How Sexism Retarded the Internet (and how the internet will make us all anarchists, possibly)

Just read a fabulous article in The Guardian about Don Tapscott and his new(ish) book, Wikinomics. There’s a splendid little story therein which recounts how, in the late 1970s, Tapscott and a couple of other computer nerds hooked some old PC’s together (“a network, you might call it,” cutes the article) and, realising how this could change working life, he began recommending the whole system to senior executives. Who thought it was a ridiculous idea. Why? Because managers and other important people would never learn to type. And why? Because there were secretaries for that…

So, yeah, looks as though good ole-timey gendered division of labour managed to hold back the internet by a decade or so. Go patriarchy!

Anyhoos, Tapscott’s book is not merely a chance for me to indulge my prejudices, it also contains a compelling notion about the material impact of internet economics. In short (and you should really read the article to get the full thang), “the internet is radically lowering the cost of collaborating” and this lowering of collaboration costs is, gradually undermining the need for giant capitalist corporations. Corporations, argues Tapscott – riffing off Coase, clearly – exist only because, in a capitalist society, they function as the most efficient way for producers to collaborate. However, the internet is removing the cost benefit of behemothic corporations, returning us to a (say it…) pre-lapsarian state in which we are able to trade fluidly with one another as individual traders.

It’s a fun notion and one that is obviously full of more holes than string theory (like, ummm… which individual traders own the physical network of the net?) but ain’t it fun? I’m popping down to the Johns Hopkins library to get a copy of Wikinomics right this minute…