Reload

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. Reload
offers an alternative picture of cyberspace as a complex and contradictory place where there is
oppression as well as liberation. It shows how cyberpunk's revolutionary claims conceal its ultimate
conservatism on matters of class, gender, and race. The cyberfeminists writing here view
cyberculture 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 the
relationship between people and virtual technologies--and feminist theoretical and critical
investigations of gender and technoculture. From a variety of viewpoints, the writers consider the
effects of rapid and profound technological change on culture, in particular both the revolutionary
and reactionary effects of cyberculture on women's lives. They also explore the feminist
implications of the cyborg, a human-machine hybrid. The writers challenge the conceptual and
institutional rifts between high and low culture, which are embedded in the texts and artifacts of
cyberculture.