Quite interesting, some valid points. But after all of this, one question nags at me, Marshall. Who is "Punkin' the Tabby Kitten"? Or are you saying that there's a specific tabby kitten you're fond of punking? - Tinu Abayomi-Paul from FriendFeed MT Plugin

I really like this post. My thoughts: does "god" have a gender? i don't think the semantic web will have one either...after...all. (shrug) - Briana Franco from FriendFeed MT Plugin

This is why librarianship - a traditionally gendered profession (female) - is so important to the creation and continued development of the Semantic Web. After all, it is librarians who continue to challenge the racist/sexist/xenophobic classifications that still exist in the Dewey Decimal System (and, to a lesser degree, the Library of Congress Classification System). - cecily

It's Pat! - Michael W. May

Great post Marshall! Hearkens me back to even deeper feminist thinking about representation itself as a gendered practice...making meaning has largely been a "male" endeavor, and yet, meaning has never been completely contained nor controlled by the masculine. As the commenter above alludes to in his intentional (mis)reading of novels, making meaning can flow outside the machines that attempt to produce meaning in certain ways, for certain ends. The semantic web will offer new opportunities to produce meanings to control/define and to subvert meanings to elude/stretch/warp/redefine. - Nate Angell from FriendFeed MT Plugin

Excellent post Marshall. Thanks for shedding light on this because I never really thought about it in terms of the development of the Semantic Web. This is an important issue and the work of Corinna Bath matters to ensure these discussions take place as the Semantic Web develops. The example of the phone book is a great example of gender bias as is the examples provided by Cecily Walker. And I thought feminism was dead! Glad to see that it is alive and well. I also think that Adam makes a good point and it will be very interesting to see how it evolves. Once again, excellent post! - Miiko Mentz from FriendFeed MT Plugin

@mediachick's fantastic StumbleUpon summary of this post: mediaChick71 - "So is it a boy or a girl?" As the best brains in the tech industry take us from html markups to a semantic web, one woman is making the rounds to remind them that gender assumptions have no place in domain knowledge. Corinna Bath is an academic researcher from Austria who brings up some critical issues about out-dated relationship definitions that may inadvertently make their way into tagging modalities. This is a very interesting look into the future of the web 3.0 and the influence of the society that builds it. - Marshall Kirkpatrick

On a more serious side... www.Cosmopolitan.com was most probably built by men, on software coded by men. Possibly fat, bald, geek men. Could you tell? I think this is a very good post only because it is thought provoking and brings a fresh perspective on the table, but the question itself is quite pointless. C'mon. Genre is determined by genes and is relevant to sexuality. I don't see the semantic web or any electronic device for the matter mating anytime soon. And any perspective introduced by developers will be buried deep below layers of content and social interaction. - Aldo Bucchi from FriendFeed MT Plugin

Aldo you have a point, but many websites - especially large ones that are built by agencies - have teams of user experience experts who work alongside developers. It's the UX and Information Architects who build out site navigation, and most (not all) UX/IA folks test taxonomies before committing final versions to the website. If you test with your intended audience, the taxonomies map to their brains better than if you didn't test and used your own perspective. - cecily

Interestingly enough, women are well represented in the Human Computer Interaction/IA/UX discipline. In fact, many computer science students call HCI "CS for Girls" because HCI programs don't usually include many of the "hard" CS courses (programming, application development) and focus more on psychology, cognitive behavior, and interaction design. - cecily

What a load of blather. Male geeks aren't very good at thinking like non-male non-geeks - this is not news. But declaring dramatically in this way that "the Semantic Web may end up being gender biased" is making a storm in a teacup. The phone book "example" is clearly not relevant to today's situation. By the way, regarding the phrase "Some argue that..." sorry, but over on Wikipedia we call those weasel words. - Earle Martin

Also, from the linked interview: "Alison Adam analyzed the well-known ontology CYC... She revealed that the knowing subject implicitly assumed by the system is a white, middle-class male professional." Oh really. Check out this excerpt of a review of where she said it: http://muse.jhu.edu/login... - Earle Martin

In fact, Google Books has a preview of Adam's book. (http://books.google.co.uk/books...) Quote: "...the AI idea of search and goal seeking... harks back to Aristotelian notions of goals, and can also be seen in terms of the phallocentric urge to a unitary goal described by postmodernist thought." Give me a break! - Earle Martin

I couldn't disagree more with the article :) but i'm months late. is it worth grumbling at this late date? - Dan Brickley

Dan, I'd say it is, yes. - Marshall Kirkpatrick