ABSTRACT
I begin by suggesting that we reject the notion of technology as a thing…we must begin to rearticulate a discourse on technology that does not, while purporting to be treating something other than things, in fact treat things…. I do not want to trade the tyranny of autonomous technology for the tyranny of structures. This means, then, that our discourse on communication technologies must be constructed such that it can acknowledge, where they occur, both correspondences and
non-correspondences in the social formation as well as in the relationship between the social formation and the technological. (9) Much of what has been written by communication scholars on print technology and its impact, particularly in relation to women, tyrannizes with a discourse of thingness. Given these circumstances, the best strategy is to leap in and to do what we can, realizing that, when we reach the end today, large gaps will remain. We can, however, give those who take over tomorrow-among whom may be some of the readers of this book-a leg up. And we can fruitfully begin the detective work by delineating what we now understand about the effect of the technology of printing on women.
