The legendary inventor predicts “the acquisition of new fields of endeavor by women” and “their gradual usurpation of leadership.”
Engineer, physicist, and futurist Nikola Tesla(July 10, 1856–January 7, 1943) is among the most radical rule-breakers of science and is regarded by many as the greatest inventor in human history. His groundbreaking work paved the way for wireless communication and imprinted every electrical device we use today. (sic) But like all true geniuses, Tesla envisioned not only the practical applications of his inventions but the profound cultural shifts that any successful technology precipitates.
One of the most surprising, most obscure, yet most incisive of Tesla’s predictions peers into the future of society’s changing gender roles and considers how the advent of wireless technology would empower women, liberating them to develop their full intellectual potential repressed by the patriarchy for centuries.
In January of 1926, a reporter named John B. Kennedy interviewed Tesla about these very ideas. The piece was published in Colliers magazine under the title “When Woman Is Boss” and is discussed in Margaret Cheney’s excellent Tesla: Man Out of Time (public library), which remains the most insightful and dimensional perspective on the great inventor’s mind and spirit.
“WHENEVER YOU PUT YOUR BODY ONLINE, in some way you are in conversation with porn.” The large-type epigraph on the landing page of the online exhibition “Body Anxiety” was culled from an interview with artist Ann Hirsch, whose frustrated musings in ☆ミ, or Starwave, an invitation-only Facebook group for “Internet-savvy” women artists, curators, and writers, spurred Jennifer Chan and Leah Schrager to organize the show. But the tensions percolating in “Body Anxiety” are long-standing. This unruly collection of work from mostly little-known artists, many from overlapping feminist subsets of the male-dominated Net art and alt-lit worlds, addresses perennially contentious issues of representation (pornographic and otherwise). They take as a given that social media—as a platform for art, activism, and sexual expression, and as a potent facilitator of image appropriation and abuse—is the primary context for such investigations today.
Source: Artforum for full article. Article by Johanna Fateman is a musician, a writer, and an owner of Seagull Salon in New York. She is working on a book about Andrea Dworkin.
For when emojis won’t suffice: express yourself with Cindy Sherman-icons!
“Highbrow folk like us often find the traditional emoticon can struggle to express how we really feel. We don’t ALWAYS want to convey that we’re blindly happy, crying with laughter or horizontally-lipped and nonplussed. Sometimes, we need something a little more creative. Thank the lord, then, that Hyo Hong has come up with just the solution, in the form of the multifaceted (in its truest sense) Cindy Sherman-icon.
With such rich subject matter to play with, there really is a Cindy for pretty much every occasion, thanks to the fact the artist’s practice is based almost exclusively on images of her self in different guises. New York-based designer Hyo says: “I found iconic connections between her self-portraits and emoticons in terms of various facial expressions from one face.” Now, anyone else feeling a little, well, 80s American HR assistant today?”
Wikipedia Edit-a-thon: Tuesday, October 14th, 9:00am-1:30pm, Research Commons, 7th floor, W.A.C. Bennett Library, SFU Burnaby
Drop in and join us!
SFU Library’s Research Commons is hosting a Wikipedia Edit-a-thon on Ada Lovelace Day. Join our interdisciplinary crew of amateur editors as we create, expand, and improve Wikipedia entries for some of SFU’s female researchers.
No experience with wiki editing is necessary, but a Wikipedia editing workshop will take place on October 6th, if you wish to prepare. Join us for all or part of this fun, friendly, and informal event, fueled by coffee and camaraderie.
Talk by Dr. Jennifer Gardy: “Leaky pipelines and push-up bras: Women in STEM and science media”
Name five well-known scientists. Now name five famous TV scientists. And now, count how of many of those are women… As a scientist and a science communicator, I’ve explored the role of women in STEM from multiple perspectives and, while things are certainly improving, there’s still far to go. In this talk, I’ll cover some of my own observations about women in science and science media, and we’ll examine some practical and easy actions we can all take to help promote the visibility of women in STEM.”
Engineer, physicist, and futurist Nikola Tesla(July 10, 1856–January 7, 1943) is among the most radical rule-breakers of science and is regarded by many as the greatest inventor in human history. His groundbreaking work paved the way for wireless communication and imprinted every electrical device we use today. (sic) But like all true geniuses, Tesla envisioned not only the practical applications of his inventions but the profound cultural shifts that any successful technology precipitates.
![[Image Credit: Simon Fraser Uni Library]](https://www.lib.sfu.ca/file-newest/12826/220px-Ada_Lovelace_portrait.jpg "[Image Credit: Simon Fraser Uni Library]")