Of mouse and man

If you are already beginning to accuse me of male-chauvinism and thinking of reminding me that we have come a long way from the gender-insensitive days of John Steinbeck, the author ofOf Mice and Men,please hold your horse. I am trying to make a simple point: men and women use computer differently -- often, for different purposes. When a man is clicking away the mouse, his attention often veers into the domains of sports and other pleasurable things -- that's what the American study of computer usage suggested. In USA, young women aged between18-24 prefer to visit news and entertainment sites, while young men prefer search engines and sports sites. In U.K. of the net users, 80 per cent men aged 55 or over go online to search for information or to pursue their hobbies. Eight-six per cent of women use the Net to communicate with close friends and family. In Singapore the male female difference in the use of internet stood at 56 per cent versus 34 per cent; this was shown in a recent study conducted by Eddie Kuo, a prominent sociologist, and his associates.

There is a digital divide based on gender as there is a digital divide based on generation often manifested in a single household producing bitterness and acrimony. However, the phrase digital divide seems to have been overused. According to NUA which specialises in surveying computer related matters, there are nearly 606 million internet users worldwide of which 190 million are in Europe, 187 million are in Asia/Pacific and 183 million in USA and Canada. Africa has less than seven million users. But such a gap -- given the economic inequality -- is unsurprising. I often joke that there is an automobile divide; some people own cars others do not.

Digital divide is somewhat special though. One may be economically in a position to own computers but then there are other factors such as competence, interest and time. Younger people seem to be smarter than older when it comes to use of computers. But adults are the ones who continue to write programmes. Although gender gap in terms of using computer is closing, men are still overrepresented in programming, designing, and fixing computers. The reason lies in uneven education in computer by gender groups. In USA only 15-20 per cent computer science majors at top computer science departments are females. At Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, one of the leading schools in computer science in the world, enrollment of women in the undergraduate computer science programme has risen from 8 per cent in 1995 to 42 per cent in 2000 as reported by Allan Fisher and Jane Margolis of CMU. Computers have not created gender gap; rather it continues to reflect underlying structured inequality between men and women, between rich and poor.

Computers have defined our age, yet sometimes I ponder how better off I am with this machine. The thoughts are timely now that I have had my third hard-disk crash in slightly over two years. I often see new advertisement promoting the capacity of the hard-disk. The capacity keeps growing and growing by leaps and bounds. However, I have lost both less-powerful and more-powerful hard-disks to unknown ailments. No one knows for sure why hard-disks crash. But they do. I have heard different answers as to why they crash but of the non-technical theories I like the "planned obsolescence" theory better. They are made to die after a certain time. That's what capitalism is all about.

In the days of real notebooks, I did not have to worry about discovering one fine morning that all my writings and scribbled notes have disappeared as if by magic. I never had to face the nightmare of looking at a (real) notebook that went blank. Yes, I would run out of ink or ideas and sometimes a notebook would be filled and I would buy a new one from the grocer shop down the street but I would never worry about my notebook "not opening" unless someone spilled glue on it. Even the size of the notebooks rarely changed and if they did it hardly mattered. Now in my life time, I have seen changes in the size of diskettes that make my original floppy diskettes obsolete. My students often wonder what those things are. I tell them these relics are from the days of Jurassic age or from the Neanderthal period. I am not a neo-Luddite. I like machines, when they are good, useful and strong. All I need is a crash-proof hard-disk that will last for years. I have used watches that are shock-proof. You throw them from roof-top they will survive the fall. I need a crash-proof computer. Progress should be translated not just as speed but also as robust. Progress should make life easy, not expensive.

Habibul Haque Khondker is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the National University of Singapore, Singapore.