Rematriating Tech. The Future Was Never Theirs Alone
Radical reading for women (and free-thinking men) with other ideas for tech's future.
TL;DR
- The dominant narrative in technology and economics often omits or undervalues women's contributions, creating a skewed history of invention and progress.
- 'Rematriating tech' involves recovering and centering excluded ways of knowing, creating, and organizing intelligence, rather than just making technology more inclusive.
- Historical figures like Adam Smith relied on significant familial care, often provided by women, which is frequently overlooked in popular accounts of their work.
- Napoleon Hill's 'Think and Grow Rich,' a foundational text of success culture, covertly reveals the significant, yet uncredited, influence of women on male achievement.
- Modern organizations are increasingly valuing 'soft skills' like communication and emotional intelligence, which have historically been associated with and performed by women.
- The AI industry often rebrands functions historically performed by women (e.g., caring, organizing) as advanced technology, without acknowledging their origins or compensating the originators.
- Alternative technological futures were imagined and built by women (e.g., Systers, ECHO, VNS Matrix, Archive of Our Own), demonstrating a different path for technological development focused on community and culture.
- True technological sovereignty requires understanding power dynamics, ownership, and control, and building new infrastructures rather than simply seeking inclusion in existing ones.
- The 'heroine's journey' of descent, re-membering, and return offers an alternative framework for understanding technological progress, emphasizing self-knowledge, integration of diverse knowledges, and building new worlds collaboratively.
- The concept of 'abundance' is proposed as a richer definition of wealth than mere financial accumulation, encompassing knowledge, relationships, wellbeing, and legacy.