challenging gender roles and other social disruptions
Lillie notes that "the status quo is never challenged by the technologies presented" in narratives like Cooltown. "Rather, these technologies allow for social relations to seemingly flow as well, ensuring that social breakdowns do not threaten the efficiency of labor or the transmission of information." as a technologist/designer/builder, I'm left asking, how can we make technologies that challenge the status quo? could we make domestic products such as those for cooking and cleaning geared obviously toward a male demographic? could we make other products such as those for yard work or car repair geared obviously toward a female demographic? I suspect we could, but I'm not sure this would really get at the point. I think the point might be more to get users of these technologies to question, to challenge the status quo. so, how do we go about doing that? how do we grant efficacy to such challenges? moreover, how do we get people to use such "challenging" technologies in the first place?