Reload: Rethinking Women + Cyberculture

Most writing on cyberculture is dominated by two almost mutually exclusive visions:the heroic image of the male outlaw hacker and the utopian myth of a gender-free cyberworld. Reloadoffers an alternative picture of cyberspace as a complex and contradictory place where there isoppression as well as liberation. It shows how cyberpunk's revolutionary claims conceal its ultimateconservatism on matters of class, gender, and race. The cyberfeminists writing here viewcyberculture as a social experiment with an as-yet-unfulfilled potential to create new identities,relationships, and cultures.The book brings together women's cyberfiction--fiction that explores therelationship between people and virtual technologies--and feminist theoretical and criticalinvestigations of gender and technoculture. From a variety of viewpoints, the writers consider theeffects of rapid and profound technological change on culture, in particular both the revolutionaryand reactionary effects of cyberculture on women's lives. They also explore the feministimplications of the cyborg, a human-machine hybrid. The writers challenge the conceptual andinstitutional rifts between high and low culture, which are embedded in the texts and artifacts ofcyberculture. Read more