In the bulk of the chapter, Selfe points to three different myths we have created and/or revised about technology to make ourselves feel more comfortable. She uses images – advertisements – to show our creation and revision of these myths.
- The first narrative myth is that of the global village: "one of the most popular narratives Americans tell ourselves about computers is that technology will help us create a global village in which the peoples of the world are connected – communicating with one another and cooperating for the commonweal... [However], we find ourselves, as a culture, ill equipped to cope with the changes that the 'global village' story necessitates, unable, even, to imagine, collectively, ways of relating to the world outside our previous sparkle and cultural experiences" (294-5). So, we revised the narrative into the electronic colonial narrative. "In the revised narrative, the global village retains its geographical reach, but it becomes a world in which different cultures, different peoples, exist to be discovered, explored, marveled at – in a sense, known and claimed by – those who design and use technology. Inhabitants of this electronic global village, in turn, become foreigners, exotics, savages, objects to study and, sometimes, to control" (295).
- In the second narrative myth, "Americans like to believe [that the electronic landscape] is open to everybody – male and female, regardless of color, class, or connection. It is, in fact, at some level, a romantic re-creation of the American story and the American landscape themselves – a narrative of opportunity in an exciting land claimed from the wilderness, founded on the values of hard work and fair play. It is a land available to all citizens, you place a value on innovation, individualism, and competition, especially when tempered by a neighborly concern for the west fortunate others that is the hallmark of our democracy" (301-2); this narrative is called the land of equal opportunity narrative. We revise this narrative into the land of difference narrative, in which "opportunity is a commodity generally limited to privileged groups within this country... [It] excludes people of color, and poor people, and people were out of work, and single-parent families, and gay couples, and foreigners" (304).
- The third narrative is the un-gendered utopia: "The story claims that computers and that computer-supported environment will help us create a utopian world in which gender is not a predictor of success or a constraint for interaction with the world" (306). We revise this narrative into the same old gendered stuff narrative: "the new electronic landscape retains a value on innovation, hard work, and the individual contributions of people of both genders, but only as they are practiced appropriately – within the traditionally gendered context we have historically and culturally ratified for women and men in our culture" (307).
And so…
"Computers…are complexly socially determined artifacts that interact with existing social formations and tendencies – including sexism, glasses on, and racism – to contribute to the shaping of the gendered society" (306). We work under doxa, "ideological systems of belief so consistent with popular beliefs, and therefore so invisibly potent, that they preclude the consideration of other positions altogether. At the same time, all such fabrics have gaps, lacunae, to provide the space for resistance... Indeed, it is exactly because this ideological system is so densely and consistently coated that these images provide such rich sites of analysis and strategic information.... An analysis of these images can provide us the chance to unthink current discourses about technology and to transform the dialogue we hold with ourselves about gender and computers in new unproductive, heterodoxic way" (306).