photos, videos or music to a web-site. Women are more likely to have created a personal blog. Women are more likely to have created and updated a personal profile on a social networking site.

According to the Future Foundation, women use a social networking site on average 3 times a week (compared to 3.2 times amongst their male counterpart). Whereas men are more likely to consider “making my opinion heard”, “sharing views” and “displaying personal creativity” key reasons for social networking, women are more likely to use the sites to form communities and listen to the views of other women. My own experience of Facebook echoes this. At first, I loved it. I discovered that I could get in touch with people that I had lost contact with. I enjoyed adding them to my growing friend list (which made me feel popular) and discover what they were up to. For a while I updated my profile religiously and I imagined that my contacts would be curious about what I was up to.

However, as my friend-list grows I found myself overwhelmed by updates from my modest list of friends. I began to realise that there is a very good reason I do not keep in regular contact with the extended cloud of contacts with whom facebook shares my updates. The truth is that I'm not that all that curious about their lives and nor are they with mine otherwise we would have never have lost contact in the first place. Most of the 'status updates' consist of mundane activities of people I barely know any more. Consequently the more friends I add, the less valuable Facebook becomes. 

Cory Doctrow was one of the first to debate the diminishing value of social networking: The more people get involved in a social network, the more users are likely to encounter people they'd rather avoid. And whilst it may be socially awkward to refuse to add someone to your friends list, deleting them from your friend-list is practically a declaration of war. The problem seems to be that Facebook treats a mundane update like 'watching TV' with the same degree of importance as 'Getting married'. Likewise it cannot distinguish between my closest friends and people I've not seen since I was a child but thought it would be fun to add to Facebook.

My own usage of Facebook has declined rapidly after an initial bubble of enthusiasm. I no longer feel a desire to monitor my friends' updates. The barrage of mostly meaningless email solicitations from 3rd party plug-ins. In Cory's words, the social network has transformed into something which has "the social graces of a nose-picking, hyperactive six-year-old, standing at the threshold of your attention and chanting, "I know something, I know something, I know something, won't tell you what it is!" Obviously the social networks need to find a balance between 3rd party added-value and the proliferating nuisance from third-party extensions. That should be easy enough and a good start, but there is a much bigger problem to solve: In order to make the networks more appealing to women, companies and brands need to find a way to stay relevant post that initial bubble. I'd like to see a social network which can recognize that not all friends are created equal.