A feminist perspective on technology and the future

Women have been left out of the mainstream of recorded technological development. Technology, increasingly so in industrialized societies, is male. This means that technology is supported by values of conquest and domination of nature, and pursuit of ‘objectivity’ and ‘rational efficiency’ to the point of irrationality. Integrated with prevailing structures of power, technology grows destructive of human beings and the earth. A feminist perspective can help us move from a hard technology society to a soft technology future in which values such as harmony with nature, subjectivity, co-operation, and non-exploitation become integral to technological development. Three avenues can be explored for ideas and models that can implement a feminist perspective for choices and issues facing our technological future. First, we need to look to the past, and to present pre-industrial cultures, to uncover women's role in technological development. Second, we must look at both the theory and experience of the current feminist movement. And third, we must look to feminist future visions that project alternative technologies and alternative modes of social and econo-political organization. The future technology we seek should be based on a dialectical vision of a creative, dynamic, humanistic technology.