I'm adding a 'Girl Geek' technology section to Beautifulmagazine. Beautiful is a women's glossy lifestyle magazine and women's magazines generally don't have tech sections because it's seen as a male domain, but millions of women use technology and gadgets every day. We are interested in the subject, enough for it to be one of our general topics of conversation, and we get excited about new gadgets and inventions as much as any man.
It's just as thrilling for us women when we see the dizzying speed of change as each of our new, amazing gadgets, within a matter of weeks, begin to feel as clunky as a house brick compared to the latest upgrade. This buzz is something I certainly feel and I hunger for the latest techie news. Am I a geek? I suppose so, but no more so than all the other women I know.
Advances in technology are surpassing all our imaginations and it's only what seems like a few weeks ago (but which was actually 2006), I was reading about 3D printers, which at the time I thought were pretty astonishing as you could create a functional ball bearing by designing it on a computer and 'printing' it out. The potential of this technology was mind boggling. The concept of being able to 'print' or manufacture a three dimensional object from a digital file was like something out of science fiction.
This was particularly interesting to me as a techno-geek and sci-fi fan (yes and a woman) as years before I'd had my mind boggled by visions of nanomachines - or printers - that would build anything you like by sequencing atoms together to form anything you like - just like a Star Trek replicator. It would mean we can literally create anything we want using these machines, food, medicine, clothing, electronics, body parts and even another replicating machine! The possibilities are endless.
And 3D printing has evolved so far that now we're manufacturing microscopic objects using nanoparticles and advances in bio-printing mean we can even print out body parts, such as ears or synthetic heart valves. According to scientists, replicating human organs using the technique will be mainstream in 20 years.
In a few years time you may be ordering your morning cup of tea from a machine that creates it out of nowhere from atoms. Or if we want some aspirin, you just feed in a code and it prints out the drug in your own home. "Shovel some nanoparticles in the replicator love I've got a headache."
Anyway, I've gone on about technology itself instead of my point that women are interested in technology as much as men are and that women's magazines should include techie news and reviews, but I suppose my digression is a good example of proof! So from now on, Beautiful will include a technology section. Am I going to give the Girl Geek page in Beautful magazine to a staff writer? Am I heck. I love tech so much that these pages are mine all mine!