The Nature of the Beast - Computers as Theatre - page 19

What Do Women Want?
In 1981, my boss at Atari asked me to draw up a list of products for the personal computer that
might be interesting to women. What began as a request that seemed sane to the polyester-suited
dude who made it became a howling joke for several of my team of Atari 400/800 personal com-
puter software ideators and producers. We began thinking about the problem after a few drinks.
Appliances are certainly a problem, we thought. So why not repurpose Missile Command into
Appliance Command ? Sure, it wouldn't really run your appliances, but women enjoy running large
appliances as they dance around in shirtwaist dresses (given the demographic, we suspected
that my boss's mother was perhaps a victim of the post-WW II propaganda romancing gleaming
household appliances, aimed at getting the women the hell out of the workforce to make room
for returning veterans). Sure, we thought, that should fl y with the boys.
To be personal for a moment, we ladies know that every woman dreads the annual pelvic
exam. Our proposed product, the Atari Home Pelvic Exam , featured a chilled cartridge, cozy foot-
holders that could be attached to the screen, and other affordances that might have inspired
excellent research. Another distinctly female concern is personal appearance. Unwittingly foresee-
ing Photoshop , we proposed the Atari Stretch Mark Editor , my
personal favorite.
Yes, I got in trouble for that smart-assed list. My boss,
bless him, tried hard to persuade me that recipes and gro-
cery lists were the way to go. Before Hypercard (this is a test
of your age, young reader), there wasn't an obviously easy
way to fool around with recipes and grocery lists. But his ar-
gument was so touching, so sincere, that not a year has gone
by since that I have not had a computer in my kitchen, fool-
ing around with new ways to organize recipes, menus, and
my grocery list.
Golly, Barbie Fashion Designer was so liberating after all
those years in my apron.
400/800 computers. I consistently resisted. Finally, I went to the head of the
Home Computer Division and drew him a map of all the areas in which we
could be creating applications that had no equivalents in game systems—
personal fi nance, education, personal development, and useful tools like
word processing and spreadsheets. He gave me a raise and a promotion.