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METAFORIX MAIL Volume 2, Issue 8 December 14, 2001 Sites and
insights for the Information Age As all of us hurtle toward the end of this very challenging year, Metaforix Mail thanks you for reading and (occasionally) responding. We send you and yours every good wish for a joyous holiday season and a peaceful New Year. Thanks for reading. CONTENTS AT A GLANCE
ON MY MIND: Women, Leadership, and the Future
The Barnard Summit On Saturday, October 27, almost a thousand women (and a few intrepid men) assembled in the LeFrak Gymnasium of Barnard College, an independent college affiliated with Columbia University in New York City. The occasion was the first Barnard Summit, held, according to the college's President, Judith Shapiro, "at an historic crossroads where, for the first time in our society, women and men are on the verge of sharing power." The Summit's distinguished roster of speakers included women from the worlds of business, government, the media, academia, philanthropy, and international relations. The four main panels addressed women's roles in business, public service, family, and community.When planning for the Summit began during the year 2000, neither President Shapiro nor any of her associates could have anticipated the more dramatic crossroads that would befall the city and our nation on September 11, 2001. Although Barnard is located far north of the World Trade Center site, it was hard to imagine that an event of this magnitude would proceed as planned -- a mere six weeks after the tragedy and its seemingly endless stream of aftereffects. Several days prior to the scheduled date, I phoned Petra Tuomi, Barnard's Associate Director of Public Affairs and key onsite member of the Summit Planning Committee, to ask about the status of the Summit. I frankly assumed that it had been cancelled, or at least postponed. No, Petra assured me, the show would go on. Furthermore, Petra remarked, it was she who had vigorously resisted all suggestions to cancel or postpone the Summit. Clearly, Petra was enormously satisfied that her point of view had prevailed. The event itself was as stimulating and exciting as anyone could have wished. The quality of the panels must especially have pleased filmmaker Richard Karz, Executive Director of the event, who taped the Summit in its entirety and will broadcast selected portions on PBS in March in conjunction with his documentary special, "If Women Ruled the World." Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter treated the audience to her trademark humor: "If women ran the world, maybe running the world wouldn't be valued as much as it is now!" Children's Defense League President Marian Wright Edelman evinced not only her political astuteness, but also her formidable moral authority: "Charity is a gift. Justice is a right." Mamphela Ramphele, Managing Director of the World Bank and the first black woman to serve as Vice Chancellor of a South African university, exhorted the audience -- comprised mainly of Americans -- to become better informed about the rest of the world, to exercise choices that matter, and to "tell your story in ways that matter." Marie C. Wilson, President of both the Ms. Foundation for Women and the White House Project, asked, "If all you're ever told is to be a good girl, how will you ever grow up to be a great woman?" Other speakers -- among them former Attorney General Janet Reno, authors Naomi Wolf and Anne Crittenden, Harvard professor and gender expert Carol Gilligan, Massachusetts Governor Jane Swift, journalist Gwen Ifill, and Chief Financial Officer Dina Dublon of J.P. Morgan Chase -- were equally provocative and perceptive. A week or two after the Summit, Petra Tuomi took time to share her observations with me by telephone. For purposes of our conversation, my infomaven hat was perched a bit higher than my social advocacy hat -- so I asked Petra about the impact of information technologies on the planning of the conference. I had been startled, for example, that conference registration could not be accomplished online nor could payment be made by credit card. Petra responded that Barnard's Office of Public Affairs had undertaken the planning and production of the Summit with staff and resources much too limited for the eventual scope of the event. In the wake of this year's success, plans are being made to upgrade the web site capabilities. The Internet did prove to be an extraordinary source of publicity for the Summit. Initially, Barnard alumnae were the principal target audience. As they and the invited speakers began posting information on the various sites they frequent, word spread rapidly around the nation and the world. (I, for example, first learned of the conference through an e-letter forwarded to my daughter in Florida, who forwarded it to me.) As for the day-to-day logistics of conference planning, Petra, Richard, and others most directly involved in making the Summit happen relied on an older technology: the telephone. In light of the overwhelming success of this year's summit, Barnard plans to make it an annual event, aimed at "high-profile" women leaders in a position to contribute toward meaningful social change. Petra and her colleagues are already hard at work analyzing this year's participant feedback and considering themes for next year's event. Despite the emotional and physical trauma of 9/11 -- or possibly because of that trauma -- the Barnard Summit of 2001 offered a striking glimpse, in a single cramped space, of women's potential to enhance our notions of leadership, justice, and community. The Barnard Summit is bound to advance that potential as it makes the transition from an occasion to a tradition.
Cordially,
Fast
Company is a new economy magazine whose mission is "to chronicle how
changing companies create and compete, to highlight new business practices,
and to showcase the teams and individuals who are inventing the future
and reinventing business." Recently, Fast Company has been sponsoring
the Fast 50, a "worldwide search" for 50 "passionate people with
big ideas and strong convictions" who are doing good and making a difference.
Access previous issues of Metaforix Mail by date by visiting our archives. Or use the search box on any page of the Metaforix site (www.metaforix.com) to search by keywords.
INFORMATICON Barry
A. Palevitz's Effort to Make "Meaning from the Rubble" of 9/11 Palevitz consulted the work of evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker of MIT, who believes that an affinity for flowers is rooted in the evolution of our species. Our earliest ancestors "quickly identified flowers as harbingers of growth, marking the site of future fruit, nuts, or tubers for creatures smart enough to remember them," writes Pinker. In other words, placing great stock in flowers was an adaptive response that allowed our ancestors to locate food and thereby survive to reproductive age. "My guess is it's a combination of two psychological phenomena," elaborates Pinker. "Seeing flowers as objects of beauty and well being, which is part of a human habitat preference, and giving valued commodities as gifts, of which high-quality food is the prototypical example. I think both are universal, and probably took place early in the evolution of modern Homo sapiens." . . . . University of Michigan scientist Stephen Kaplan agrees that "It's adaptive to find flowers attractive and valuable, since wanting to stay where they are puts one in a better position to reap the harvest when the fruits follow." Studies done by Kaplan and others among people from diverse cultures document an innate, subconscious appreciation of nature, but do not provide adequate evidence to attribute that appreciation to evolution. But, Palevitz asks, How many of us really care? Will digging into our deepest emotions keep us from stopping at a flower stand on the way home? Not a chance.
POST - 9/11 NEW SITES AND PAGES Citizens
of Cyberspace Respond
Here
are some additions to our series highlighting innovative, comprehensive,
and/or just plain excellent Internet responses post-9/11: "Recent
Terrorism Events: Background and Context"
Learn how Metaforix can help you and your business take a byte of the Information Age. See what we have to offer at www.metaforix.com. CYBERSPEAK
Holiday Shopping Entanglements I'm a chronically late holiday shopper. So I'm just getting around to letting you know about the "aggressive technology tactics" the Internet's top 100 shopping destinations have in store for those who are still buying gifts online.Cyveillance, the Internet consulting firm, surveyed a representative sample of 100,000 American and European sites to analyze the tactics used to "entangle and divert" online shoppers. Their report, issued late last month, revealed that 30% of U.S. sites and 20% of European sites use spawning techniques, otherwise known as pop-up or pop-under windows, that are triggered automatically when the visitor enters or leaves the site. The second most popular entanglement is mouse-trapping, which prevents the visitor from exiting or closing a page. And these are only the first two of the top ten disruptive, intrusive, and potentially damaging tactics on the Cyveillance list. The purposes of the other techniques range from artificial inflation of search engine rankings to unauthorized downloading of spyware (the tracking software that records your movements around the Internet) to unauthorized changing of the user's home page. The Cyveillance report provides a virtual education in the language of unethical Internet business tactics. In an upcoming issue, we'll review some of the free and inexpensive software solutions available to protect you from these abuses. Meanwhile, happy shopping!
Alice in Punditland The mission of The White House Project is to "enhance public perceptions of women's capacity to lead, change biases against women's leadership ability, and foster the entry of women into positions of leadership, including the U.S. presidency." One important measure of women's perceived capacity to lead is how they are portrayed in the media -- in particular, the media devoted to policy and government.The White House Project recently released a study that examined the presence and treatment of women guests on five influential Sunday talk shows broadcast regularly on the ABC, CBS, CNN, FOX, and NBC networks during the periods from January 1, 2000 through June 30, 2001, and then again in the post-9/11 weeks from September 16 through October 28, 2001. The study was designed to look at both the "agenda-setting" effect of these programs -- their influence on the perceived importance or lack of importance of public policy issues -- and their "authority-setting effect" -- their ability to confer expertise, leadership, and agenda-setting authority on guests. The key findings of the White House Project study are disturbing, but hardly surprising: - Only 11% of Sunday talk show guests were women. When Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates are included in the count, the figure is reduced to 10%. - Of all guests invited to appear more than once during the period of the study, only 7% were women. For example, there were 245 repeat appearances by male U.S. Senators, as contrasted to 8 by female Senators. - Women spoke 10% fewer words than men and were slightly more likely to appear nearer the end, rather than the beginning, of the programs. - Women were underrepresented in every category of speaker and on every topic. - During the post-9/11 period of the study, the percentage of American women guests dropped by 39% and the overall percentage drop including foreign women was 12%. As the authors point out in their Executive Summary, the Sunday talk shows perpetuate the myth that men have much greater political insight and expertise than women. The gross underrepresentation of women in punditland denies women critical opportunities to showcase their skills and to cultivate political constituencies. Whether you are concerned for the future of your daughters and sons, the future of your grandsons and granddaughters, or merely for the future of your country, the full report is well worth reading. Find it in .pdf format at http://www.simginc.com/whp/.
Please note that the links contained in Metaforix Mail are current as of the time of publication. Some of them may no longer be operative at the time you access past issues. |
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