Selfe Summary/Claim

A)In the essay, Lest We Think the Revolution is a Revolution by Cynthia L. Selfe, she talks about how computers and technology is leading to big changes. Americans believe that technological change leads to productive social change and that hopefully computers will make the world a better place. She mainly focuses on how commercial images about technology complicate and distort meanings. For example, she starts off with the myth or narrative called the “Global Village” and the “Electronic colony” (Selfe 294), which discusses about how Americans believe we can, through technology, bind everyone in the world together regardless of ethnicity, race, or location. But the problem is even though we think this is what happens, the end result ends up to be that we are “not simple members of this electronically constituted village, but rather as discoverers of the village…and even colonizers of its exotic people”(Selfe 295). What Selfe is trying to say is that even though we would like to have a global place where no rankings exist, there would inevitable happen. We, in fact, are more separated from other inhabitants and even worse, we aren’t shown at all in images showing this “Global Village”. Americans are using images to sell another piece of technology. Also in some images, showing workers in the South Africa and Dresden, demonstrate how technology is “fixing” their problems by making quick fixes, but the matter of fact is that technology can’t eliminate hunger, pain, suffering or war in our lives. It’s not the solution for everything and it may actually be a contributing problem. The second narrative is “Land of Equal Opportunity” and “Land of Difference” which is the myth that the internet or computer use is open to everybody regardless of color, class, or connection. It can relate to the story of how America was claimed from the wilderness and how were incredibly gained democracy from it and individualism. But this is just an American tale also known as the Land of Equal Opportunity narrative and it shows typical stereotypes of the fifties. So in result, America being the Land of Opportunity is really one for some people. Ads need to show everyone regardless of differences and this is not shown through them. The third and last narrative in this society is “The Un-gendered Utopia” and “The Same Old Gendered Stuff”. The myth is that technology will create a utopic world despite gender, but women use computers less than males do. For example, fewer women go into the more advanced fields of computer science than males. Computers then, in fact, are creating more social formations that include sexism, classism, and racism. Selfe mentions Andrea Dworkins and how she says we need to analyze images that give us false impressions of gender and computers. We tend to lean on the old gendered stereotypes of the fifties where women are known as the wife, mother, as seductress, as lover, or secretaries, executive assistants, or local employees. Even men are given roles with computers such as bosses, leaders, or decision makers. All these familiar roles are played in our everyday lives and even though it is said that gender doesn’t have a influence in technology, that Is absolutely untrue. We can’t change our way of thinking because it’s too hard for us, Americans. We just want to stay with our old beliefs and traditions. Un-gendered Utopia suggests that we can all have an equal opportunity apart from gender, race, etc. yet women and men are constantly singled out. We have to work at making a sexist environment and make it a place where people are free to be whomever. In conclusion, changes are hard to make, but it’s our responsibility to make a change especially for educators.

B)1st claim: “That computers and that computer-supported environments will help us create a utopic world in which gender is not a predictor of success or a constraint for interaction with the world”(Selfe 305). Selfe claims that Americans think this, but it is entirely the opposite. Less women use computers than males and even more men enter the advanced fields of computer science. Computer games are still designed for boys and computer commercials are aimed for males.

2nd Claim: “That America is the land of opportunity only for some people” (Selfe 304). Women’s suffrage, the history of slavery and deaf education, immigration, and labor unions, the differential school graduation rate for blacks and whites and Hispanics, the fact that there has never been a woman president, or poverty are just some examples of how this opportunity is only for fortunate groups in our society and in America