Silicon Valley Isn’t a Meritocracy ⇥ wired.com

Alice Marwick, Wired:

When social technologies emerged, pundits and journalists hailed YouTube, Flickr, and Wikipedia as a way for individuals to fully participate in the creation and dissemination of culture and knowledge. But what is acceptable to create and disseminate has been increasingly circumscribed by what is acceptable to be publicly judged. The “edited self” is one constructed with a particular group of people in mind, and one that people expect will be scrutinized. The care with which people create their edited self is at odds with the stated ideals of equality, meritocracy, and collaboration that permeate the tech scene. And since women in the scene are subject to scrutiny for their appearance, information-sharing, and relationships in a way that men are not, there is a stark gender imbalance in the way user-created content is perceived and judged.