Part III: "Ethical and Feminist Concerns in an Electronic World"
The essays in this section address the very important issues of ethics and feminism in electronic spaces. Through media such as online discussions and photography and through website and print advertisement analysis, these authors bring to light the many realities, concerns, and possible outcomes that the portrayal of women and minorities in electronic communication may bring to the electronic world.
In his article, James Porter examines liberal individualism ethics prominent in Internet discussions through the heuristic of communitarian ethics, finding a gap between these principles and the actual problems that exist in various electronic environments. He warns that some online communities may need to be protected from individual acts of online violence, a future that may inhibit the free speech inherent in Internet culture so that Internet culture more closely parallels our offline culture of today, in which the privledged have the power and control.
Susan Romano also addresses the question of equity on the Internet as she examines the different positions taken up by women writers in online discourse, specifically in the topics they chose for one of Romano's online writing courses. She suggests that these women apply the "pedagogies of the self" in their writing, in which they must decide on which subject positions to occupy, thus perpetuating the inequities of women in the virtual world.
The articles by Cynthia Selfe, Gail E. Hawisher and Patricia A. Sullivan provide possible answers to Romano's queries as they examine the representation of women in our society. Their analyses of how women visually represent themselves on personal webpages and how others represent women online suggest how women control the electronic spaces of the Web. Hawisher and Sullivan charge that the online representation of women has done little but mirror the representation of women in offline society, though this situation ideally will change as more women become comfortable with their abilities on the web and with the freedom that accompanies these abilities. Selfe addresses how women are portrayed in advertisements for technology, though computers are seen as the unifying force through which the genders become equal. She also examines society's role in the presence and dispersion of technology throughout the world through her analysis of advertisements of technology companies, bringing into question the conventional and revised narratives of technology and global society.
The question of narrative is again addressed in Carolyn Guyer and Dianne Hagaman's essay "Into the Next Room," in which the authors argue that we either rely on established narratives (based on prior experiences) or create new narratives as we encounter new events, people, and contexts, applying the concept of different rooms to help us imagine the underlying structures and borders present when we consider these narratives. Guyer uses Hagaman's photographs to illustrate the way humans connect texts to images and how humans incorporate these into their understanding of an online space, specifically text-based MOOs, and how the understanding of these borders and connections can help us move from room to room, from narrative to narrative.
In her response to the articles in this section, Cynthia Haynes examines how the issues presented in these articles permeate throughout the section, connecting the assertions and ideas to each other through a sort of "virtual diffusion" involving ethics, technology, and feminism, all major concerns at the "end of the cold millenium."
- James Porter, "Liberal Individualism and Internet Policy: A Communitarian Critique"
- Susan Romano, "On Becoming a Woman: Pedagogies of the Self"
- Gail E. Hawisher and Patricia A. Sullivan, "Fleeting Images: Women Visually Writing the Web"
- Cynthia L. Selfe, "Lest We Think the Revolution is a Revolution: Images of Technology and the Nature of Change"
- Carolyn Guyer and Dianne Hagaman, "Into the Next Room"
- Cynthia Haynes, "Virtual Diffusion: Ethics, Techne, and Feminism at the End of the Cold Millenium"
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