The Increasing Technology Divide

Abstract

Part of the promise of new technologies at the turn of the millennium included claims that they would engender new forms of social equality. At this time, US marketers promoted new technologies as ushering in a new era of globalized prosperity. My analysis of advertisements within Wired, the flagship magazine of the “digital revolution,” compares marketing texts appearing at the height of the technology boom with more recent examples. In the face of economic uncertainties and increasingly fractured audiences, marketers adopted narrower portrayals of masculinity and femininity. Here, advertisements cultivated a pervasive form of maverick masculinity to place technologies as the province of an elite, white, male subculture. This (re)turn to traditional and conservative imagery is particularly alarming given evidence of women's continuing exclusion in technological cultures and occupations. Ultimately, these portrayals provide insight into the ongoing commodification of notions of dis/empowerment, rebellion, and countercultural revolution within US marketing discourses.