The Obama Administration and Technology

I am so excited to see what Obama does to revolutionize the way technology is used, not only in our government, but in our interactions with it too.

He wants to appoint our very first Chief Technology Officer, who will "improve the exchange of information between the federal government and citizens." This is so crucial, because we as a nation are becoming increasingly comfortable with our computers and the Internet - and the government should take advantage of that. Web sites like Facebook and MySpace show that connecting with people over the Internet is a worthwhile, highly popular, and groundbreaking endeavor. For example, the nation- and world-wide Proposition 8 protests were organized by Join the Impact, which formed on November 5, 2008. Three days later, almost entirely online, 49 states organized protests in 80 cities. And more than one million people actually showed up. Imagine - just imagine - what this could mean for our government provided similar ways to begin conversations about laws, elections, court decisions, appointments and more, so that our representatives could see it, could hear us as individuals. Obama hasn't even been inaugurated yet, and he's already begun a conversation.

And conversation is only truly possible if net neutrality is maintained and protected. Obama's Technology Agenda promises that "Obama will strengthen privacy protections for the digital age and will harness the power of technology to hold government and business accountable for violations of personal privacy." The Mac Observer says - and I agree - that that is "the strongest and most specific statement of support for [privacy] to have come from Washington in decades, if not ever." And, regarding sensitive material inappropriate for children - say, porn - Obama's agenda says that it will develop ways for parents to protect their children from it, which implies that such material will not be outlawed or suppressed.

However, net neutrality is irrelevant to those without quality Internet access in the first place. Obama wants to bring broadband Internet to every household, like past Presidents did with water, electricity, and telephone service. It's about damn time.

Brian Solis points out that there is no where yet for people to tell Obama why he did not receive their votes. He says that "if Obama [could] reach, listen to, and embrace the 46% who voted against him, he might be able to run a truly democratic term." This idea is truly astounding, and yet why hasn't it been done earlier? This is true bipartisanship. But Solis is right - if Obama truly wants to be their President too, then he needs to open up avenues for dissent.

But there are some problems to overcome. Josh Bernoff brings up the problem of scale: "how do you deal with 10,000 suggestions? How do you learn from them? How do you manage them?" And then he offers some suggestions. My favorite is handing moderation and management over to the electorate, Wikipedia-style.

Some other nuggets:

• Bush stopped using e-mail the day of his inauguration.
• Obama will be the first President in history to keep a laptop on the Oval Office desk.
• Obama's Facebook page had 3 million fans to McCain's 618,000.
• Comparing to McCain's 330, the Obama campaign published 1,800 YouTube videos, summed up to 110 million views.

Now this is progress.

WebDevs Vote Obama

I came to a stunning realization. Open up John McCain's website and Barack Obama's website.

Now. Compare address bars for both candidate's websites. See it?

McCain uses Microsoft's ASP.NET; Obama uses PHP.

If that doesn't secure your vote, I don't know what will.

Sexism in the World of Warcraft

Okay, okay. Yes, I play the damn game. ("Oooh oooh what do you play, what do you play?") I play a night elf ("awwwwwww :(") holy priest named Casperne on the Kul Tiras sever, with a bunch of nerds that line up under the banner of Lexington.

There is quite a bit of sexism floating around the world. Of Warcraft. (Sorry, had to do it.) Not only are the users themselves rather sexist, but the designers, at least, are too.

The foremost thing to discuss is, of course, the playerbase. Due to WoW's infamy, its playerbase could not be contained to a single demographic: rich and poor, young and old (12-70, I'd guess, averaging around 20), male and female, gay and straight, mature and immature, introverted and extroverted, educated and uneducated, right and left (-winged and -handed). Thus, you often have the pleasure of playing with really idiotic, immature people. Conclusion: no wonder there's misogyny abound. The best example is probably the oft-declared, "Girls don't play WoW!" or "There aren't any girls on the Internet!" Obviously, this is incorrect, and, in fact, most people say it knowing that it is, and I guess that's supposed to make it funny. Similar to "Oooh, don't hurt me, feminist-man-hating lady!" It's just not funny anymore.

There is, however, one good thing regarding gender that WoW embraces: you can play whatever gender you want. There are a lot of men that play female characters, and they aren't ashamed of it. (Compare to Ragnarok Online, where, when you create an account to start playing, you choose your gender, and then you can only play characters of the matching gender.) There are only two major reasons for this that I know of so far. Some of these players admit that they just like to see their female character's boobs jiggle when they run (and similar reasons), while others simply don't like the male character models. There is one other reason, and I've only heard my boyfriend give this reason so far: some identify better with females in real life, thus find it natural to play a female character. I have no idea how common this reason is. Only a handful of times have I ever heard someone use the choice to play the opposite gender as ammunition in an argument. It's generally a pretty accepted thing to do.

But when the developers themselves program misogyny right into the game, I tend to get a little annoyed. For example, this is my human female paladin:



Pretty skimpy, huh? Here's what this outfit looks like on a human male:



Surprised? I'm not either. The guy doesn't even have to have an uncomfortable wedgie all the time. It would have been pretty simple to just have the armor cover up the same amount of skin. This lends more to the sexist idea that the female body is community property and that women exist as eye candy.

Character models' body types deserve to be pointed out. The female human body is fairly proportioned, in my opinion. Her waist isn't itty-bitty, her thighs are healthy, and her boobs are, though ample, not enormous. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the male body is the truly unfair one: he really is packing, to an unrealistic degree. (And I just noticed that his legs appear to be shaved! Nutty.) When the blood elf race was announced as the new horde race for the expansion, I was ecstatic to find out that the male blood elf was not packing huge muscles. He was skinny, almost frail, and certainly feminine. Personally, I find such a body type to be extremely attractive. But Blizzard's average player doesn't, and after a lot of homophobic clamoring, Blizzard beefed up the model to the same levels as the male human, and it hasn't changed since.

As far as being a woman playing the game among males goes, I've been pretty pleased. I have never been talked down to because I'm a female and I don't know anything. No one has ever apparently disagreed with me because I'm female. My knowledge of how to play my class has never been questioned because of the fact that I'm female. In fact, I get a lot more respect for playing my class well in this game than I do for getting good grades in my tech classes at school. Men appreciate my work in the game more than they do in class. I can't begin to theorize why this might be true. In fact, this is merely anecdotal; it might not be true. It might simply be easier for my teammates to communicate respect to me over the Internet than it is in real life.

You might be surprised that those are the only examples I came up with. I chose to leave out the more "mundane" examples of misogyny (instances are divided into "5-man" and "25-man" dungeons, for example, instead of "5-person" and "25-person"), because they mostly come from the playerbase, not the developers themselves. And again, there really shouldn't be much surprise about the playerbase being misogynist. On top of that, the truth is that I play this game for much the same reason others do: to escape. I tend to try very hard to ignore misogyny in WoW because I'm trying to have fun here. And, as Shakes has wisely said, if I were dedicated to purposefully finding and calling out misogyny everywhere, I would be a very unhappy woman indeed.

Doubt not that I will continue to post examples of misogyny in WoW as I come accross them, even the mundane ones.