sexing the machine Three digital women debate gender, technology and the Net 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 BY LAURA MILLER | this three-way e-mail conversation about technology, the changes it's working on our lives and how those changes affect women in particular was held at the request of a national magazine. Later, the magazine decided the discussion would "go over the heads" of its readers. Perhaps its editors were also confused when so little of the conversation amounted to what we dubbed "whining at the gates" -- that is, the familiar complaint that women have been excluded from the world of high technology. To us, the debate about the role of computers in our lives has moved on from those early days. Instead, we felt at home enough to question the more fundamental ways high technology is reshaping our world. If more and more women are practicing "multi-tasking" as a way of life, is that liberating or maddening? Do computers concentrate or decentralize authority? Does the World Wide Web give users more power or less? Can machines ever be considered "intelligent"? Our conversation might indeed go over the heads of the shrinking ranks of the resolutely unwired -- but for everyone else, we think it goes right to the heart of the matter. Participants: Laura Miller, a senior editor at the Internet magazine Salon Sadie Plant, a lecturer in cultural studies at the University of Birmingham and author of "Zeroes and Ones: The Matrix of Women and Machines" (Doubleday, 224 pages, $23.95) Ellen Ullman, a software engineer and consultant since 1978 and the author of "Close to the Machine: Technophilia and Its Discontents" (City Lights Books, 189 pages, $21.95 -- October 1997) 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 Laura Miller: We've been asked why so few women seem to be among the movers, shakers and philosophers of high-tech industry and culture. I'll make the usual, obvious observations about how girls are socially and culturally steered away from mathematics at a fairly early age, and this leads to fewer women in computer science and engineering schools, and therefore fewer women in the community of people that high-tech industries draw their leaders and pioneers from. It's intellectually fashionable to see girls' lack of interest in math as innate, but the same thing was once said about athletics, and the new surge in women's and girls' sports shows how much that can change with a little encouragement and reforms like Title IX. We may see more women in these industries within the next 10 years. I see another problem, though. The work culture of high tech is obsessive and single-minded, on both the creative and the business sides. When you're on a project, you work every waking hour, sometimes losing track of the time of day or the day of the week. Everything else falls away. It's a work style that's carried over from the computer science programs in universities. If we assume that women are generally more invested in having balanced lives, and are often responsible for taking care of kids, then they may be unwilling to drop everything else for work and as a result don't find high-tech careers tenable. The culture of the Net is a slightly different matter, since participating in it doesn't make that kind of demand. But from its early years, the Net was populated with people -- mostly men, but some women -- from tech companies and the tech-related programs in universities, and it reflected their social inexperience. There was a lot of talk about Net culture being hostile to women early on, but that seems to have died out. There are a lot more women online now, and it's now clear that loutish behavior -- and the reaction of being hurt or offended by it -- are not the exclusive property of either gender. MULTI-TASKING -- BENEFIT OR CURSE? ILLUSTRATION BY BART NAGEL