Really love this comparison. I always find myself thinking really deeply about concepts when viewing them from another lens- Instruments, art supplies, and computers are all tools. Why have we developed specific connotations about all of them when they are all just tools?

Try and think to list the advantages of soft and hard approaches. What list is longer? What list is most valuable to you? What list would you think society at large would find more valuable?

I had a middle school teacher who told us repeatedly "Boys are good at math and science, and girls are better at english and history and art."

Funny coincidence. What professions tend to make more money? Math and science? Or english, history, and art? This is psychological priming at its most dangerous.

Again, coming back to the idea of equating femininity/femaleness with softness. No one thinks of the word "soft" or "warm" when thinking of computer science, more like "cold" and "calculating."

I've noticed this a lot in the scientific community, particularly my own field. I'm a psychology student, and psychology is often quickly called a "soft science" over other STEM fields like biology, engineering, physics, and chemistry. Despite the fact that psychology embodies literally all facets of these sciences (seriously would you call a brain surgeon a "soft scientist"), I have a feeling that the "nurturing" and clinical aspects of psychology are why it's so often pinned as soft.

Doesn't help that it's one of the more gender-differentiated STEM fields. I sure do freakin wonder if that plays a role at all. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

I've seen tons of comments like these on Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter, particularly about feminists and BLM protesters, but I think the comments that chill me the most are about Muslim people. Islamaphobic comments I've seen are more often met with applause and agreement over any kind of harmful discourse. It's unsettling.

I'm not following this logic. The point of agreeing to the Terms of Service is giving permission to your provider to use whatever data you provide for collection. If you are uncomfortable with a free service using your data, don't agree to the terms of service. It's an understandable, reasonable boundary and if their data collection is something you disagree with, then don't use their program.

I feel like as a whole, people who use the entire google interface profit from getting data collected. Data is important to figure out how and why people do the things they do. We can use this data to change what isn't working and to reinforce what is. It may just be because I'm a psych major and I've had the importance of data shoved down my throat, but I don't feel like I lose importance or individuality by being a data point on a spreadsheet. My tiny contribution to the population of Internet users helps improve its functioning.

I may not be fully understanding, but how is google not innovative? Why the airquotes? One may say that organizing content on the internet isn't incredibly innovative or scholarly, but I feel like it definitely is. Innovation is, in my opinion, changing a flawed design for the better. Organizing basically the entire internet is groundbreaking to me, even though it sounds quite simple.

This is an interesting bit because I'm getting the vibe that Watters is undermining the importance of digital citizenship being taught in schools. I understand and agree that giving young people their own independent web domain is a great case for individuality, but I'd sooner have a high schooler learn about the repercussions of cyber bullying than running a website. I find this ironic because she seems to think this isn't as important but later mentions that students who were given domains still talked frequently about proper digital citizenship. I may not be understanding her properly, but I'm not exactly following this train of thought.

Not necessarily the most insightful comment on this thread, but my immediate thought was "damn right students should keep their webpage since we pay so dang much to go here"