Dale Spender, Composing Cyberspace

Dale Spender,
"Social Policy for Cyberspace: Access and Equity"

Dale Spender (b. 1943) is a feminist scholar, writer, teacher, and consultant from Australia. She is co-founder of the database WIKED (Women's Internationl Knowledge Encyclopedia and Data) and founding editor of the Athene Series and Pandora Press, commissioning editor of the Penguin Australian Women's Library, and associate editor of the Great Women Series (United Kingdom). Her many books include Man Made Language (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980), For the Record: The Making and Meaning of Feminist Knowledge (Women's Press, 1985), and Writing a New World: Two Centuries of Australian Women Writers (Penguin Books, 1988). This selection, like "Gender Bending" in Chapter 2, is from her recent book Nattering on the Net: Women, Power and Cyberspace (Spinifex, 1996).

"Social Policy for Cyberspace: Access and Equity" (Composing Cyberspace p. 266) is not available online.

1. Spender writes, "Despite the ideal potential of the new technologies to create a global, egalitarian community, a virtual world without barriers or divisions, the scene down on the ground is strikingly different" (¶ 4). What is the reality, according to Spender?

2. Why does Spender think the suggestion that everyone ought to have or be provided with a computer "could appear as more a sign of contempt than a social justice policy" (¶ 10)? To what extent do you agree?

3. Do you agree with Spender that social and political consequences of the global village ought to take precedence over technological advances? She mentions issues such as malnutrition, decent housing, and sanitation. What priorities do you think should be assigned to these or other issues? What emphasis should policymakers give to electronic resources? To what extent do you think information technologies can help promote, rather than compete with, other social priorities?

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