Not too long ago, the internet was a place you visited. The family desktop stood at its designated spot and you had to wait your turn to use it. Pull up a chair, then log into Club Penguin, Tumblr or laboriously type girlsgogames.com onto Internet Explorer. “The old internet was kind of like hunting and gathering. You had to search for your people, your websites and everything was chronological,” remembers London-based writer Sihaam Naik, who has an avid interest in cyberfeminism. “There was an element of friction, especially with the dial-up connection on the family computer. The IRL and URL were separated by logging off.” We crave this separation today when the internet is a permanent presence that stalks us rather than a flashing neon dreamworld to lose ourselves in. It is bone-chilling that all our information is surveilled and controlled by a small group of wealthy, soulless men; that all of this could vanish in an instant because we own nothing.
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But girls around the world brought up by pink iPods and high-saturation computer games refuse to accept this dull, grey version of technology. “The girls are at the forefront of making tech a more DIY, fun and accessible craft to get into,” shares 27-year-old interdisciplinary artist Rohini Maiti. “When I think about a tech bro, I think high tech. Like the hardware of MacBooks and PCs. This movement is pushing us to adopt low tech, which is more analogue and messy.” The cyberdeck, defined by coder Tru Narla as “custom-built, portable computers usually designed around the builder’s taste, workflow and imagination,” is at the forefront of this cultural shift and has been popularised by women like Annike Tan and Narla across the internet. The alt-tech device attempts to revive an era in which technology was playful and expressive in addition to being useful. “It’s a move towards hobbies that feel tactile,” points out Naik. “Beyond hypercustomisation, sometimes it feels good to build something with your own two hands.”
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: vogue.in
