Going beyond PC

Off Our Backs, May 1997

Going Beyond PC

"You're going to get e-mail, right?" All eyes were on me and it was clear that the imminent vote for the Gay and Lesbian Interests Consortium Board Chair was hanging on my answer to this question. While it was true that no one but me had been nominated for the position, everyone on the Board had e-mail but me, and it was clear the Board had deep misgivings about having a techno-slacker at the helm of the organization. "Yes, forthwith," I assured them. They breathed a collective sigh of relief and voted me in.

Lucky for the Board, I had no idea what I was getting into, or I might have turned down the nomination. I knew that having a computer would make me a more effective activist: I had fantasies of tapping out scathing feminist analysis without keeping two fingers on "Alt-Tab" in case my boss came around the corner. I mentally composed scintillating e-mail exchanges with feminists three continents away. I longed to surf the net for news of feminist activists world wide. GLIC was only the missing link in the growing evolution of my desire to find out what a "List Serve" is. All I needed was the right tool for the job: I needed to buy a computer.

Little did I know I was about to enter the baffling and nebulous PC Expenditure Universe ("PEU" -- pronunciation "pee-ew"), a place where time and reality is only loosely related to life here on Earth. I now understand the secret language of "Gigs" and "Pipeline Burst Cache" spoken in PEU, can debate with confidence the merits of various modem protocols, and can keep pace with the zippiest Zip Drive. Armed only with my wits and my Visa card, I faced PEU's army of computer designers, who are generating technology so fast that the PC is considered primitive quicker than a Festie can get her shirt off at Michigan. (And girl, did my wits and Visa take a beating.) This journal tells the story of my awakening to some of the challenges computers pose to feminist activism (all names have been changed).

2/22. I walked into the oob office and said, "I need to get a PC." I knew this was a good place to start since the office is full of women who measure time by the interval until the next issue of PC World arrives. Several women surrounded me with rapt attention.

One conspiratorially whispered, "Go to the warehouse in Springfield. When you get there, knock on the door two-and-a-half times and give them the magic password `The sound card crows at midnight.' When you get inside, find the guy with the most pens sticking out of his pocket protector. If he doesn't have what you want, he can probably make it out of a rubber band, some Pop Rocks, and an expired Pizza World coupon. Don't worry about the maintenance warranty -- all the machines are used, and they're going to be obsolete in six months anyway. But you can get a great deal."

Another oob-er jumped in, "No, what you want to do is, figure out how much money you can spend and then buy the most expensive equipment you can find. Don't spend less than $2,000. But don't worry about the money -- it will be obsolete in six months anyway."

$1,000? $2,000? It used to be, all you needed to be a grassroots activist was a passion and a clipboard. Now nobody will even talk to you if you don't have an e-mail address. (And once you do, all they say is "I'll e-mail you!") I did some quick mental calculations. A basic set-up costs about 300 hours of work at the minimum wage. What's an activist to do?

2/23. "You're a technogeek. Will you take me computer shopping?" I engagingly asked L. She looked up from reprogramming her PC so that it can simultaneously download football scores and cook a six-course meal from Martha Stewart's Menus for Entertaining and said, "I'm not a geek." She looked a little hurt. But she logged off and we grabbed our coats.

A few minutes later, L. and I were standing in the PC aisle of Best Buy. Her eyes lit up with an inspired glow as she unconsciously moistened her lips. "What a beautiful monitor," she moaned, looking a little flushed. "Now this machine is fast," she panted. We moved on down the aisle as she fondled keyboards and mice.

I had never seen this side of her before and was a little concerned. "You're not a geek?" I asked her as I gently dabbed a dot of drool off her chin. "No," she sniffed. "Now that machine -- that's for a geek. 32 MB RAM, 2.5 GB hard drive, zip drive -- that's for the person who wants the latest and greatest toy."

2/25. I went into Barnes & Noble on my lunch hour to look at the computer magazines. After looking at several that seemed to resemble hardware porn more than any type of useful information, I approached a clerk in the computer section to ask his advice on resource materials. He puffed his chest out and threw his shoulders back with all the bravado of a John Wayne look-alike contestant. "What do you need information for?" he drawled, eager to be a techno-hero. "What's your question? Just ask me, I can tell you all the answers." I choked back my inner-Hothead Paisan and simply asserted "I'd like to do my own research."