Katherine's EDC blog » android https://edc15.education.ed.ac.uk/kfirth Another Education and digital culture 2015 site Thu, 09 Apr 2015 05:44:06 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.38 Gender and robotics https://edc15.education.ed.ac.uk/kfirth/2015/02/06/gender-and-robotics/ https://edc15.education.ed.ac.uk/kfirth/2015/02/06/gender-and-robotics/#comments Fri, 06 Feb 2015 06:35:03 +0000 http://edc15.education.ed.ac.uk/kfirth/?p=197 After reading Katherine N Hayles on Cyborgs and Cognispheres (via @sbayne on Twitter), I wondered if the Cyborg Manifesto had had any influence on wider culture. So I did a little unscientific explorations on tumblr (a social media platform with a good range of technology, fan art, house improvement plans, soft porn, gifs and poetry).

Searching for cyborg:
Pictures of half dressed robot girls, and some half-dressed robot boys. Ad for the Fifty Shades of Grey film (sponsored by Maybelline cosmetic company). (In a second search, the ad was for the Strictly Ballroom musical).

Searching for Cybernetics:
Pictures of half dressed robot girls. Ad for the Fifty Shades of Grey film. (Second search, Kia ‘Game On’ app to win a car with a tennis tie-in).

Searching for android:
Mostly the operating system, some robot stuff. Ad for McDonalds fast food.

Searching for robot:
Mix of half dressed robot girls, real robots, transformer fan art. Ad for McDonalds fast food.

Searching for Cognisphere:
2 quotes from Hayles (2006) from Anzbau, another MScED participant.

Searching for AI:
lots of Ashton Irwin fan love. Ad for Woolworths supermarket hot cross bun trifle.

Searching for Artificial Intelligence:
Serious articles about science and technology. Ad for MLC financial advisors.

Searching for mecha:
mostly transformer fan art. Ad for MLC financial advisors.

Correlation doesn’t equal correlation, of course, but my search on Thursday night suggests that, for posters and for ad algorithms, cyborgs are coded as more female that robots.

I went back to find some images and found that I would probably code the feeds very slightly differently–so clearly the above is a snapshot, not a definitive statement. 

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