The Dialogue between
Gender Studies and Computer Science
The dialogue between the technological and the social has a severe impact on the daily life of humans. Computer Science is an important actor in this dialogue. Its product development, its data processing, and the use of its products has changed human interaction. The ready-making of products is not a neutral objective process. The producers act out of their own thoughts and opinions based in their own cultural and social surroundings, where the technological is often overestimated and where their own social acting and thinking became obvious. The epistemological and ontological conceptions in Gender Studies and in Computer Science are essentially different. In Computer Science, the world consists of objects which are classified on the basis of similarities. Humans and their interactions are analyzed and represented, by methods which were intended exclusively for the production of mathematical machines. In Gender Studies, differences are respected. Gender is an integrated situated process, which manifests itself in the interactions of human and non-human actors and therefore social and technologically shaped. The recognition of differences in interaction and its materiality could lead to the cooperation of both disciplines to empower responsible behavior of people in a complex world in which non-human actors play their role.
Research Areas
Gender Studies, Computer Science, Human Computer Interaction, E-learning, Ambient Intelligence
Vita
Dr. Dipl.-Math. Cecile K. M. Crutzen is a researcher and author in Computer Science and Gender Studies. She published and lectured about Interaction, Object Orientation and Ambient Intelligence. Her critical analysis shows that Computer Science is a process of negotiation about the redesign of social interactions in human gendered environments. She retired as associate professor Open University of the Netherlands, Department Computer Science. In 2012 she was visiting professor on Gender and Technology at the University of Vienna.
References
Crutzen, Cecile K.M. 2013. „Nicht-menschlich ist auch Gender“. In: Informatik-Spektrum, Vol. 36, 3. 309–318.
Crutzen, Cecile K.M. 2013. „Masks between the Visible and the Invisible“. In: Ernst, Waltraud and Horwath, Ilona. Ed. „Gender in Science and Technology. Interdisciplinary Approaches“. Bielefeld: Transcript. 79–110.
Crutzen, Cecile K.M. 2012. Council Interview with Cecile Crutzen on Ambient Intelligence and Internet of Things: Link.
Contact
Prof. Dr. Dipl.-Math. Cecile K. M. Crutzen
E-Mail
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