Zeros and Ones: Digital Women and the New Technoculture

Description

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.

Sadie Plant is 33. She received her PhD from the University of Manchester and is the author of The Most Radical Gesture: The Situationalist International in a Postmodern Age. She has been a lecturer in Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham and Research Fellow at the University of Warwick.