on MySpace role modeling and authentication

I've been taking a step back lately and thinking about the way current efforts seem to want to push not pull girls and women into technology.

What kind of women are they trying to push? Will current efforts just lead to women who tend to be, to put it one way, a bit more male-brained than the average girl?

Where's the gender variant diversity in that? I'd rather try to change the field than box the people that come into the so-called "pipeline".

That's a large task, but we have to get started somewhere.

I'm using this blog to reach a larger (or rather, more powerful) audience for the moment, but I think there's so much strength and potential in those that LJ and MySpace.

One issue, though, in MySpace, is that of user authentication. Amazon solves this using credit card information (trademarked, and probably patented, in the form of Real Name (tm)). But that's not a feasible solution for youth and folks that just don't have or want credit cards.

I'm guessing there's some kind of integrated photogrammatic-ish and/or inverse BRDF solution, and I'll give it some thought.

Better user authentication, in the authentic identity sense, would make it easier for MySpace and other networks to grow trust and make it a space for, perhaps one day, role modeling within and across communities.