Real Women and Men Like Technology

Well, I was planning to discuss why we don't need MAC addresses anymore, but then I ran across this little google search on "women don't like technology" and I was intrigued enough to check it out. Not surprisingly, even a small datacenter like TeleMuse Networks checks out some of the more interesting keyword searches once in a while.

While I certainly wasn't surprised that the Lynne's Blog entry entitled Why Women Don't Like IT? Ed Frauenheim of CNET and Anthro 101 is right up there on page one, I was bemused to find the rest of the entries didn't seem to have much to do with women and technology and what they think of it. In fact, except for the gizmodo reference to nagging robots, fluff about sex, health and humor (well, maybe humor fits) abounds. The whole page is singularly notable for its absence of relevence.

But wait - what if we change "women" to "men" and do another google search on "men don't like technology"? Will there be a marked difference in the results, with in-depth technology discussions instead of the frivolous stuff we see in the women's popularity domain? Are men taken more seriously than women in the world of Internet inquiry?

There is one discussion of "real men" and PASCAL, as in they shouldn't use it, with which incidentally I heartily agree - at one of those Silicon Valley get-togethers we have to honor Herr Professor Wirth, my husband laughingly whispered to me to not beat up on the old man for the sin of creating PASCAL as he would be "punished in the next life sufficiently". And there is a discussion of Windows, which "real men" don't use if they can use Unix. But aside from these few relevent references the listings again seem notably devoid of any discussion of men's feelings about technology. This is very odd, because I hear the guys I work with vent their feelings about technology all the time. "We've got to get the latest [cellphone, disk drive, processor, OS, app, camera, player...] immediately, because it has [more features, more memory, more pixels, more cycles] and less [wait states, power, sheer bulk] and this old stuff is [crap, obsolete, crap, broken (because I just broke it)]. Whatever else you can say, men are never neutral about technology.

So what do they talk about on page one of google? Well, there's sex again, and health (both metrosexual spa fun and avoidance of doctors), and humor. Oh, there's also creepy stuff about myspace that I'd rather not talk about.

So women, don't feel bad. It doesn't matter who you are or what you want to know in the world of Internet inquiry - all that matters is that you'll be given lots of sex, health, and humor references to mortify and entertain you. If it makes you a bit more ignorant, disoriented, and distracted from your original question, remember - you can't trust everything you read on the 'net! :-)