Shelley Powers is a really interesting blogger. Not only that, but she takes amazing photos. She’s made her career in the tech/Internet field and writes books for O’Reilly Publications. Her Javascript book was the first book I bought on the topic and is still the one I use the most.
Today there’s a great discussion around yesterday’s New York Times article about Web 3.0. (Gimme a break, the rest of the world isn’t really even hip to Web 2.0). What it’s really about is the Semantic Web, or developing technologies that bring the element of human thought to the more rigid world of applications. (This isn’t expressed very well, and what you really should do is go read Shelley’s blog.)
Of course, this topic is on the front page of Techmeme, but every single link listed there goes to a blog written by men. Piling on that, there is a post on Google Blogoscoped asking bloggers about their most popular posts. Every single blogger listed is a man. Not one female voice in the bunch.
Why? Shelley adds tons to the discussion. So do other women. Yet the only voices worth notice are men?
I truly believe that cream should rise to the top regardless of gender. Yet it seems that it isn’t the case when it comes to blogging. Why is that? Shelley Powers, Danah Boyd, Tara Hunt, and many others are strong, clear voices who deserve to be heard because they are worth hearing, not because they are women.
Shelley, if you want to put this into the context of the Semantic Web, I’d love to hear what your thoughts are on finding ways for that to be developed with some gender equality instead of just those that Techmeme deems to be worthy. Oh, and one other thing — I did find your current blog via a link from Scoble, and I’m glad I did. However, I’d just as soon have found you because you were the first search result listed and not on page three. This is the A-List stuff that I wish would just stop, because it assumes the only voices worth our attention are ones that some algorithm (probably developed by a man) says are worth our attention.
Update: I think I’m abandoning Techmeme for Megite — it seems to have a better model for fairly linking blog posts on hot topics.
Technorati Tags: attention, shelley powers, semantic web, web 3.0, gender inequality, blogs, blogging
