The Computer Pays Its Debt: Women, Textiles, and Technology, 1965-1985 | Center for Craft

In  The Fabric of Interface , Stephen Monteiro argues that our everyday digital practice has taken on traits common to textile and needlecraft culture. Our smart phones and tablets use some of the same skills—manual dexterity, pattern making, and linking—required by the handloom, the needlepoint hoop, and the lap-sized quilting frame. Monteiro

patriarchy mystifies technology, casting it as a domain beyond the possibility of comprehension for all but certain experts. Mystification hides the economics of accumulation that technologies serve, turning people’s attention to a marvelous innovation instead of the extraction it enables.