Male Mob at Macworld
Fortune magazine’s top corporations are mostly old-economy stalwarts: oil companies, banks, and retailers. But the products, corporations, and leaders that fire the imaginations of men these days are in technology—especially now that investment banking is in disgrace. Technology is the new frontier.
Silicon Valley is the cradle of dreams, and technology is the language that all self-respecting men must speak…Whether they have an eye for Jennifer Aniston, Jennifer Lopez, Brad Pitt, or XXX-rated celebrities, virtually all men lust after the latest gadgets. They admire those who make them–and especially those who make money from them.
An added bonus is that technology is still a man’s world. Women have shown their mettle in most domains, but not as much in the technology business. It’s still an area in which men’s competitiveness, obsessiveness, and love of gadgets give them the edge. It’s the frontier where they can range freely and do heroic deeds. And there are plenty of high-profile wealthy technopreneur role models for men of all ages: genomics guru Craig Venter, Apple’s Steve Jobs, and Linus Torvalds of Linux are just the tip of the iceberg.
And don’t forget Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Evan Williams of Twitter, and Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai of Foursquare. Social media is to today’s millennial generation what rock ’n’ roll was to baby boomers: a new and powerful mass cultural phenomenon that is defining and shaping attitudes, behaviors, and generational self-perception. It has eclipsed politics, corporations, and consumer power as the greatest agent of change, according to a summer 2010 survey by Euro RSCG Worldwide.
So IT and social media have generated the first and second waves of technology icons. Now venture capitalists are looking to fund new technologies to take over outdated energy and transportation systems. Chances are that, as with IT, the icons of these new technologies will be men. Despite the advances made by women, power generation, cars, boats, trains, and planes still tend to be guy things.
This post is an excerpt of Euro RSCG Worldwide PR’s “Male in the U.S.A.” study. To download the white paper, click here.
Image credit: Creative Commons/Ken-ichi@flickr.com
