Beyond the Blackbox: Repurposing ROM Hacking for Feminist Hacking/Making Practices

Thumbnail Image

Files

ada13-beyon-kir-2018.pdf (9.25 MB)

Date

2018-01

Authors

Kirtz, Jaime Lee

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Fembot Collective

Abstract

While much interest in feminist technology looks to future inventions, dead or obsolete communication media, such as older smartphones, offers spaces in which to hack into effaced gendered narratives, specifically through physical processes of deconstruction and circuit bending. Thus, this practice brings attention to the tasks and narratives of circuit inspection and soldering of female workers, such as dagongmei, i.e. Chinese female migrant workers. Through resoldering and reassembling a ROM chip in older telecommunication media, exposed is the ways in which women’s work in technology is blackboxed. Hacking the device in ways that make visible the work of women reconfigures this media as feminist technology. This hack draws from initiatives by scholars such as Lisa Parks and Lisa Nakamura, as well as DIY culture to trace, recover and discuss forms of female labor, inviting feminist technology to include affective, minority and domestic labor as critical production processes. This practice brings attention to the tasks and narratives of circuit inspection and soldering of female workers, such as dagongmei, i.e. Chinese female migrant workers (Pun and Chan 2013). Through resoldering and reassembling a ROM chip in older telecommunication media, exposed is the ways in which women’s work in technology is blackboxed. Bending the device in ways that make visible the work of women reconfigures this media as feminist technology. This hack draws from initiatives by scholars such as Lisa Parks and Lisa Nakamura, as well as DIY culture to trace, recover and discuss forms of female labor, inviting feminist technology to include affective, minority and domestic labor as critical production processes.

Description

23 pages

Keywords

Citation

Kirtz, J. L. (2018). “Beyond the Blackbox: Repurposing ROM Hacking for Feminist Hacking/Making Practices. Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology, No. 13. https://doi.org/10.5399/uo/ada.2018.13.3

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/1794/26786

Collections

Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology; Issue No. 13: Radical Feminist Storytelling and Speculative Fiction: Creating new worlds by re-imagining hacking (January 2018)