Spender, Dale. Nattering on the Net. Toronto: Garamond Press, 1996.

 

Spender's basic premise is that the Internet represents a revolution in communications technology which parallels the development of the printing press in terms of social impact and change. She traces the history of print culture, and shows the similarities between it and the emerging history of the Net.

Spender's analogy, though useful, also leads to one of the main theoretical flaws of the book. She argues that the print information revolution is similar to the information technology revolution. One significant way in which the two are alike, proposes Spender, is the resistance against both print and information technology, in that many of the objections raised by manuscript owners and creators are similar to those raised by opponents of information culture. However, Spender assigns little validity to the objections to information technology, insisting instead that criticisms of infotech are merely resistance to a new medium, and that to refuse to be swept up in the flow of technoculture is to be left behind. While she acknowledges that there will be some losses, as in the case of the illuminated manuscripts, she feels that the gains of the so-called information revolution will outweigh the losses.

Spender proposes that the "information revolution" will change the way in which reading is done. Comparing print reading skills to early oral and recitation skills, she points out that new technologies will lead to new ways to ingest and process information. Whereas print literacy depended mainly on symbolic decoding of alphabetic characters, information literacy depends much more on decoding visual imagery and nonlinear sequences.

Spender argues that authorship, as in a single person creating a work of intellectual property which is theirs to distribute, will come to have no meaning in the new medium, as more and more people are able to publish their work online with no intermediary. Spender feels that authorship and intellectual property will come to have no meaning. Considering that she places this in a historical context, it is interesting that she is so uncritical about this development, since the process of women coming to voice has traditionally been so significant from a political and personal point of view. Does erasing the speaking subject and her work really represent progress for those whose voices have traditionally been marginalized? Does the "death of the author" mean democratic subjectivity for all, or merely heteroglossic chaos?

The education system, based as it is on print, is inadequate to address the knowledge and knowledge acquisition needs of the information generation. Spender believes that print culture lends itself to envisioning knowledge as a given, stable, canonical body that can be, with some finality, "known" and assimilated, whereas information acquired through use of technology requires much more "doing" than "knowing". This model is reminiscent of the new kinds of subjectivity proposed by Lorraine Code, in that knowledge is not gained through reflection and observation in isolation, but rather by interacting with things and others in the world. Furthermore, all students can be teachers and knowledge makers, and the old hierarchies of "knowers" and "learners" will be broken down.

With regard to the question of public access to technology, Spender feels that this is where libraries can play an important role. No longer repositories for tomes of knowledge, libraries as Spender envisions them are dynamic centres for knowledge production and technological interaction. Librarians have an active role to play in shaping the information paradigm, and as such, Spender notes, we should be observant of what systems of classification are being developed.

Chapter 7, "Women, Power, and Cyberspace" is where Spender at last engages in some criticism of the medium. She notes that it is of fundamental importance that women participate fully in the information revolution. However, her critique remains largely a liberal feminist one, in that she sees the solution as more female involvement. This, of course, is not a problematic goal in and of itself, but as critics of liberal feminism have pointed out, simple giving women equal opportunity does not necessarily guarantee an equal voice. Still, her historical analysis is useful here, showing how women's reticence to use technology is situated in a larger context of exclusion of women from science/technology. Here she works with Turkle's research about women/girls and computer use, and notes how women's participation in and use of certain kinds of technologies is incompatible with definitions of women (a familiar theme in Code: the intersection of gender binaries with epistemological styles). Furthermore, Spender points out problems in the technological education of girls and boys which contributes further to women's lesser participation.

One interesting tactic Spender uses is to debunk the idea that women are not "naturally" suited to machine use, by describing the history of the telephone and its enthusiastic adoption by women as a communications technology. Here, she uses the same critical technique as Sadie Plant to illustrate the fallacy of women's "natural" reticence about technology: namely, that women can and have been proficient and confident with technology use. Thus the social context of technology is what impedes women's participation, not the actual technology itself. Spender warns against focusing only on "tension and exclusion" when examining women and technology, and that preoccupation with why women aren't measuring up tends to create a deficit model which looks for the problem in women themselves.

A significant problem for women online, according to Spender, is the intersection of gendered power and discourse. As Herring has also noted, psychological threat and intimidation through discourse is one of the major impediments to women's full participation. This is where I perceive an inconsistency in Spender's argument: on the one hand, she feels that theoretically, the internet can be a site of democratic pluralism; on the other hand, the reality clearly shows that the same old power dynamics apply, and in some cases are even worse. Harassment which would never happen in person occurs frequently online. Women are verbally abused and silenced. I don't feel that Spender sufficiently problematizes this gap between utopic theory and reality. Is erasing the author, for example, the solution in a context where women are barely able to assert any kind of subjectivity at all? Is, as other feminist theorists have pointed out, a plural or decentred self a luxury only available to those whose self and subjectivity were never in question? In spite of this culture of harassment and silencing, a strong freedom of speech ethic persists online, which reflects the value system of its privileged male creators. Yet, as Spender points out, these same champions of free speech are very uncomfortable with feminist criticism about what is being said. Spender argues that harassment and silencing (here she includes pornography) should be seen not as idiosyncrasies of a free society, but rather deliberate "terrorist tactics" which are aimed at excluding women from a predominantly male space. Futhermore, despite assertions of cyberspace as an identity-neutral territory, Spender sees strong indications that users are figuring out new ways to mark (and, hence, value) gender and race online.

However, Spender does feel that the Net can be a powerfully useful place for women to be, despite obstacles. She feels that the most significant use of the Net for women is as a networking tool.