The Channel9 Show WM_IN

The Channel9 Show WM_IN is “a show about diversity.” And what I am putting in quotes should be said with a valley girl accent—and by the time you get to the end of the phrase the tone of your voice should curl up into the sound of a question. Thank the Lord Microsoft is not producing a show for “minorities” with strong African features. My egocentrism is under enough control to see past my complexion and gender to quickly come to the conclusion that the “minority” tech show would not be much different from the WM_IN show. All you have to do is take out the word “woman” and insert the word “minority.”

In the rasx() context, the best tech show featuring women and minorities is indigital. My second-place winner is NerdTV. (The last two sentences appear with full knowledge of the existence of on10.net and bwana.org.) At least with these shows there is no forced farce of a question like, “I don’t understand. Why are there so few women in technology?” This is another little existential doggy bag kind of a question—just hanging out in space free from historical context. Little babies don’t care where the cookies came from—all they see are cookies. So these “sensitive” corporate shows hitting all of the “tough issues” look like children’s television to me. “Why are there so few women in technology?” In the rasx() context, the politically-correct, condescending, kiddie answer to the question is this:

Technology in this culture is largely influenced by the “military industrial complex” President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us about… We all should know that the Internet itself came from a military project. In fact (insert disarming giggle here), there this great BBC series called Connections 1 by James Burke that details how most of the technology we in the West are proud of—even something as mundane as can goods—came from solving the myriad of problems related to warfare on massive scale—total war. It should not be a surprise that many of the problems women have had in the military with army officers can come from grade school teachers and corporate officers.

The ostracizing answer without regard to the politics of social climbing is this:

Women in the West live in patriarchal cultures. It would not be difficult to discover that women are directed toward certain social roles under patriarchy that have nothing to do with the mentality required for technical mastery. The women who do have technical prowess did so without the “benefits” of patriarchy.

When a woman says the word “patriarchy,” it has the same effect on the properly assimilated as the term “white supremacy.” Fortunately, most English-speaking women won’t be using the word “patriarchy” this year. It’s so grody. It’s so, like, 1970s. Most English-speaking women—even the properly assimilated colored women—talk like those Encino valley girls, gagged with that silver spoon. A gang of brother’s in the ’hood brag saying that everybody in the world wants to be thugged out like gangsta rappers. Everybody supposedly goes around trying to talk like Black street youth. The opinion here is that too many westernized people of both genders all over the world want to sound like that valley girl with the rich white daddy. When I hear the “cool” tune sung through the halls of Microsoft on Channel9, I think that Bill Gates is put into the role of that rich white daddy.

rasx()