In my newsletter to NMK readers today, I referred to the Internet as a ’she’. Reading that back once it arrived in my inbox, I wasn’t entirely sure how I felt about that. I think I’m happy about referring to websites as ’she’ – they are akin to vessels like ships and cars, and also domiciles – those things are very often referred to as feminine. But the Internet as a whole?

I’m wondering about this from a web 2.0 perspective. Web 2.0, with its insistence on ’social everything’ – seems to fit well with what people normally classify as feminine characteristics – connecting, embracing, collectivism, joining together.

The proposed next generation of web applications, on the other hand, the sort that will join up microformats and form the semantic web, seem to be delivering the Internet back into the hands of the engineers, and into the traditionally masculine traits of straight facts, logic and formulae. The thing that interests me is whether this is being driven by gender agendas in some way, at least in the way it is narrativised, if not in terms of the science.

Are any readers aware of any gender politics research being done in this domain? Or have I finally found my PhD thesis? [sidenote: also interested in anyone attempting to 'queer' the 'net and what that entails.]

PS: there is a broken link in the second paragraph of the newsletter. You could patch it together yourself, but to make things easier, the link is to this – a great analysis of the new rules of reputation in the era of Google, and why the Internet is really rather frightening.

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