Amazon.co.uk Review
Meet Ada Lovelace, daughter of mathematician Annabella Byron and poet Lord Byron, and a major contributor to Charles Babbage's famous
Analytic Engine. Lovelace is in many ways the patron saint of Sadie Plant's exploration of women's roles in the creation of modern technology. The book begins with Lovelace's story, and elements of her writings appear throughout the book--sometimes to emphasize points but often to exemplify attitude. They also serve to anchor Plant's dynamic, almost stream-of-consciousness approach as we travel to 19th-century Europe to meet the nameless women who laid the foundation of modern technology with the development of weaving, survey the major female technological innovators of today, and even explore female figures in technology-based fiction.
Plant's "cyberfeminist rant", as William Gibson calls it, attempts to demonstrate that women have always used technology. You won't find victims here, rather women who were empowered by the technological innovations in their lives. What emerges is a very nontraditional feminist picture, one in which women are neither bystanders nor victims but are in many ways the unsung heroes of technical innovation. The author also points to a future where, within the zeros and ones of cyberspace, many dichotomies such as life/machine, let alone male/female, may blur in unexpected ways.
Synopsis
A provocative and accessible investigation of the intersection between women, feminism, machines and, in particular, information technology, this text argues that the computer is rewriting old conceptions of "man and his world". It suggests that the telecoms revolution is also a sexual revolution which undermines the fundamental assumptions crucial to patriarchal culture. Historical, contemporary and possible future developments in telecommunications and IT are interwoven with the past, present and future of feminism, women and sexual difference. Sadie Plant challenges the belief that man was ever in control either of his own agency, the planet, or his machines. The theory is that this belief is undermined by the new scientific paradigms emergent from theories of chaos, complexity and connectionism, all of which suggest that the old distinctions between man, woman, nature and technology need to be reassessed.