Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!agate!zwicky@pterodactyl.cis.ohio-state.edu From: zwicky@pterodactyl.cis.ohio-state.edu (Elizabeth D. Zwicky) Newsgroups: comp.society.women Subject: Re: Women Wizards? Message-ID: <11839@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> Date: 8 Jul 88 14:41:15 GMT References: <11796@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> Sender: usenet@agate.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: The Ohio State University Dept of Computer and Information Science Lines: 43 Approved: skyler@violet.berkeley.edu (Moderator -- Trish Roberts) Comments-to: comp-women-request@cs.purdue.edu Submissions-to: comp-women@cs.purdue.edu In article <11796@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> skyler@violet.berkeley.edu writes: >I think that one thing which may well prevent women from becoming >wizards is purely and simply technophobia. >My mother is _convinced_ that she cannot handle any equipment more >complicated than a toaster oven. (This, from a woman who was working >at her father's lab using an electron microscope in the forties.) She >simply won't use the stereo unless someone else is around to >turn it on for her. It doesn't matter that all she has to do is push >one button--the fact that it has so many buttons completely intimidates >her. There's more than one sort of technophobia being considered here. I have problems with the stereo at home - partly intimidation, and partly in its nature, since there are some complicated dependencies to remember, and besides you have to remember that the CD player is on the button marked VCR. On the other hand, I certainly pass for a wizard around here. Hell, I can even do strange things with RS-232 cables (how many of you have hooked up a printer with paperclips?). Knowing how a printer works has not made me any more able to deal with the telephone system, or the stereo system, or my car. Similarly, my mother could use a PC a little, but not play a cassette tape. She didn't like word processing, but she found it less intimidating than the stereo, because it made more sense. Partly this has to do with computer interfaces. You can put a tape in my car cassette player backwards (I know, I did it and it was a near thing whether we were ever going to get it out again), but you can't do the same with our quarter-inch tape drives. Guess which one makes me more nervous? The person who I know who is most scared of computers is a man, and one who tinkers with lots of technological marvels. He doesn't think of a computer as a piece of hardware; he sees it as some sort of demon familiar. After a great deal of encouragement, he still has the classic beginner's fear that he's going to hit the wrong key and make the computer explode. This from a person who plays with cars, which are more expensive than PCs and full of flammable liquids. A lot of women are afraid of computers, but I don't think it's the same as being afraid of cars and stereo systems. Elizabeth