sadie plant

FOURTHESTATE•LONDONzeros+ones

DIGITAL WOMEN+ THE NEWTECHNOCULTUREc o ntents

preambleada

35

matrices

9

tensions11

on the cards

14

second sight18

anna 123

gambling on the futurebinaries

supporting evidence
genderquake
cultures

35

37

45

nets

46

digits

51

holes

55

cyborg manifestos

58

programming l anguage
shuttle systems
casting on
flight69

73

virtual aliens
cocoons

27

32

77

74

60

60

diagrams
eve 1

82

85

masterpieces
trials88

90

errors

93

eve 8

95

case study

97

what eve 8 next
monster 1

100

102

robotics

103

learning curves
anna o104

109

multiples112

switches

114

speed queens
secrets

115

121

grass

124

automata
bugs

125

127

disorders131

amazone137

beginning again
grapevines

140

143

enigmas144

monster 2

151

marriage vows
spelling

152

153

hysteresis

154

cybernetics

156

sea change

165

scattered brains
neurotics

171

intuition

176

cave manhooked
tact

166

177
182

185

cyberflesh·

191

mona lisa overdrive
runaway199

passing210

chemicals
xyz

218

214

194

the peahen's taleloops

symbionts
eve 2

233

237

pottering239

mutants

244

wetware248

dryware250

silicon25 1

quanta253

casting off
notes

223

229

256

257

bibliography297

acknowledgments

307

pream ble

Those were the days, when we were all at sea. It seems likeyesterday to me. Species, sex, race, class: in those days none ofthis meant anything at all. No parents, no children, just our­selves, strings of inseparable sisters, warm and wet, indistin­

guishable one from the other, gloriously indiscriminate, pro­miscuous and fused. No generations. No future, no past. An
endless geographic plane of micromeshing pulsing quanta, lim­
idess webs of interacting blendings, leakings, mergings, weaving
through ourselves, running rings around each other, heedless,needless, aimless, careless, thoughdess, amok. Folds and fold­ings, plying and multiplying, plicatirig and replicating. We had
no definition, no meaning, no way of telling each other apart.
We were whatever we were up to at the time. Free exchanges,
microprocesses finely tuned, polymorphous transfers without
regard for borders and boundaries. There was nothing to hangon to, nothing to be grasped, nothing to protect or be protected
from. Insides and outsides did not count. We gave no thought toany such things. We.gave no thought to anything at all. Every-

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thing was there for the taking then. We paid no attention: it wasall· for free. It had been this way for tens, thousands, millions,4billions of what were later defined as years. If we had thought
about it, we would have said it would go on forever, this fluent,
fluid world.
And then something occurred to us. The climate changed.
We couldn't breathe. It grew terribly cold. Far too cold for us.
Everything we touched was poisonous. Noxious gases and thin
toxic airs flooded our oceanic zone. Some said we had brought
it on ounelves, that all our activity had backfired, that we had
destroyed our environment by an accident we had provoked.
There were rumon of betrayal and sabotage, whisperings ofalien invasion and mutant beings from another ship.
Only a few of us survived the break. Conditions were soterrible that many of those who did pull through wished they
had died. We mutated to such an extent that we were un­recognizable to ounelves, banding together in units of a kindwhich, like everything, had been unthinkable before. We foundourselves woz:king as slave components of systems whose scales
and complexities we could not comprehend. Were we theirparasites? Were they oun? Either way we became componentsof our own imprisonment. To all intents and purposes, we
disappeared.
"Subtly, subtly, they become Invisible; wondtouSiy, won­drously, they become soundless-they are thus ablfl to be
their enemies' Fates."
Sun Tzu, The Art of war

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ada
In 1833, a teenage girl met a machine which she came to regard"

as a friend." It was a futuristic device which seemed to have

dropped into her world at least a century before its time.

Later to be known as Ada Lovelace, she was then Ada
Byron, the only child of Annabella, a mathematician who had
herself been dubbed Princess of Parallelograms by her husband,
Lord Byron. T he machine was the Difference Engine, a calcu­
lating system on which the engineer Charles Babbage had beenworking for many years. "We both went to see the thinking
machine (for such it seems) last Monday," Annabella wrote inher diary. To the amazement of its onlookers, it"raised several
Nos. to the 2nd & 3rd powers, and extracted the root of aquadratic Equation." While most of the audience gazed inastonishment at the machine, Ada "young as she was, under­stood its working, and saw the great beauty of the invention."
W hen Babbage had begun work on the Difference En­
gine, he was interested in·the possibility of"making machinery
to compute arithmetical tables.'' Although he struggled to per­suade the British government to fund his work, he had no
doubt about the feasibility and the value of such a machine.
Isolating common mathematical differences between tabulated
numbers, Babbage was convinced that this "method of differ­ences supplied a general principle by which all tables might becomputed through limited intervals, by one uniform process."

By 1822 he had made a small but functional machine, and "inthe year 1833, an ev�nt of great importance in the history of theengine occurred. Mr. Babbage had directed a p_ortion of it,

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consisting of sixteen figures, to be put .together. It was capableof calculating tables having two or three orders of differences;
and, to some extent, of forming other tables. The action of thisportion completely justified the expectations raised, and gave amost satisfactory assurance of its final success. "Shortly after this part of his machine went o n public dis­play, Babbage was struck by the thought that the Difference
Engine, still incomplete, had already superseded itself "Having,in the meanwhile, naturally speculated upon the general princi­
ples on which machinery for calculation might be constructed,
a principle of an entirely new kind occurred to him , the power ofwhich over the most complicated arithmetical operations
seemed nearly unbounded. On reexamining his drawings . . .
the new principle appeared to be limited only by the extent of
the mechanism it might require. " If the simplicity of the mech­anisms which allowed th�. Difference Engine to perform addi­
tion could be extended to thousands rather than hundreds ofcomponents, a machine could be built. which would "execute
more rapidly the calculations for which the Difference Engine
was intended; or, that the Difference Engine would itself besuperseded· by a far simpler mode of construction." The gov­
ernment officials who had funded Babbage's work on the firstmachine were not pleased to learn that it was now to be aban­
doned in favor of a new set of mechanical processes which"were essentially different from those of the Difference En­
gine." While Babbage did his best to persuade them· that the.
"fact of a new superseding an old machine, in a very few years,
is one of constant occurrence in our manufactories; and in­stances might be pointed out in which the advance of invention
has been so rapid, and the demand for machinery so great, that
half-finished machines have been thrown aside as useless before
their completion, . " Babbage's decision to proceed with his new

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machine was also his break with the bodies which had funded

his previous work.
Babbage lost the support of the state, but hehad already gained assistance of a very different kind.
"You are a brave man," Ada told Babbage, "to give your­self wholly up to Fairy-Guidance!-! advise you to allow your­self to be unresistingly bewitched ... " No one, she added,"knows what almost aufol energy & power lie yet undevelopped
in that wiry little system of mine."
In 1842 Louis Menabrea, an Italian military engineer, haddeposited his Sketch of the Analytical Engine Invented by Charles

Babbage in the Bibliotheque Universelle de Geneve. Shortly
after its appearance, Babbage later wrote, the "Countess ofLovelace informed me that. she had translated the memoir of
Menabrea." Enormously impressed by this work, Babbage in­vited her to join him in the development of the machine .. "I
asked why she had not herself wr itten an· original paper on a
subject with which she was so intimately acquainted? To thisLady Lovelace replied that the thought had not occurred to her.

I then suggested that she should add some notes to Menabrea's
memoir; an idea which was immediately adopted."

Babbage and Ada developed an intense relationship. "We

discussed together the various illustrations that might be intro­
duced," wrote Babbage."I suggested several, but the selection
was entirely her own.So also was the algebraic working out ofthe different problems, except, indeed, that relating to the num­bers ofBernc;mlli, which I had offered to do to save Lady Love­lace the trouble. This she sent back to me for an amendment,·having detected a grave mistake which I had made in the pro­cess.""A strong-minded womanl Much like her mother, eh1 WealS
green spectacles and writes learned books.

. . She wants

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to upset the universe, and play dice with the hemispheres.
Women never know when to stop

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."

William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, The Difference Engine
Babbage's mathematical errors, and many of his attitudes,
gready irritated Ada. While his tendency to blame other bodies
for the slow progress of his work was sometimes well founded,

when he insisted on prefacing the publication of the memoir

and her notes with a complaint about the attitude of the British
authorities to his work, Ada refused to endorse him. "I neveram or will support you in acting on principles which I consider

not only wrong in themselves, but suicidal." She declared Bab­bage "one of the most impracticable, selfish, & intemperate
8

persons one can have to do with,'' and laid down several severe
conditions for the continuation of their collaboration. "Canyou," she asked, with-undisguised impatience, "undertake togive your mind wholly and undividedly, as a primary object thatno engagement is to interfere with, to the consideration of all
those matters in which I shall at times require your intellectual

assistance & supervision; & can you promise not to slur & hu;ry
things over; or to mislay & allow confusion & mistakes to enter
into documents &c?"

Ada waS, she said, "very much qfraid as yet of exci�g thepowers I know I have over others, & the evidence of which l havecertainly been most unwilling to admit, in fact for a. -lorig{ti;meconsidered quite fanciful and absurd . . . I therefore carefully
refrain from all attempts intentionally to exercise unusual pow­ers." Perhaps this was why her -work was simply attributed to

A.A.L. "It is not my wish to proclaim who has written it," shewrote. T hese were just a few afterthoughts, a mere commentaryon someone else's work. But Ada did want them to bear somename: "I rather wish to append anything that may tend hereaf-

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ter to individualize it & identify it, with other productions of thesaid A.A.L." And for all her apparent modesty, Ada knew how
important her notes really were. "To say the truth, I am rather

amazed at them; & cannot help being struck quite malgre moi,
with the really masterly nature of the style, & its Superiority tothat ofthe Memoir itsel£" Her work was indeed vasdy more
influential--and three times longer-than the text to which
they were supposed to be mere adjuncts. A hundred years be­fore the hardware had been built, Ada had produced the firstexample of what was later called computer programming.

matri ces

9

Distinctions between the m ain bodies o f texts and all their pe­ripheral detail-indices, headings, prefaces, dedications, appen­
dices, illustrations, references, notes, and diagrams-have long
been integral to orthodox conceptions of nonfiction books andarticles. Authored, authorized, and authoritative, a piece ofwriting is its own mainstream. Its asides are backwaters whichmight have been-and often are-compiled by anonymous edi-:
tors, secretaries, copyists, and clerks, and while they may well be
providing crucial support for a text which they also connect toother sources, resources, and leads, they are also sidelined anddownplayed.

i.,When Ada wrote her footnotes to Menabrea's text, herwork was implicidy supposed to be reinforcing these hierarchi­
cal divisions between centers and margins, authors and scribes.
Menabrea's memoir was the leading article; Ada's work wasmerely a compilation of supporting detail, secondary commen­
tary, material intended to back the author up. But her notes

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made enormous leaps of both quantity and quality beyond atext which turned out merely to be providing the occasion for
her work.
Only when digital networks arranged themselves inthreads and links did footnotes begin to walk all over what had
once been the bodies of organized texts. Hypertext programs

�ciples, hierarchies. Such networks are unprece­and the Net are webs of footnotes without central points, or­ganizing p

dented in terms of their scope, complexity, and the pragmatic

possibilities of their use. And yet they are also---ru1d have always
been-immanent to all and every piece of written work. "Thefrontiers of a book," wrote Michel Foucault long before thesemodes of writing hypertext or retrieving data from the Net1oemerged, "are never clear-cut: beyond the tide, the first lines,

and the last full stop, beyond its internal coDfiguration and its
autonomous form, it is caught up in a system of references toother books, other texts, other sentences: it is a node within
network."
Such complex patterns of cross-referencing have become
increasingly possible, and also crucial to dealing with the floodsof data which have burst the banks of traditional modes ofarranging and retrieving information and are now leaking

through the covers of articles and books, seeping past theboundaries of the old disciplines, overflowing all the classifica­
tions and orders of libraries, schools, and universities. And thesheer weight of data with which the late twentieth century finds
itself awash is only the beginning of the pressures under which
traditional media are buckling. If the "treatment of an irregularand complex topic cannot be forced in any single direction without
curtailing the potential for transfer," it has suddenly become

obvious that no topic is as regular and simple as was once as.:..

sumed. Reality does not run along the neat straight lines of the

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printed page. Only by "criss-crossing the complex topical land­
scape" can the " twiti goals of highlighting multifacetedness andestablishing multiple connections" even begin to be attained.

Hypertext makes it possible for "single (or even small numbersof) connecting threads" to be assembled into a " 'woven' inter­
connectedness" in which "strength of connection derives from_the partial overlapping of many different strands of connected­

ness across cases rather than from any single strand running
through large numbers of cases . . . ""It must be ·evident how multifarious and how mutuallycomplicated are the considerations," wrote Ada in her own
footnotes. "T here are frequendy several distinct sets of effects
going on simultaneously; all in a manner independent of eachother, and yet to a greater or less degree exercising a mutual

1

influence. To adjust each to every other, and indeed even to1

preceive and trace them out with perfect correctness and success, e.ntails difficulties whose nature partakes to a certain extent
of those involved in every question where conditions are very
numerous and inter-complicated; such as for instance the esti­
mation of the mutual relations amongst statistical phenomena,and of those involved in many other classes of facts."
She added, "All, and everything is naturally related andinterconnected. A volume I could write on this subject."te nsions
Just as individuated texts have become filaments of infinitely
tangled webs, so the digital machines of the late twentieth cen­tury weave new networks from-what were once isolated words,
numbers, music, shapes, smells, tactile textures, architectures,

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and countless channels as yet unnamed. Media become interac­
tive and hyperactive, the multiplicitous components of an im­
mersive zone which "does not begin with writing; it is directly
related rather to the weaving of elaborate figured silks."�
yarn is neither metaphorical nor literal, but quite simply mate­

2.story of computing, technolo_gy, the sciences and arts. In and,rial, a gathermg of threads which twist and turn through the�gh the ages of spinning and weavin&, back and fortheut of the punchea holes of automated looms, up and doW!!

�d silk, canvas and paper, brushes and pens, typewriters, car:.
�iages, tdephone wires , Ttthetic fibers, electrical fllam.ent§..
through the fabrication of fabrics, shuttles and looms, cotton

�con strands, fiber-optic cables, pixeled screens, telecom lines,

1

the World W ide Web, the Net, and matrig;s to come...

-2"Before you run out the door, consider two things:
The future Is already set, only the past can be changed, andNIt was worth forgetting, It's not worth remembering. "Pat Cadigan, Fools

When the first of the cyberpunk novels, William Gibson's

Neuromancer was · published in 1984, the cyberspace it described

was neither an actually existing plane, nor a zone plucked out of

the thin airs of myth and fantasy. It was a virtual reality which

was itself increasingly real. Personal computers were becoming
as ubiquitous as telephones, military simulation .technologies
and telecommunications· networks were known to be highlysophisticated, and arcade games were addictive and increasingly
immersive. Neuromancer was a fiction, and also another piece ofthe jigsaw which allowed these components to converge. In thecourse of the next decade, computers lost their significance as

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isolated calculators and word processors to become nodes of thevast global network called the Net. Video, still images, sounds,

voices, and texts fused into the interactive multimedia which
now seemed destined to converge with virtual reality helmets
and data suits, sensory feedback mechanisms and neural connec­
tions, immersive digital realities continuous with reality itsel£
W hatever that was now supposed to be.

At the time, it was widely assumed that machines ran on

more or less straightforward lines. Fictions might be speculativeand inspire particular developments, but they were not supposed
to have such immediate effects. Like all varieties of culturalchange, technological development was supposed to proceed

step after step and one at a time. It was only logical, after all. But

cyberspace changed all this. It suddenly seemed as if all thecomponents and tendencies which were now feeding into thisvirtual zone had been made for it before it had even been
named; as though all the ostensible reasons and motivationSunderlying their development had merely provided occasions
for the emergence of a matrix which Gibson's novel was nudging into place; as though the present was being reeled into afuture which had always been guiding the past, washing backover precedents completely unaware of its influence.

Neuromancer was neither the first nor the last of such con­fusions between fiction and fact, future and past. When Gibson
described 4'bright lattices of logic unfolding across that colorless

Man Turing's universal machine

void," his cyberspace was already implementing earlier--or
later--works of nonfiction:_

had drawn the devices of his day-calculators and typewriters­

W�En

into a virtual system which brought itself on-line in the Second
rld War; Ada's Analyticalgine, which backed the--punched-card processes of the automated weaving machine;

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and Jacquard's loom, which gathered itself on the gathering
threa9s of weavers who in turn were picking up on the threadsof the spiders and moths and webs of bacterial activity.

on the cards

1
4

Until the early eighteenth century, when mechanisms whichallowed looms to automatically select their own threads wereintroduced, it could take a weaver "two or three weeks to set up
a drawloom for a particular pattern." The new devices usedpunched-paper rolls, and then punched cards which, when they
were strung together in the early nineteenth century, made theloom into the first piece of automated machinery. It was Joseph
Marie Jacquard, a French engineer, who made this final move.
''Jacquard devised the plans of connecting each group of threads
that were to act together, with a distinct lever belonging exclu­
sively to that group. All these levers terminate in rods" and a"rectangular sheet of pasteboard" moves "with it all the rods ofthe bundle, and consequendy the threads that are ·connectedwith each of them." And if this board, "instead of being plain,
were pierced with holes corresponding to the extremities of thelevers which meet it, then, since each of the levers would passthrough the pasteboard during the motion of the latter, theywould all remain in their places. We thus see that it is easy so to
determine the position of the holes in the pasteboard, that, at
any given moment, there shall be a certain number of levers,and consequendy parcels of threads, raised, while the rest re­main where they were. Supposing this process is successively
repeated according to a law indicated by the pattern to be

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executed, we perceive that this pattern may be reproduced on
the stuff."
As a weaving system which "effectively withdrew controlof the weaving process from human workers and transferred it
to the hardware of the machine," the Jacquard loom was "bitterly opposed by workers who saw in this migration of control apiece of their bodies literally being transferred to the machine."
The new frames were famously broken by Luddite rioters towhom, in his maiden speech in the House of Lords in 18 12,
Lord Byron offered his support. "By the adoption of one species of frame in particular," he said, "one man performed thework of many, and the superfluous laborers were thrown out of
employment. Yet it is to be observed that the work thus exe­
cuted was inferior in quality; not marketable at home, and1merely hurr ied over with a view to exportation. It was called, in5

the cant of the trade, by the name of 'Spider-work.' "Byron was concerned that his peers in the Lords would
think him "too lenient towards these men, & half a framebreaker
mysel£" But, unfortunately for both his argument and thehandloom weavers who were thrown out of work, the fabrics-woven on the new looms soon surpassed both the quantity andquality of those which had been made by hand. And the Spiderwork did not stop here. These automated processes were only
hints as to the new species Byron's daughter had in store.

"I do not believe that my father was (or ever could have been)such a Poet as I shall be an Analyst."

Ada Lovelace, July 1843

Babbage had a long-standing interest in the effects of automatedmachines on traditional forms of manufacture, publishing his
research on the fate of cottage industries in the Midlands and

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North of England, The Economy of Manlifactures and Machinery,in 1832. The pin factory with which Adam Smith had illus­
trated his descriptions of the division of labor had made a great
impression on him and, like his near contemporary Marx, he
could see the extent to which specialization, standardization,and systematization had made both factories and economies
into enormous automated machines themselves. Babbage waslater to look back on the early factories as prototype "thinking
machines," and he compared the two main functions of theAnalytical Engin�torage and calculation-to the basic com­ponents of a textiles plant. "The Analytical Engine consists of
two parts," wrote Babbage. "1st. The store in which all thevariables to be operated upon, as well as all those quantities
which have arisen from the result of other operations, areplaced," and "2nd. The mill into which the quantities about tobe operated upon are always brought." Like the computerswhich were later to run, and still do, the Engine had a store andmill memory and processing power.
It was the Jacquard loom which really excited and inspired
this work. Babbage owned a portrait ofJacquard, woven on oneof his looms at about 1,000 threads to the inch and its produc­tion had demanded the use of some 24,000 punched cards, each
one capable of carrying over 1,000 punch-holes, and Babbage
was fascinated by the fine-grained complexity ofboth the clothand the machine which had woven it. "It is a known fact," hewrote, "that the Jacquard loom is capable of weaving any design
which the imagination of man may conceive.'' The portrait wasa five-feet-square "sheet of woven silk, framed and glazed, but
looking so perfectly like an engraving, that it had been mistaken
for such by two members of the Royal Academy."
While it was "generally supposed that the Difference En­
gine, after it had been completed up to a ce�tain point, su ggested
,

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the idea of the Analytical Engine; and that the second is in fact
the improved offSpring of the first, and grew out of the existenceof its predecessor," Ada insisted that the Analytical Engine wasan entirely new machine: "the ideas which led to the AnalyticalEngine occurred in a manner wholly independent of the latterengine, and might equally have occurred had it never existed
nor been even thought of at all." The Difference Engine could"do nothing but add; and any other processes, not excepting
those of simple subtraction, multiplication and division, can be
performed by it only just to that extent in which it is possible,
by judicious mathematical arrangement and artifices, to reducethem to a series of additions." As such, it is "the embodying of

one particular and very limited set of operations, which ... may be
expressed thus (+,+,+,+,+,+), or thus, 6 (+). Six repetitions of1

the one operation, +, is, in fact, the whole sum and object of

7

that engine." But if the Difference Engine could simply add up,
the Analytical Engine was capable of performing the "whole ofarithmetic."

Women can't add, he said once, Jokingly. When I asked him
what he meant, he said, For them, one and one and one andone don't make four.

What do they make? I said, expecting five or three.
Just one and one and one and one, he said.
Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale

"If we compare together the powers and the principles of con­struction of the Difference and of the Analytic Engines," shewrote, "we shall perceive that the capabilities of the latter are
immeasurably more extensive than those of the former, and thatthey in fact hold to each other the same relationship as that ofanalysis to arithmetic." It was, as Babbage wrote, "a machine of

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the most general nature." This machine could not merely syn­thesize the data already provided by its ope�tor, as the Differ­ence Engine had done, but would incarnate what Ada Lovelace
described as the very "science of operations."s e c o n d sight1
8

Babbage's attempts to build an adding machine were not with­out precedent. Wilhelm Leibniz's seventeenth-century Stepped
Reckoner was marketed on the basis that it would "be desirable
to all who are engaged in computations . . . the managers offinancial affairs, the administrators of others' estates, merchants,
surveyors, geographers, navigators, astronomers, and those con­nected with any of the crafts that use mathematics." His work
was in part inspired by the Pascaline, developed by Blaise Pascal
in 1642. This machine used rotating wheels and a ratchet toperform addition and subtraction and was also designed as adevice "by means of which you alone may, without any effort,
perform all the operations of arithmetic, and may be relieved of
all the work which has often times fatigued your spirit when
you have worked with the counters or with the pen."
While Babbage's Difference Engine had already improvedon these earlier designs, the Analytical Engine was a vasdy supe­rior machine. And it was, as Ada wrote, "the introduction of
the principle which Jacquard devised for regulating, by meansfor punched cards, the most complicated patterns in the fabrica­tion of brocaded stuffS," which gave the Analytical Engine its"distinctive characteristic" and "rendered it possible to endow
mechanism with such extensive faculties as bid fair to make thisengine the executive right-hand of abstract algebra.

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"The mode of application of the cards, as hitherto used in
the art of weaving, was not found, however, to be sufficiendy
powerful for all the simplifications which it was desirabl� toattain in such varied and complicated processes as those requiredin order to fulfil the purposes of an Analytical Engine. A
method was devised of what was technically designated backing
the cards in certain groups according to certain laws. The objectof this extension is to secure the possibility of bringing any
particular card or set of cards into use any number of times succes­
sively in the solution of one problem." This sophistication of thepunched-card system caused "the prism over which the train ofpattern cards is suspended to revolve backwards instead of for­wards, at pleasure, under the requisite circumstances; until, by
so doing, any particular card, or set of cards, that has done duty
once, and passed on in the ordinary regular succession, isbrought back to the position it occupied just before it was used
the preceding time. The prism then resumes its forward rotation, and thus brings the card or set of cards in question intoplay a second time." The cards were selected by the machine asit needed them, and effectively functioned as a filing system, ameans of storage and retrieval which allowed the engine to draw
on its own information as required without having to make alinear run through all its cards.
"There is no limit to the number of cards that can be used.
Certain stuffi require for their fabrication not less than twenty
thousand cards," and because their repetition "reduces to animmense extent the number of cards required," the Engine
could "far exceed even this quantity." This was an improve­
ment "especially applicable wherever cycles occur in mathemati­
cal operations," so that "in preparing data for qlculations by
the engine," wrote Ada, "it is desirable to arrange the order andcombination of the processes with a view to obtain them as

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much as possible symmetrically and in cycles." Ada defined any"recurring group" as "a cycle. A cycle of operations, then, must
be understood to signify any set of operations which is repeatedmore than �>nee. It is equally a cycle, whether it be repeated twice
only, or an indefinite number of times; for it is the fact of arepetition occurring at all that constitutes it such. In many cases ofanalysis there is a recurring group of one or more cycles; that is, acycle of a cycle, or a cycle of cycles . . ."The Engine's capacity to circulate its data also meant that
it was always "eating its own tail," as Babbage described it, sothat "the results of the calculation appearing in the table column
mightbe made to affect the other columns, and thus change theinstructions set into the machine." The Engine "could makejudgements by comparin:?; numbers and then act upon the resultof its comparisons--thus proceeding upon lines not uniquely
specified in advance by the machine's instructions."
When Babbage had talked about the Analytical Engine's
ability to anticipate the outcomes of calculations it had not yet
made, it was felt that his "intellect was beginning to become�ranged." But Babbage's forward thinking was not a patch on
Ada's own anticipative powers. "I do not think you possess half
m y forethought, & power of seeing all possible contingencies(probable & improbable, just alike)," she told Babbage.
"I am a Prophetess born Into the world, & this conviction fills
me with humility, with fear and trembling!"

Ada Lovelace, November 1844

Ada hoped that the difficulties in the way of constructing either
the Difference Engine or the Analytical Engine " will not ulti­
mately result in this generation's being acquainted with theseinventions through the medium of pen, ink, and paper merely,"

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but she also had no doubt that the immediate construction of
the machine was not the only key to its influence. Any suchdevelopment, she writes, will have "various collateral influ­

ences, beside the main and primary object attained." And "inso distributing and combining the truths and the for mulae of
analysis, that they may become most easily and rapidly amenable
to the mechanical combinations of the engine, the relations andthe nature of many subjects in that science are necessarily

thrown into new lights, and more profoundly investigated. Thisis a decidedly indirect, and a somewhat speculative, consequenceof such an invention. It is however pretty evident, on generalprinciples, that in devising for mathematical truths a new form
in which to record and throw themselves out for actual use,views are likely to be induced, which should again react on the
more theoretical phase of the subject."
The Engine was left on the nineteenth-centur y drawing

board, and it was a hundred years before anything akin to Ada's

software would find the hardware on which to run. Even themost interested parties tend to think that Ada, for all her fore­sight, had no influence on the machines which were to come,regarding both her programs and the Analytical Engine itself as
aberrant works of genius so untimely as to be more or lessirrelevant to the future course of the machines.
But technical developments are rarely simple matters ofcause and effect, and Ada was r ight to assume that the Engine

would have more than an immediate influence. While they may

have left few trails of the kind which can easily be followed andpackaged into neat and linear historical accounts, Ada and hersoftware did not evaporate. The programs began to run as soon
as she assembled them.

Lack of public support, funding, Babbage's own eccentric­

ities, and ill health all contributed to the abandonment of the

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machine. But the greatest obstacle to the construction of theAnalytical Engine was simply technical capacity. The Engine
demanded an attentio� to both precision and abstraction which
earlier, single-purpose machines had not required, and for all its
sophistication, nineteenth-century engineering was neither ac­
curate nor diverse enough to produce even the machines capa­
ble of manufacturing the components for such a machine.
While Henry Maudslay, for example, had developed screw cut­ting at the end of the eighteenth century, the absence of univer­
sal standards for its threads constituted an enormous obstacle tothe construction of a machine as precise as the Analytical En­
gine. But if the Analytical Engine suffered at the time for the
want of precision engineering, it also played a leading role in thedevelopment of the capacity necessary to its own construction.
An 1846 reference work on the lathe included Babbage's "On
the Principles of Tools for Turning and Planing Metals" and,eager to acquire the components,Babbage collaborated with anumber of engineers, including Joseph Clement, who had
worked with Maudslay on the first mechanized lathes, and Jo­
seph Whitworth, whose 1841 paper "On a Universal System ofScrew Threads" was already a consequence ofBabbage's exact­
ing demands for his machines. This text also triggered a processof standardization which was in widespread use by the late1850s and was crucial to all subsequent engineering, scientificexperiment, and of course, computing itsel£ The Engine wasassembling the processes and components from which it would
eventually be built.
The Analytical Engine also fed back into the practices
from which it had most immediately emerged. It was, wrote
Ada, such a superb development of automated weaving that its
discoveries were used "for the reciprocal benefit of that art."
The "introduction of the system of backing into the Jacquard-

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loom itself" meant that "patterns which should possess symme­
try, and following regular laws of any extent, might be woven
by means of comparatively few cards.''..Unbuttoning the coat, he thrust his hands Into the trouser­
pockets, the better to display the waistcoat, which was
woven In a dizzy mosaic of tiny blue-and-white squares. Ada
Chequers, the tailors called them, the Lady having createdthe pattern by programming a Jacquard loom to weave purealgebra. "William Gibson and·aruce Sterling, The Difference Engine

2

anna 1

In 1933, Sigmund Freud made his final attempt to solve theriddle of femininity: "to those of you who are women," hewrote, "this will not apply-you are yourselves the problem."Having dealt with its wants and deficiencies and analyzed its
lapses and absences, he had only a few more points to make. "Itseems," he wrote, "that women have made few contributions
to the inventions and discoveries of the history of civilization.''
They lacked both the capacity and the desire to change thew.prld. They weren't logical, they couldn't think straight, they
flitted around and couldn't concentrate.
Distracted by the rhythmic beat of a machine, Freudlooked up to see his daughter at her loom. She had wandered
off, she was miles away, lost in her daydreams and the shutde's
flight. But the sight of her gave him second thoughts. When hetook up the thread, he had changed his mind: "There is, how-

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ever, one technique which they may have invented�at ofplaiting and weaving.
"If that is so, we should be tempted to guess the uncon­
scious motive for the achievement," he writes. "Nature herself
would seem to have given the model which this achievement
imitates by causing the growth at maturity of the pubic hair thatconceals the genitals. The step that remained to be taken lay inmaking the threads adhere to one another, while on the bodythey stick into the skin and are only matted together." Since she
has only a hole where the male has his source of creativity, thefolding and interlacing of threads cannot be a question of athrusting male desire. Unless she was hiding something else, theprocesses which so engrossed her must, of course, be a matter ofconcealing the shameful "deficiency" of the female sex.
Take Anna: a weaver and a spinster too, working to cover
her wounded pride, her missing sense of self, the holes in herlife and the gaps in her mind. She simply doesn't have what it
takes to make a difference to the civilized world. Her work is anatural compensation for a natural flaw. All she can discover is
her own incompletion; all she can invent are ways and means toprocess and conceal her sense of shame.
If weaving was to count as an achievement, it was not evenone of women's own. Their work is not original or creative:
both the women and their cloths are simply copying the matted
tangles of pubic hair. Should they have pretensions to authority,
they would only be faking this as well. Women "can, it seems,(only) imitate nature. Duplicate what nature offers and pro­duces. In a kind of technical assistance and substitution." Weav­ing is an automatic imitation of some bodily function alreadybeyond the weaver's control. She is bound to weave a costumefor the masquerade: she is an actress, a mimic, an impersonator,
with no authenticity underneath it all. She has nothing to re-

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veal, no soul to bare, not even a sex or a self to please. He pulls
aside the veils, the webs of lies, the shrouds of mystery, and thelayers of deception and duplicity, and finds no comfort, nothere there. Only "the horror of nothing to be seen." Good ofher to cover it up for him .
This tale of absence, castration, deficiency, negativity, sub­stitution was composed by one whom Gilles Deleuze and Felix
Guattari describe as "an overconscious idiot who has no under­
standing of multiplicities." From Freud's point of view, there is
one and its other, which is simply what one sees of it. And what
one sees is nothing at all . "Because the path it traces is invisible
and becomes visible only in reverse, to the extent that it istravelled over and covered by the phenomena it induces within
the system, it has no place other than that from which it is'n.llssing,' no identity other than that which it lacks."
Anna Freud's biographer describes her as a woman who"specialized in reversals, in making the absent present, the lost
found, the past current . . . she could also make the undone
4one, or-even more valuable--doable. When she was tired
and faced with a stack of letters to answer, for example, shewould simply set her pen down on a blank page and scurry it
along, making quick mountain ranges of scribble. Then she
would sign her name under the rows of scribble in her charac­
teristic way, as one flourishing word: ANNAFREUD."
After that, it was downhill all the way "Having thus writ­
ten a letter in fantasy with complete ease, she wrote a real letter
helped by the sense that the task was accomplished anyway." It's
easy to complete a job already done. "Her lectures were com­posed in the same way First she lectured in her imagination,
enjoying the thunderous applause, and then she made an outlineof what she had said, adjusting it if she needed to for greater
simplicity and coherence. Later, with her outline in hand, she
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would give the lecture extempore. The method-if it can becalled that--also supplemented her pleasure in sprints ofthought. Intellectually she was . . . a quick sketcher. "No doubt Freud despaired at such unorthodox approaches
to her work. It seemed she did everything in reverse, backward,
upside down, contrary to any rational approach. But if Anna's
techniques appeared to be the random tactics of a scatteredbrain, knowing something backward and inside out is far inadvance of any straightforward procedure. And she was hardly

alone in her topsy-turvy ways. This ability to win "victories inadvance, as if acquired on credit" may not figure in the history of
discoveries and inventions familiar to Freud, but this is only
because it underlies the entire account. According to Marshall
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McLuhan, "the technique ofbeginning at the end of any opera­
�n whatever, and of working backwards from that point to th�

beginning" was not merely an invention or discovecy to be
added to �t: it was "the invention of invention" itsel£

This is hysteresis, the lagging of effects behind their causes.

Reverse engineering: the way hackers hack and pirates conspireto lure the futUre to their side . . Starting at the end, and then_:ngaging in a process which simultaneously assembles and dis­mandes the route back to the start, the end, the future, the pas�
who's counting now? As Ada said, she "did everything topsy­

turvy, & certainly ought to have come into the worldfeet down­wards. " M ere discoveries were not enough for her: "I intend toincorporate with one department of my labours a complete
reduction to a system, of the principles and methods of discov­

ery . ,The prevalence of these backward moves is not the least of

the reasons why histories of techriology-and indeed histories
of anything at all-Me always riddled with delicious gaps, mys­teries, and riddles just like those perplexing Freud. No straight-

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forward account can ever hope to deal with the tactical advan­
tages gained by such disorderings of linear time. The names anddates and geat achievements of the Read Only M,emory called
�tOJY may enjoy their fifteen kilobytes of digital fame on thelatest encyclopedic compact disc, but what announce them­selves to be founding fathers, points of origin, and defining
moments only ever serve as distractions from the ongoing pro­
cesses, the shifting differences that count. These are subde andfine grained, often incognito, undercover, in disguise as mere
and minor details. If, that is, they show themselves at all.
"Ada's method, as will appear, was to weave daydreams Intoseemingly authentic calculations. "Doris Langley Moore, Ada, Countess of Lovelace2
7

ga m b l i n g on t h e fut u re"That you are a peculiar-very pecu lia r-s pe cimen of the femi­nine race, you are yourself aware." They called her "wayward,
wandering . . . deluded. " She didn't argue; she seemed not tocare. "The woman brushed aside her veil, with a swift gesture ofhabit" and, as though responding to Sigmund Freud, said,"There is at least some amusement in being so curious a riddle. "She didn't have a p.ame to call her own, but she did have
many avatars: Ada Augusta King, Countess of Lovelace; Ada
Lovelace, nee Byron; A.A.L., the first programm er; She is alsoAda..
the language of the United States military m.achine. "Sheis the Queen of Engines, the Enchantress of Number. "Soon after Ada's birth, Lord Byron went his own opiatedway, and Lady Byron brought her daughter up with all the

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excesses of stringent discipline to which well-bred girls were
supposed to be subject. After rumors of a scandalous affair, shemarried William, a man in his thirties, when she was still in her
teens, and became Ada King in 1 835. Three years later, when

William inherited his father's tide, she became a countess inname as well as deed.
When she married, her mother instructed her to bid"adieu to your old companion Ada Byron with all her peculiar­
ities, caprices, and self-seeking; determined that as A.K. you

will live for others . " She tried to be the dutiful daughter and did
her best to lead a domesticated life. She was the mother of twoboys and a girl by the age of twenty-four. But it wasn't long
before she was describing her children as "irksome duties &2

nothing more. " Although she had "wished for heirs, " she had

8never "desired a child," and described herself as having a "total
deficiency in all natural love of children." She wrote, "To tell
the honest truth I feel the children much more nuisance thanpleasure & cannot help remembering that I am not naturally or
originally fond of children. " She wrote of her husband withaffection, describing him as "my chosen pet, " but also expressed
her indifference to any "mortal husband," even her own.

"No

man would suit me, " she wrote, "tho' some n:Ught be a shade or
two less personally repugnant to me than others. "One of Ada's most long-standing and trustwor

thy friends

was the acclaimed mathematician Mary Somerville , who had
published theConneaion of the Physical Sciences in the early

1 830s. Just after her marriage �he wrote to Mary, "I now read
Mathematics every day, & am occupied on Trigonometry & inpreliminaries to Cubic and Biquadratic Equations. So you seethat matrimony has by no means lessened my taste for thesepursuits, nor my determination to carry them on. " She also
gained many new interests after her children were born. She lost

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thousands at the races and, seduced by her mathematical prow­
ess and her reassurances that she really did have "a system,"many of her male companions were also encouraged to do thesame. This was an illegitimate use of her already dubious inter­
est in mathematics. "The passions suffer no less by this gaming
fever than the understandings and the imagination. What vivid,
unnatural hope and fear, joy and anger, sorrow and discontent
burst out all at once upon a roll of the dice, a turn of the card, a
run of the shining gurneys! W ho can consider without indigna­tion that all those womanly affectionS , which should have beenconsecrated to children and husband, are thus vilely prostituted
and thrown away. I cannot but be grieved when I see theGambling Lady fretting and bleeding inwardly from such evil
and unworthy obsessions; when I behold the face of an angelagitated by the heart of a fury!"
Ada was ill for much of her short life, walking with
crutches until the age of seventeen, and endlessly subject to thefits, swellings, faints, asthmatic attacks, and paralyses which were
supposed to characterize hysteria. "Heaven knows what intense
suffering & agony I have gone thro ' ; & how mad & how reckless& desperate I have at times felt," she wrote. "There has been no
end to the manias & whims I have been subject to, & whichnothing but the most resolute determination on my part could
have mastered."
Like many of her ailing contemporaries, Ada had been
subjected to a variety of treatments before she developed an"opium system" in the 1 840s. This was supposed to bring her
down, but it only added to her volatility. "No more laudanum
has been taken as yet," she wrote at one point. "But I doubt
another twenty..:.four hours going over without. I am beginningto be excited, & my eyes burn again. " She would, she wrote,take laudanum "not for ever," but "as a regular thing once or

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twice a week. " The drug had "a remarkable effect on my eyes,
seeming to free them, & to make them open & cool. " In opium
lay the vast expanses, orders, and harmonies conjured by mathe­
matics: "It makes me so philosophical, " she wrote, " & so takes
off all fretting eagerness & anxieties. It appears to harmonize thewhole constitution, to make each function act in a just propor­

tion; (with judgment, discretion, moderation). " Her doctor "seems
to think it is not a mere palliative but has a far more radical
effect. Since this last dose, I am inclined to think so myself . . .
It is a pity that instead of ordering Claret some months ago, he
had not advised laudanum or Morphine. I think he has got thething at last. "In 1851 a uterine examinatio� revealed "a very deep and
30extensive ulceration of the womb" which her doctor thought

must long have been "the cause of much derangement ofhealth." She died in 1852 at the age of thirty-six.
They called her complex of diseases hysteria, a diagnosis
and a term which indicated wayward reproductive organs: hys­teria is derived from the Greek word hystera, and means 'wan­dering womb . ' There was a time when it wa5 widely believedthat "the womb, though it be so stricdy attached to the parts wehave described that it may not ehange place, yet often changes
position, and makes curious and so to speak petulant move­ments in the woman's body. These movements are various : towit, ascending, descending, convulsive, vagrant, prolapsed. The
womb rises to the liver, spleen, diaphragm, stomach, breast,
heart, lung, gullet, and head. " Although such direct connec­
tions with the womb had fallen out of medical favor by the endof the nineteenth century, hysteria continued to be associatedwith notions of a wandering womb.
"There is in my nervous system, " wrote Ada, "such utter
want of all ballast & steadiness, that I cannot regard my life or

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powers as other than precarious. " They said she was a nervous
system apparendy unable to settle down. She had what she
described as a "vast mass of useless & irritating POWER. OF

EXPRESSION which longs to have full scope in active manifes­
tation such as neither the ordinary active pursuits or duties oflife, nor the literary line of expression, can give vent to. " She
couldn't

concentrate,

flitting between

obsessions,resdess,

searching. At one point she declared, "There is no pleasure in
way of exercise equal to that of feeling one's horse flying underone. It is even better than waltzing. " At another the harp was"I play 4 & 5 hours generally, & never lessthan 3. I am never tired at the end of it. " Drama was anotherher greatest love:

contender: "Clearly the only one which directs my Hysteria

from all its mischievous & irritating channels. " But even thiswas a short-lived love: "I never would look to the excellence ofmere representation being satisfactory to me as an ultimate goal,or .exclusive object .

. ."Ada was hunting for something that would go more thall

l!llng new, something else. Even the doctors agreed that she
Jeere se� an exi�ting world. Something that would work: some­needed "peculiar & artificial excitements, as a matter of sqfety

even for your life & happiness. " Such stimulations simply did
not exist. She had to engineer them to suit hersel£

�

Hysterics were said to have "a hungry look about them. "Lik� all Luce Irigaray's women, · what they desire is precisely
nothing, and at the same time, everything. Always something
more and something else besides that o ne--sexual organ, forexample--that you give them, attribute to them" ; somethingwhich "involves a different economy more than anything else,
one that upsets the linearity of a project, undermines the goal­
object of a desire, diffuses the polarization towards a single
pleasure, disconcerts fidelity to a single discourse . .

."

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Ada was by turns sociable and reclusive, cautious and reck­
less, swinging between megalomaniac delight in her own bril­liance and terrible losses of self-esteem. There had been times
when she had almost given into the fashionable belief that over­exertion of the intellect lay at the root of her hysteria. At one
point she wrote, "Many causes have contributed to produce thepast derangements; & I shall in future avoid them. One ingredi­ent (but only one among many) has been too much Mathematics. "Not even countesses were supposed to count. But Ada
could be very determined, proud ofher own staying power, andsometimes absolutely convinced of her mathematical, musical,
and experimental genius. "I am proceeding on a track quite
peculiar and my own," she wrote. "I mean to do what I mean todo. " In 1834 she explained that "nothing but very close &
intense application to subjects of a scientific nature now seems
at all to keep my imagination from running wild, or to stop up
the void which seems to be left in my mind from a want of
excitement." And in spite of the prevailing opinion that num­bers were bad for her, she was never coaxed into "dropping thethread of science, Mathematics &c. These may be still my ulti­
mate vocation. "b i n a r i es

The postwar settlement was supposed to mark the dawn of a
new era of regulation and control: the Central Intelligence
Agency, United Nations, welfare states, mixed economies, andbalanced superpowers. This was a brave new equilibrated worldof self-guiding stability, pharmaceutical tranqUillity, white
goods, nuclear families, Big Brother screens, and, to keep these

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new shows on the road, _vast new systems of machinery capable�f recording, calculating, storing, and processing everything thatmoved. Fueled by a complex of military goals, corporate inter­
ests, solid-state economies, and industrial-strength testosterone,
�omputers were supposed to be a foolproof means to the famil­
iar ends of social security, political organization, economic or, der, prediction, and control. Centralized, programmable sys­
te:plS running on impeccably logical lines, these new machines
were supposed to make the most complex processes straightfor­
ward. But even in the most prosaic terms, this supposedly logi­
cal, directed, and controlled of zones has always been wildly
unpredictable. In 1950, when the processing power which can
now be inscribed on the surface of a silicon chip occupied vast

�mputers was five. In 1 9 5 1 the United States Census Bureau

air-conditioned rooms, IBM thought the total global market for33

put UNIVAC to work. t;p.e Bank of America installed Elec­tronic Recording Machine Accounting (ERMA) , and by . 1 957,

when the Type 650 was launched, IBM anticipated sales ofsomewhere between fifty and 250. Two years later some 2,000
computers were in use in government agencies and privatecompanies, and the figures were drastically revised. Perhaps
200,000 computers would be sufficient to saturate the market.

By the early 1 990s, IBM alone was selling twice that number ofsystems a week.
Computers have continued to pursue these accelerating,exponential paths, proliferating, miniaturizing, stringing them­selves together into vast telecommunications nets, embedding
themselves in an extraordinary variety of commodities, becom­
ing increasingly difficult to define. While the postwar program­�c; on_as a s�np_£onductor of electric current1 bY the end of the����P_l!�ers were composed of transistors ·which used!,?50s the integrated circuit conn.ected the transistors and in-

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gl

scribed them a sin e wafer of silicon. In the same vein of
exponential miniaturization, the microprocessor was developedin the early 1 970sz �ffective].y putting aJJ the solid-state circuits

e silicon chi . The screen mi_grated
m the TV set tn give the machine a monitor, and by th�

of a com uter onto a si

1 980s what had once been vast room-size systems without win­
dows on the world were desktop microprocessors.

�"The calculations takingplace within the machine are contin­

uously registered as clicks clicking high-pitched sounds as oftinkling bells, noises like those of a cash-register. There are.
lights that go Out and come on at Irregular lnt«vaas of time.
They are red orange blue. The apertures through which they3

shine are circular. Every divergence Is ceaselessly recorded

4

In the machine. They are scaled to the same unit whatever
their nature. "Monlque Wittig, Les G,.,lllres

Whether they are gathering information, telecommunicating,running washing machines, doing sums, or making videos, alldigital computers translate information into the zeros and ones,;t;s of eigh_!. The z;;,s and ones of machineof machine code. These binary digits are kn<>V!QL as bits and.!._trung together tn

code seem to offer themselves as perfect symbols of the orders ofWestern reality, the ancient logical codes which make the dif­�rence between on and off, right and left, light and dark, form
and matter, mind and body, white and black, good and evilt.
right and wrong. life and death. somegring and nothing, thisand that, here and there, inside and out, active and passive. true._!!ld false. yes and no, sanity and madness. health and sickness·�

up and down. sense and nonsense, west and east, north and_south. And they made a lovely couple when it came to sex. Man

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and woman, male and female, masculine and feminine: one andzero looked just right, made for each other: 1 , the deftnite,
upright line; and 0, the diagram of nothing at all : penis andvagina, thing and hole . . . hand in glove. A perfect match.

Jt takes two to make a bin:uy, but all these pairs are two of�C: and -�emale add up to man. There is no female equiva­

a kind, and the kind is always kind of one. 1 and 0 make anotherlent. No universal woman at his side. The male is one, one iseverything, and the female hasttnothing you can see . " Woman"functions as a hole, " a gap, a space, "a nothing--that is a noth­ing the same, identical, identiftable . . . a fault, a fiaw, a lack,an absence, outside the system of representations and auto­

representations. " � lays down the law and leaves no doubt:"There is woman only as excluded by the nature of things, " h e...

�e knows can only be described as "not-knowledge. "There i s "no such � as The woman, where the deftnit£._.explains. She is "not-all , " "not-whole," "not-one.'' and what-article stands for the universal. " She has no place like home,'J designate with a capital 0 . "-nothing of her own, "other than the place of the Other which, "writes Lacan,

supporting evidence�zed,

Man once made himself the point of everything. H e or

she operated. He ruled, she served. He made the great discover­ies, she busied herself in the footnotes. He wrote the books, shecopied them. She was his helpmate and assistant, working in
support of him, according to his plans. She did the jobs heconsidered mundane, often the ftddling, detailed, repetitive op­

erations with which he couldn't be ·bothered; the dirty, mind-

3

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less, semiautomatic tasks to which he thought himself superior. ·He cut the cloth to fit a salary; she sewed the seams at a piece­
rate wage. He dictated and she transcribed. In the newly auto­mated factories and mills she worked on the looms and sewing
machines; in the service of the great bureaucratic machines, sheprocessed the words, kept the records, did the sums, and filed
the accounts.

With "all the main avenues of life marked 'male,' and thefemale left to be female, and nothing else, " men were the ones
who could do anything. Women were supposed to be single­
purpose systems, highly programmed, predetermined systems
tooled up and fit for just one thing. They have functioned as"an 'infrastructure' unrecognized as such by our society and our
3culture. The use, consumption, and circulation of their sexual-

6

ized bodies underwrite the organization and the reproduction
�f the social order, in which they have never taken part as'subjects . ' " Everything depends on their complicity: women� the very "possibility of mediation, transaction, transition,transference--between man and his fellow-creatures, indeed
between man and himsel£ " Women have been his go­•

betweens, those who took his messages, decrypted his codes,
counted his numbers, bore his children, and passed on his ge­
netic code. They have worked as his bookkeepers and his mem­ory banks, zones of deposit and withdrawal, promissory notes,
credit and exchange, not merely servicing the social world, but
underwriting reality itsel£ Goods and chattels . The property ofman.

That's what it said in the manual. "It does strike me,though, that there are any number of women who resemble
Lady Ada, our Queen of Engines being a queen of fashion as
well. Thousands of women follow her mode. "I t takes time and patience. Many seconds pass. But, a s it��-�r:ns out, women have not merely had a minor part to play inthe emergence of the digital machines. When computers wen:

i'�t systems of transistors and valves which needed to be coaxed: · into action, it was women who turned them on. They have notmade some trifling contribution to an otherwise man-madetale: when computers became the miniaturized circuits ofsilicon chips, it was women who assembled the!!!. Theirs is not
a-subsidiary role which needs to be rescued for posterity, a small· supplement whose inclusion would set the existing records

straight: when cnmpntet:s were virtually real machines, women;rm applied to flesh and blood =;orkers, the bodies which

wrote tAw software on which they ran. And when comzzu ter was acomposed them were female. Hardware. software wetwa{S-before their beginnings and beyond their ends. women have3

been the simulators, assemblers, and programmers of the digital

7

machines.

ge n d e r q u a ke
"Tile Idea that a 'nothing to be seen ' . . . might yet havesome reality, would Indeed be Intolerable to man. "Luce lrlgaray, Speculum of the Other Woman

In the 1 990s, Western cultures were suddenly struck by an

extraordinary sense of volatility in � matters sexual: differences,

relations, identities, definitions, roles, attributes, means, andends. All the old expectations, stereotypes, senses of identity andsecurity faced challenges which have left many women with
unprecedented economic opportunities, technical skills , cui-

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tural powers, and highly rated qualities, and many men in aworld whose contexts range from alien. to unfamiliar.
This was neither a revolutionary break, nor an evolution­
ary reform, but something running on far more subde, wide­
ranging, and profound fault lines. Nothin� takes the final
credit--or the blame--for this shift which, as though in recog­
nition of the extent to which it defies existing notions of cul­tural change, has been defined as genderquake. But the newmachines, media, and means of telecommunication that com­pose what are variously called high, information, digital, or
simply new technologies �hich have emerged within the lasttwo decades have played an enormous and fascinating role in
the emergence �f this new culture. This is far from a question oftechnological, or any other, determinism. If anything, technologies are only ever intended to maintain or improve the statusquo, and certainly not to revolutionize the cultures into which
they are introduced. It is in spite of their tendencies to reduce,
objectify, and regulate everything that moves that computers
and the networks they compose run on lines quite alien to thosewhich once kept women in the home.
In some respects, the impact of these new �chines is
direct and very obvious. In the West, the decline of heavy
industry, the automation of manufacturing, the emergence ofthe service sector, and the rise of a vast range of new manufac­
turing and information-processing industries have combined toreduce the importance of the muscular strength and hormonal
energies which were once given such high economic rewards.
In their place come demands for speed, intelligence, and trans­
ferable, interpersonal, and co�cations skills . A�' the sametime, all the structures, ladders, and securities with which ca­reers and particular jobs once came equipped have been sub­sumed by patterns of part-time and discontinuous work which

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privilege independence, flexibility, and adaptability. These ten­dencies have affected skilled, unskilled, and professional workers
alike. And, since the bulk of the old full-time, lifelong work­force was until recendy male, it is men who have found them­selves most disturbed and disrupted by these shifts, and, by thesame token, women who they benefit.
These tendencies are far from new. Since the industrial
revolution, and with every subsequent phase of technologicalchange, it has been the case that the more sophisticated themachines, the more female the workforce becomes . . Automa­tion has been accompanied by what is often referred to as the
feminization of the workforce ever since the first automatic­
machines were operated by the first female workers, and thefears of unemplowent which have haunted modern discussions..2f!e_chnological innovation have always applied to male workers_!!ther than tbeit female pe�What is unprecedented is for male workers to be outnum­
bered by their female counterparts, as will clearly be the case in
the United Kingdom and the United States by the end of thiscentury. And with this tipping of the scales comes not only
unprecedented degrees of economic power, but also a radical
change in the status of female workers, an erosion of the malemonopoly on tasks and jobs once reserved for men, and a new
standing for the work involved in what were once considered tobe pin-money jobs for women supplementing male incomes.
Many of these tendencies are also at work in the emer­
gence of what the West was once in a position to call "the otherside of the world. " By the time the cultures of the old whiteyvorld ha�:l_�gticed they were even on the map, many of the so­.sallect.:_� . nations-Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Korea,,:Thiwan� and Indonesia-were already leaping ahead in an ecQ::
�omi��e which for at least two hundred years had been

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_governed by the We� And they are only the tips of an iceberg
of change which brings many regions into play: China, India,
East and Southern Africa, Eastern Europe, South America.
Given that the populations of China and India alone vasdy
outnumber those of the old white world, there seems litde
doubt that the days ofWestern empire have well and truly died.
These regions have genderquakes of their own. And whilea variety of political and religious fundamentalisms are doing
their best to maintain the status quo, there are few regions of theworld in which women are not asserting themselves with un­
precedented ingenuity and, very often, great success. IfWestern
women have dreamt of change for three hundred years, Asian
women: are playing roles which would have been unthinkable_
only a decade or so ago. By the mid-1 990s, 34 percent - ofChina's self-employed were women, and 38 percent of Sin­gaporean women managers were running companies of theirown. Thailand's leading hotel chain, Indonesia's largest taxi
company, and Taiwan's two largest newspaper groups were
owned by women. Japanese women still found themselves
treated as "office fiowers," composed only 0.3 percent ofboard
members ofJapanese firms, and made up just 6.7 percent of theJapanese parliament. But the sexual shift was also evident inJapan: 2 . 5 million women owned businesses, five out of every
six new Japanese firms were set up by women, and "a revolution
without marches or manifestos" was underway.
There is enormous resistance to these changes whenever
and wherever they occur. As their effects began to be felt in theearly 1 990s there were men who jerked their knees and went on
TV to lament the fact that ;�omen and robots had apparendy
�ired to take their masculinity away.- One 1 990� survey
found one in two fathers still believing that "a husband shouldbe the breadwinner and the wife should look after the home

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and children" ; the fear, if not the fact, of violent crime still
keeps many women in at night; domestic violence was preva­
lent; and in Britain, the benefits system was still conspiring withthe high costs and scarcity of child-care provision to keep many
women from working, learning, or-perish the thought-en­
joying themselves. As unprecedented numbers of women jug­
gled children, education, and work, many female workers foundthemselves saddled with the low paying, part-time, insecurejobs rejected by men. In the United States, almost half of em­
ployed women worked in technical, sales, and administrative
support jobs, and pay differentials were still very large: in 1 992
American women still earned only 75 cents for every dollar
earned by men, and while their participation in U.S .. managerial
and professional life rose from 40 percent in 1 983 to 47 percent.in 1 992, it was still the case that women occupied relatively few
executive posts and prominent public positions: only 1 0 percentof the voting members of the United States Congress were
women, and the United Kingdom had only sixty women members of parliament. Many sectors of education, politics, andbusiness seemed riddled with enough archaic detail and glassceilings to make even the most determined women feel unwel­
come. In universities, they were averaging higher marks thanmen, but relatively few gained first-class degrees; they weremore numerous and successful as undergraduates and in master's
programs, but less prominent when it came to Ph.D. candidacy.
Even highly successful career women were more likely to dropout of their jobs than their male counterparts.
But many women had already set their sights beyond these
traditional focal points. While the members of an older male
workforce had found a sense of identity in their work, women
were not only less able, but also less willing to define themselves
through employment or a single career. Many of them were

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actively seeking opportunities to make and break their own
working lives, not necessarily in favor of family commitments,
but also in an effort to free themselves from the imposition of
external constraints on their time and economic capacity. Theremay have been men who still thought they were protecting
their own positions of power by locking women out of thehigher echelons of the universities, corporations, and public
institutions,jntt it was no longer obvious that top positions weresJte most impnrt:aiJt or desirable of roles to be eiaxed.:, ,!:!!gilgrades and doctorates were no lo�er enough to guarantee suc­cess outside an academic world itself poised on the brink of

redundancy, and corporate executives were increasingly s�_£awns in global economic games. As for the attractions of pub42

lie service, who was going to disagree with the young women

who said that "politics is all talk and no action"? They simE!r_� better things to do.

Some of these things were fat more lucrative as well: in thetwenty years after 1 970, the number of women-owned small
businesses went from 5 percent to 32 percent in the UnitedStates, and in Britain nearly 25 percent of the self-C!llployed
were women by 1994, twice as many as in 1980. Taking theskills , contacts, and experience gained in their periods of paid

employment, these women have tended to be far more success­ful than their self-employed male counterparts: in the UnitedStates, where most new businesses failed, those which were

owned by women enjoyed an 80 percent success rate and em­
ployed more people than the companies on the Fortune 500 list.
Having had little option ' but to continually explore new
avenues, . take risks, change jobs, learn new skills , workiindepen­dendy, and drop in and out of the labor market more frequendy
than their male colleagues, women seem far "betteE..l'rep�d,

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culturally and pnrcholqgically" for the new economic condi­_!ions which have emerged at the end of the twentieth centULY.
They are advanced players of an economic game for which �elf­
employment, part-time, discontinuous work, multiskilling,fiexibility, and maximal adaptability were suddenly crucial tosurvival. Women had been ahead of the race for all their work­
ing lives, poised to meet these chariges long before they arrived,� though they always had been working in a future which theirmale counterparts had only just begun to glimpse. Perhaps they
really were the second sex, if seconds come after firsts.

•" 4Let the man get some sleep, Armitage, ' Molly said from her· futon, the components of the fletcher spread on the silk likesome expensive puzzle. 4He's coming apart at the seams. ' "4William Gibson, Neiii'OIrIIIICfl

3

But there was much more to come. Abandoned by the eco­nomic power and social privilege which once made them such
attractive, even necessary, mates, the sperm counts fell, birthrates crashed, and the hormonal energy and muscular strength
which once served them so well were now becoming liabilities.
Women were becoming mothers on their own terms, or not atall. Heterosexual relations were losing their viability, queer con­nections were fiourishing, the carnival had begun for a vastran� of paraphilias and so-called perversions, and if there was--- ---���----�--�----�--�--��------��
more than one sex to have, there were also more than two to be.
---- -- ..
�yYllng claiming to be normal had become peculiar.
"He was thoroughly lost now; spatial disorientation held apeculiar horror for cowboys. "William Gibson, Neuromancer

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It was falling apart. They were coming undone. Everything wasmoving much too fast. What had once seemed destined to
become a smoothly regulated world was suddenly running awaywith itself. Control was slipping through the fingers of those
who had thought it was in their hands. Something was wrong.
They were losing it all : their senses of security and identity,
their grip, the plot, ·and even their jobs. Couldn't see the point
to anything. What else could the Iilasters of the old white world
do but redouble their efforts, intensify their drives for security,heighten and perfect their powers? But the more they struggled
to adapt and survive, the faster the climate seemed to change.
The more they tried to regain control, the more their narrative
lost its thread; the closer they came to living the dream, theweaker their grasp on power became. Was it even possible that,regardless of their labors, their hopes and dreams, they had been"the sex organs of the machine world, as the bee of the plantworld, enabling it to fecundate and to evolve ever new forms"?
All that time, the effort and the pain, the trouble they had taken
to maintain control.
"And Instead they watch the machines multiply that pushthem ·little by little beyond the limits of their nature. And they

are sent back to their mountain tops, while t,. machiMS
progressively populate the earth. Soon engendering man as
their epiphenomenon. "Luce lrlgaray, Marine Lover

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c u l t u r es

Nothing takes the credit-or the blame--for either the runaway
tendencies at work or the attempts to regulate them. Politicalstruggles and ideologies have not been incidental to these shifts,
but cultures and the changes they undergo are far too complex
to be attributed to attempts to make them happen or hold themback. This is not because some other determination has comeinto play. If anything does emerge from the complexity of cur­rent shifts, it is the realization that cultures cannot be shaped ordetermined by any single hand or determining factor. Even
conceptions of change have changed. Revolution has been revolutionized. There is no center of operations, no organizing
core; there are no defining causes, overriding reasons, funda­
mental bases, no starting p oints or prime movers; no easy expla­
nations, straightforward narratives, simple accounts, or balanced
books. Any attempt to deal with some particular development
immediately opens onto them all.
The impossibility of getting a grip, and grasping thechanges underway is itself one · of the most disturbing effects toemerge from the current mood of cultural change. ·The pros­
pect of being in a position to know, and preferably control,changes manifest on the soci31 scale has been crucial to modern
conceptions of what used to be called man's place in the grandscheme of things. Technology itself was supposed to be a vitalmeans of exerting this explanatory and organizational power.
But the revolutions in telecommunications, media, intelligencegathering, an4. information processing they unleashed have co­incided with an unprecedented sense of disorder and unease,

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not only in societies, states, economies, families, sexes, but alsoin species, bodies, brains, weather patterns, ecological systems.
There is turbulence at so many scales that reality itself seems
suddenly on edge. Centers are subsumed by peripheries, main­streams overwhehned by their backwaters, cores eroded by theskins which were once supposed to be protecting them. Or­
ganizers have found themselves eaten up by whatever they were
trying to organize. Master copies lose their mastery, and every­
thing valued for its size and strength finds itself overrun bymicroprocessings once supposed too small and insignificant tocount.

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nets

Of all the media and machines to have_ emerged in the latetwentieth century, the Net has been taken to epitomize theshape of this new distributed nonlinear world. With .no limit to
the number of names which can be used, one individual canbecome a population explosion on the Net: many sexes, many
species. Back on paper, there's no limit to the games which canbe played in cyberspace. Access to a terminal is �o access toresources which were once restricted to those with the rightface, accent, race, sex, none of which now need be declared.
Using the Net quickly became a matter of surfing, a channel­
hopping mode facilitated and demanded by information which
is no longer bound together in linear texts or library classifica­
tions, but instead needs to be laterally traversed.
As the system began to spill out into wider academic usage
over the course of the next twenty years, other networks also
emerged. Businesses developed local, and then wide area net-

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works; commercial on-line services appeared; electronic mailand bulletin boards proliferated alongside fanzines and thesamizdat press. While the network was doubling in size every
year, the screens were gray, the options limited, and the numberof users relatively small until the late 1 980s. Access was hardly
limite� to students, hackers, and academic!! but certain skills
and commitments to computing were prerequisites of any tan­gible input into the system, and the users of the network occu­
pied a strange frontline between state institutions and anarchic
private use. In the wake of a massive expansion of the Net, thearrival of cybercafes, public terminals, falling costs, and a com­plex of other economic and cultural tendencies, use of the Net
has grown not only in the West but in almost two hundred
countries of the world. Usenet gives readers and writers access4

to thousands of articles in thousands of threads in vast popula-7f....-�--..-

tions of newsgroup conversations, continually adding to them-�s (Multi­

selves and ading out of use... On-line worlds scrolled down thescreens in IRC (Internet Relay Chat) networks, M

User Dungeons, or Domains) , and � (MUDs Object Ori­
ented) , where softbots---software robo ts--and pseudonymous
users interact in labyrinthine virtual worlds. With the develop­

ment of the World Wide W.eh. a user-friendly, interactive, mul­
timedia interface which uses J;hrpertext Marlcnp I aztgnage.(tiTl\11) to map and interlink the information on the screen toanother, and in princip�e, any other site, the Net gained both agleaming corporate mall , and also a degree of interconnectivity
which has continually drawn more computers, pages, links,
users, and characters into a network which soon hosted gal­leries, libraries, shopping malls , company showcases, S&M dun­�eons, university departments, personal diaries, fanzines . . .
every page linked to at least one other, sometimes hundreds,
and always proliferating.

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The Net has not caught up with the more expansive hopesof unfettered, free-flowing information which were once at­tached to it. But the technical potential it opens up comes close
to the enormous system of lateral cross-referencing which the?

hypertext networ� Ted Nelson first named Xanadu in the

1 960s, and the sys�em Vannevar Bush called the memex in the,""'' "'---'' 1 940s. Both these conceptions were far more interactive thantA·) 0- ined system left "a trail-di_·{. of interest throughfue maze ofthe system· of the mid-1990s allows . The user of Bush's imag­.

.

materials available," adding links and connections, inserting

passages, and making routes through an immense virtual library

whose composition continually shifts as a consequence of theactivity of those who are using it. Ted Nelson's envisaged sys4
8tern, which, to some extent, has been realized by the World
Wide Web, has the enormous advantage of facilitating this samelevel of influence with the introduction of (very) small paymentsof electronic cash for the use of ma�erial on specific sites. With
the flat-rate subscription system currendy in place, links have tobe deliberately made and do not, as with pathways aqoss a fieldof grass, emerge from the sheer force of numbers making them.
As well as potentially facilitating new modes of informa­tion circulation, this grass-roots commerce poses great threats tothe corporate interests currendy in play. But iflarge-scale com­
mercial activity tends to turn the Net into a shopping mall, it
had its beginnings in 1 969 as ARPAnet, a U.S. military defense_EJ;Qject which quickly joined cockroaches on the short list of
those most likely to survive nuclear attack. Developed at theheight of the cold war, the Net had also learned from the VietCong, whose networks of tunnels and guerrilla techniques had

forced a centralized U.S. military machine to adopt unprece­

dented tactics of distribution and dispersal in response. These

military influences on the Net are betrayed in its messages'

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ability to route and reroute themselves, hunting for ways roundobstacles, seeking out shortcuts and hidden passages, continuallyre,quisitioning supplies and hitching as many rides as possible.
The network and its traffic are so dispersed that any damage to
one part of the system, or even a particular message, will have
litde effect on the whole machinery. Information is transmitted
in packets which rarely take the same route twice, and may .takemany different routes to a destination at which they weave
themselves together again. Maps of the network cannot bestolen, not because they are closely guarded, but because there isno definitive terrain. Any map adds to the network and is always
aheady obsolete.

The growth of the Net has been continuous with the way

it works. No central hub or command structure has constructed

4

it, and its emergence has been that of a parasite, rather than an

9.

�rganizing ho�t. It has installed none of the hardware on which
it works, simply hitching a largely free ride on existing com­puters, networks, switching systems, telephone lines. This was
one of the first systems to present itself as a multiplicitous,
bottom-up, piecemeal, self-organizing network which a art

fro�-� "9�<:>.�----·--·-� �uei.!._C_£1 government censorship,

���ora�P.�WC:�·--��9.---�---��.!9 be emerging without,�Y.�-�m!'!li!t:.�J. Not that such lateral networks or boot­strapped systems

have

"an

irresistible

revolutionary

call-

are now expending all
their energies on processes of molecularization and virtu:iliza-

ing . . . " The leading corporations

tion, continually downsizing and turning themselves into flat­
tened horizontal operations and, in effect, getting all suchmodes of activity on their side. No matter how spontaneous
their emergence, self-organizing systems are back in organiza­
tional mode as soon as they have organized themselves.

This conflict is inscribed in the double-edged quality of

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�� ,
) the word itself. Technology is both a question of logic. the loE,g
�m of the law, logos, "the faculty which distinguishes parts ('onthe one handon the other hand') , " and also a matter ofthr
eerin whichskills, di 'ts( s eeof techno, e
and r·

run with "a completely other distribution wbjcb must b@ calk,dnomadic, a nomad nomos, without property. enclQ§ure or mea­

sure . " The same wbjyalence is inscribed in the zeros and ones-of computer code. These bits of code are themselves derived

from two entirely different sources. and terms: the binary andthe digi� or the sytp.bols of a logical identity which does

indeed put everything on one hand or the other, and the digitsof matbematics, . full of intensive potential, which are notcounted hf hand but on the fingers and, sure enough, arrange

50

themselves in pieces ofeight rather than binary pairs.
,The techno and the digital are never perceived to run freeof the coordinating eyes and hands oflogic and its binary codes.
But logic is nothing without their virtual plane. They are theinfrastructure to its superstructure: not another order of things,

but another mode of operations altogether, the m�tters of a
distribution which is "demonic rather than divine, since it is a
. peculiarity of demons to operate in the intervals between the
gods' fields of action . . . thereby confounding the boundaries
between properties. ""You know I am a � ODD anlmall And as my motheroften says, she never has quite yet made up her mind If It Is
the Devil or Angel that watches peculiarly over me; only that
It IS one or the other, without doubtl"(And for my part, I am quite Indifferent which.)"Ada Lovelace, December 1841

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d igits

The vast majority of what are now assumed to be the West's
mathematical terms and axioms are either Arabic or Hindu.
The word algebra is taken from the title of the Al-gebr we'lmukabala, a book written in the ninth century by one of themost sophisticated Arab mathematiciansz. Alkarismi, who gave
his name to the algorithm. '!'he Al-gebr is in turn based on thework of Brahmagupta, a Hindu mathematician and astronomer
who, in the seventh century, consolidated India's sophisticated£.ut unwieldy arithmetical principles in the form of twenty basis.
processes "essential to aJJ wbo wish to be calculators."
The system of notation and calculation which emerged
from this fusion of Hindu and Arabic arithmetic was introduced
to the West by both Arabic scholars and Asian traders. Indianarithmetic had already been carried by merchants as far west as
Baghdad, and Alk:arismi's own arithmetical prowess is said tohave resulted from his own travels in India. It was a great space­saving device when compared to its far more cumbersome
counterparts, most of which had been developed in conjunc­tion with the abacus, a device which was unknown to Hindu
culture, but . had been widely used in the Egyptian, Babylonian,
Greek, and Roman worlds. While the abacus had removed theneed to process and store numbers in concise written form,
India had developed a sophisticated system of notation which it
used both to calculate and record results.
India had effectively developed a written abacus, using its
written numbers in place of pebbles or beads, giving them thesame signs regardless of the positions they assumed, and using 0

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or a dot to indicate an empty column of the virtual abacus.

Whereas abacists used completely different signs for numberswith different place values--such as I for one and X for ten in
Roman numerals-the Hindu system could use the same
digit-1-to compose one, ten, hundred, and an obviously vast
number of other numbers.
"It is India that gave us the ingenious method of expretS­

ing all numbers by means a£ ten mubols,' ' wrote Pierre-Simon
Laplace, ��ch symbol receiving a value of position as well as an. absolute value.�' In other words, �;:.:::e:..:n:;um=�b:.::e!!rs:....w.=e!!re�b�ot.,.h-cardi==.·­
nal and ordinal, each expressing its place in the string (first,

second, third etc.), as well as a value specific to itsel£ Unlike theRoman numerals, in which two is simply two ones collected52

together, the Sanskrit two is a qualitatively different number toone, an entity or character in its own right. As Laplace points

out, the new arithmetic was '�found and important ida

which 31!pears so simple to ys now that we ignore its true mer�but its very simplicity, , the great ease which it has lent to al!.
computatinnt,_puts our arithmetic in the front r� of useful.i!!.yentions. " Although this statement about "our -arithmetic"

subdy app�priates the new system as one of the West's "inven­tions," Laplace continues, "We shall appreciate the grandeur of
this achievement when we remember that it escaped the genius
of Archimedes and Apollonius, two of the greatest men pro­duce.d by antiquity. "·"Certainly my troops must consist of numbers, or they canhave no existence at all, & would cease to be the particularsort of troops In questlon.-But then what are tMse num­bers? There Is a riddle. "Ada Lovelace

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To a Europe s� counting in bundles ofRoman sticks, this newarithmetic, with its alien Sanslqit figures, was an infidel system
which posed an extraordinary threat to the stability of the Western world. Although the Eastern system is as widely used as thealphabet today, it was not until the Renaissance that Europe's
new merchants overcame the opposition of the Church to theintroduction of the numbers 1 23456789 and 0. One of the firsttexts on the new arithmetic-which was also one of the firstbooks in the English language, The Creift of Nombrynge (ca.
1300)-was composed while edicts forbidding the use of thenumbers were still being issued in Florence. By 1478, the firstmanual on the new arithmetic. had been printed in Italy on oneof the then brand-new Gutenberg presses. "Numeration is therepresentation of numbers by figures;'' it explained. This isdone by means of ten letters or figures as here shown,
1 . ,2. ,3.,4.,5.,6.,7.,8.,9.,0. Of these the first figure, 1 , is notcalled a number, but the source of number. The tenth figure, 0,
is called cipher or 'nulla,' i.e. the figure of nothing, since byitself it has no value, although when joined with others it increases their value. "I n addition to i ts numbers, the new arithmetic intro­
duced negative . numbers and irrational numbers, ;as well aszero and the decimal point. These were features crucial to
the networks of banking and trade which became increas­
ingly important to European culture in the fifteenth century.
Trade, which is now widely assumed to be a peculiarly West­ern invention, was then as new to Europe as these numbers,
and there is little doubt that even the simple matters of keep­
ing accounts, setting prices, doing deals, and working withlarge numbers were simply impossible with Roman numerals.
This was not the least of the reasons why the infidel arith"

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metic threatened a Christian culture which, even now, de­murs at the thought of Sunday trade.
The one of the new arithmetic was also very different to
the old straight line which had figured as both a number and theninth letter of the Roman alphabet. Western philosophy is sup­posed to be an elucidation and confirmation of the unity ofone, a number which had been held in great esteem long before
there was one male god. To the ancient Greeks, one was every­
thing and anything, first and last, best and good, universal, uni­fied. It was the symbol of existence, identity, and being. Stricdy
speaking, there was nothing else. To be anything at all was to beone.
For all its dreams of self-sufficiency, even one has always
neededanother of some · kind. But since it was the only one as
5well, it had·\o ensure that any other options were merely im­4poverished variations on its theme. �e Greeks recognize�
many· as an alta:nati:Y.:� .t.Q. one but, like the Ro�_even this0 was conceived as a collection of many·��;;.Derived from the.......
·�-�
Greek term iota, and closely telat�d to atom and jot, this one
was taken to symbolize any individuated and indiv!sible entity,lA)
whereas the Sanskrit one functioned in relation to the othereight digits of the Hindu system. But one closely resembled theold Roman line and was easily subsumed into the old paradigm.
Any differences between the two were more or less erased.
Zero posed a very different threat. When it first appearedin the new string ofinfide1 figures, the old Church fathers did
everything to ke� it out of a world which then revolved
around one and its multiples: one God, one truth, one way, one
one. The numbers 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 were subversive �nough, but
zero was unthinkable. If it wasn't one of something, it couldn't
be allowed. Then again, the Church could hardly be seen toprotest too much about something that, as far as they could see,
-

(._

-

"'""

OIL

....-....--.
-.... �,_._,..� .,.._., .

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wasn't really there at all. If zero was nothing, it should be as easy
to absorb as the Sanskrit one had been. And, sure enough, zero

was appropriated as a sign of absence, nonbeing, and nothing-,!?:�SS. J'he .al!�ient ..unity-D.f something and nothiDg was a];!Jtar-...- . " · --�-- � . --- ---endy undisturbed.

·_.......- ...._... . ..,,....

holes"Somewhere there Is a siren. Her green body Is covered withscales. Her face Is bare. The undetsldfls of her arms are arosy colour. Sometimes she begins to sing. The women saythat of her song nothing Is to be heard but a continuous 0.

5

That Is why this song evokes for them, like everything that5

recalls the 0, the zero or the circle, the vulval ling. "Monlque Wittig, Les Guerllltires

Having escaped the rigors of an education which would havetaught her not to ask such things, Ada wandered off, around andabout, and wondered about zero too . One of her earliest enqui­ries to Augustus De Morgan, her tutor in mathematics, con­cerned the status of this figure. Did it exist as a "thing, " sheasked? Was it something, or nothing, or something else again?
He gave her an intriguing answer. "Zero is something, " he ex­plained, "though not some quantity, which is what you here
mean by thing. ""She does not set herself up as one, as a (single) female unit.
She Is not closed up or around one single truth or essence.
The essence of a truth remains foreign to her. She neither has
nor /s a being. And she does not oppose a feminine truth to azemasculine truth

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the female sex takes place by embn»lng Itself, by endlessly sharing and exchanging Its lips, Its

edges, Its bordetS, and their •content, ' as It ceaselessly IJe.

comes other, no stability of essence Is proper to her. " .

Luce lrlgaray, Speculum of the other Woman

5
6

Zero may mean nothing to the Western world, but this has
nothing to do with the way it works. It was certainly crucial to
the functioning of the Analytical Engine, a machine which,according to Menabrea, used an "occult principle of change"
which allowed it to "provide for singular values. " The Engine
was able to deal with those functions "which necessarily change
in nature when they pass through zero or infinity, or whose
values cannot be admitted when they pass these limits. Whensuch cases present themselves, the machine is able, by means of abell, to give notice that the pasSage through zero or infmity is!alOng place, and it then stops until the attendant has again set itin action for whatever process it may next be oesired to per­form. If this process has been foreseen, then the machine insteadof ringing, will so dispose itself as to present fhe new .cards
which have relation to the operation that is to succeed thepassage through zero and infinity. " It is the possibility of thispassage which allows the machine "arbitrarily to change its
processes at any moment, on the occurrence of any specified
contingency."
IIi terms of the pragmatic roles they play, the zeros andones of machine code do far more than hark back to the bina­
ries their logical symbols represent. If zero is !_Upposed to signify_. a hole.-a space, or a missing__pieZe; and one �: is the sign of .
positivity, digital machines turn these binaries around. In bothelectronic systems and the punched cards of weaving machines,
a hole is one, and a blank is zero, in which case there are two

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missing elements, if missing is where either can be said to go .

No longer a world o f ones and not-ones, o r something andnothing, thing and gap, but rather not-holes and holes, not­nothing_ and .nothing, pap and not-gap. Not that this matters

any more than the initial dualism between one and a zero con­ceived as not....one. Zero was always something very different

from the sign which has emerged from the West's inability todeal with anything which, ].!c�---�ro·JL�eithe��
�
particular nor nothing at all . And it is certainly the case that,

Witli or"Wi.tliOUithe·;� th"at represent them as inert negativi­

ties, holes themselves are never simply absences of positive
things. This is a purely psychoanalytical myth. For Deleuze andGuattari, it is not even enough "to say that interise and moving,
particles pass through holes: a hole is just as much a particle as5what passes through it , . . " Holes are not absences, spaces

7

where there should be something else. "Flying anuses, speeding
vaginas, there is no castration. " Adrift in the doped lattices of asilicon crystal, a hole is a positive par ticle before it is the . absenceof a negatively charged electron, and the movement of electrons
toward the positive terminal is also a flow of holes streamingback the other way. Holes are charged par ticles running in·-perse. For the quantum physicist, ' 'holes are not the absenceof particles but particles �veling faster than the speed of lis!?;t. ''11Transpletce the mountains Instead of scaling them, exca­vate the land Instead of straltlng It, bore holes In space In­
stead of keeping It smooth, turn the earth Into swiss
cheese. "Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guatta ri� ..A �usand Pf!Uu!us

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c y b o r g m a n i festos
For years, decades, centuries, it seemed as though women were

lagging behind the front runners of the human race, struggling
to win the rights attained by men, suffering for want of thestatus which full membership of the species would supposedly
have given them. And as long as human was the only thing tobe, women have had little option but to pursue the possibility ofgaining full membership . of the species ' 'with a view to winningback their own organism, their own history, their own subjec5ativity. " But this is a strategy which "does not function without
drying up a spring or stopping a flow." And there are processesof parallel emergence, noncausal connections and simultaneousdevelopments which suggest that sexual relations continuallyshift in sympathy with changes to the ways many other aspectsof the world work. If Simone de Beauvoir's Second Sex founditself compelled to call for "men and women" to "univocallyaffirm their brotherhood" in 1 949, this was also the point at
which the first sex began to find itself subsumed by self-organiz­
ing tendencies beyond its ken or its control. By 1 969, when
Monique Wittig published Les Gubilleres, these tendencies were
emerging as networks which didn't even try to live up to theexisting definitions of what it was to be a proper one of any­

thing at all. And by the 1 970s, when Luce Iri;.raray wrote ThisSex Which Is Not One, fluid coinplexit:re;"""were giving a world

which had Qnce revolved around ones and others a dynamic
which obsolesced the possibility of being one! ·of anything at all .

tives proliferated in the mid-1 980s, ...Donna Haraway's�org;.
As personal computers, samplers, and cyberpunk narra­

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""were . writing manifestos of their own.

nt·� the late twentiethD ��;: />:""�

�ntury, " they declared, "our time, a mythic time, we are an
chimeras, theorized and fabricated hyhrids of machine and or­·in short, we are all cyborgs. " An d while the shiny'
screem oftlielitetieth century continued to present them­

gamsffi;�nselves as clean-living products of the straight white lines of apeculiarly man-made world, Haraway's text excited a wave of
subversive female enthusiasm for the new networks and ma­chines. In the early 1 990s, a cyberfeminist manifesto appearedon an Australian billboard and declared, "The clitoris is a dire�tline to the matrix, " a line which refers to both the womb-­

matrix is the Latin term, just as hystera is the Greek--and theabs.tract networks of communication which were increasingly
assembling themselves.

59"You may not encounter ALL NEW GEN as she has manyguises. But, do not fear, she Is always In tiHI matrix, an omni­

present lntelllgencer-Jlnarcho cyber terrorist acting as a vltuSof the new world disorder. "VNS Matrix

They say she wears "different veils according to the historic
period. " They say her "original attributes and epithets were so
numerous . . . in the hieroglyphics she is call ed 'the many­
named, ''the thousand-named' . . . 'the myriad-named. ' "They say, "the future is unmanne d. ' ' They say, "let those whocall for a new language first learn violence. They say, let those
who want to change the world first seize all the rifies. They saythat they are starting from zero. They say that a new world is
beginning. ' ' They say, "if machines, even the machines of the­ory, can arouse themselves, why not women?"

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p rogra m m i n g l a ngu age"It Is already getting around-at what rate? In what con­texts? In spite of what reslstances 1-that women diffuse
themselves according to modalities scarcely compatible withthe framework of the ruling symbollcs. Which doesn't happen
without causing some turbulence, we might even say whltl­
wlnds, that ought to be reconflned within solid walls of princi­
ple, to keep them from spreading to Infinity • • • ' 'Luce lrlgaray, This Sex Which Is Not One
60

In May 1 979, Commander John D. Cooper came up with aname which the United States Department of Defense's High
Order Language Working Group (HOLWG) could accept for
their new programming language: Ada, chosen "in honor of an
obscure but talented mathematician, Ada, Coyntess of Love­
lace. " When HOLWG approached the Earl of Lytton, one of
Ada's descendants, for permission to use the name, he "wasimmediately enthsiastic about the idea and pointed out that theletters 'Ada' stood 'right in the middle of "radar. " ' "s h u tt l e syste ms
There is always a point at which, as Freud admits, "our mate­rial-for some incomprehensible reason-becomes far more

obscure and ·full of gaps. " And, as it happens; Freud's weaving

women had made rather more than a small and debatable con-

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tribution to his great narrative of inventions and discoveries. Far
more than a big and certain one as well. It is their micro­
processes which underlie it all: the spindle and the wheel usedin spinning yarn are the basis of all later axles, wheels, androtations; the interlaced threads of the loom compose the mostabstract processes of fabrication. Textiles themselves are very
literally the softwares linings of all technology.
String, which has been dated to 20,000 B . C . , is thought tobe the earliest manufactured thread and crucial to "taking theworld to human will and ingenuity, " not least because it is such
multipurpose material. It can be used for carrying, holding,�man race to conquer the earth . "Textiles underlie the great canvases of Western art, and even the

6materials of writing. Paper now tends to be made from wood,1

tying, and trapping, and has even been described as "the unseen
�IWn that allowed thebut it too was woven in its early form, produced from the denseinterlacing of natural fibers. The Chinese, with whom the pro­duction of paper is thought to have begun some 2,000 years
ago, used bamboo, rags, and old fishing nets as their basic materials; papyrus, from which the word paper is itself derived, wasused in ancient Egypt, and later Arab cultures used the same flax
from which linen is produced. Wood pulp gradually took overfrom the rags which Europe used until the nineteenth century,and most paper is now produced from fibers which are pulped
and bleached, washed and dried, and then filtered onto a meshand compressed into a fine felt.
Evidence of sophisticated textile production dates to 6,000
B.C. in the southeast regions of Europe, and in Htingary there isevidence that warp-weighted looms were producing designs of
extraordinary extravagance from at least 5,000 B . C . Archaeo­
logical investigations suggest that from at least the fourth millen­
nium B . C . Egyptian women were weaving linen on horizontal

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looms, sometimes with some two hundred threads per inch, andcapable of producing cloths as wide as nine feet and seventy-fivefeet long. Circular warps, facilitating the production of seamlesstubes for clothing, and tapestry looms, able to weave the dense
complications of images visible in weft threads so closely woven
as to completely conceal the warps, were also in use in ancient
Egypt where, long before individual artisans stamped their workwith their own signatures, trademarks and logos were woven in
to indicate the workshop in which cloths had been produced.
Cloths were used as early currency, and fine linens were as
valuable as precious metals and stones. In China, where thespinning wheel is thought to have first turned, sophisticateddrawlooms had woven designs which used thousands of differ6

ent warps at least two and a half thousand years before such2

machines were developed in the West.
It may be a bare necessity of life, but textiles work always
goes far beyond the clothing and shelter of the family. In termsof quality, sophistication, and sheer quantity, the production of
textiles always seems to put some kind of surplus in play. The
production of "homespun" yarn and cloth was o ne of the firstcottage industries, pin money was women's earliest source ofindependent cash, and women were selling surplus yarn andcloth and working as small-scale entrepreneurs long before theemergence of factories, organized patterns of trade, and any ofthe mechanisms which now define the textiles industry. Even
when cloths and clothes can be bought off the rack, womencontinue to absorb themselves in fibrous fabrications.
There is an obsessive, addictive quality to the spinning ofyarn and the weaving of cloth; a temptation to get fixated andlocked in to processes which run away with themselves andthose drawn into them. Even in cultures ass�ed to be subsis­
tence economies, women who did only as much cooking,

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cl.e,;�ng, and childcare aS was necessary tended to go into over­'dri�� when it came to spinning and weaving cloth, producing
far more than was required to clothe and furnish the family
home. With time and raw materials on their hands, even "Neo­lithic women were investing large amounts of extra time into
their textile work, far beyond pure utility," suggesting that not
everything was hand to mouth. These prehistoric weavers seemto have produced cloths of extraordinary complexity, woven
with ornate designs far in excess of the brute demand for simple
cloth. And wherever this tendency to elaboration emerged, it
fed into a continual exploration of new techniques of dyeing,color combination, combing, spinning, and all the complica­
tions of weaving itself
Even in Europe there had been several early and sophisticated innovations. Drawlooms had been developed in the Middie Ages, and while many ofLeonardo da Vinci's "machines forspinning, weaving, twisting hemp, trimming felt, and making
needles" were never made, he certainly introduced the flyer andbobbin which brought tension control to the spinning wheel.
Unlike "the spinster using the older wheel," she now "slackened her hold on the yarn to allow it to be wound on to thebobbin as it was being twisted. "It is often said that Leonardo's sixteenth-century work
anticipated the industrial revolution "in the sense that his 'ma­chines' (including tools, musical instruments, and weapons) all
aspired toward systemic automation." But it was his intuition
that textiles machines were "more useful, profitable, and perfectthan the printing press" which really placed him ahead of histime. If printing had spread across the modern world, textiles
led the frantic industrialization of the late eighteenth and earlynineteenth centuries. "Like the most humble cultural assets,
textiles incessantly moved about, took root in new re-

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gions . . . ' ' The first manufactory was a silk mill on an islandin the Derwent near Derby built early in a century which also
saw the introduction of the spinning jenny, the water frame, thespinning mule, the flying shuttle, the witches' loom, and thepower loom. A spiral of "inventions in both spinning and weav­ing (interacting and mutually stimulating) had attracted capital,
concentrated labour, increased output and swollen �ports andexports. " This was cloth capitalism, a runaway process whichquite literally changed the world. In the 1 850s, it was said that
"if Providence had never planted the cotton shrub those majes­

tic masses of men which stretch, like a living zone, · through ourcentral districts, would have felt no existence; and the magic
impulse which has been felt . . . in every department of na-

u!d6

tional energy, our literature, our laws, our social condition, our4political institutions, making us almost a new people, wo

never have been communicated. " Textiles had not merely
changed the world: they seemed to have mutated its occupants
as well. "Almost a new p eople.

. . " "I was surprised at the place

but more so at the people," wrote one commentator of Bir­mingham, the site of the first cotton-spinning mill . "They werea species I had never seen."

While the industrial revolution is supposed to have madethe break between handheld tools and supervised machines, thehandmade and the mass-produced, the introduction of technol­
ogy to more primitive textiles techniques is both a break withthe old ways and a continuation of the lines on which thewomen were already at work. Even before its mechanization,
the loom was described as the "most complex human engine ofthem all," not least because of the extent to which it "reduced
everything to simple actions: the alternate movement of the feetworked the pedals, raising half the threads of the warp and thenthe other, while the hands threw the shuttle carrying the thread

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of the woof. " When John Heathcote, who patented a lace­making machine just after Jacquard built his loom, flrst saw "awoman working on a pillow, with so many bobbins that it
seemed altogether a maze," his impression was that lace was a"heap of chaotic material. " In an attempt to unravel the mys­
tery, he "drew a thread, which happened to draw for an inch or
two longitudinally straight, then started ofT diagonally . The next
drew out straight. Then others drew out in various directions.
Out of four threads concurring to make a mesh, two passed one
way, the third another and the fourth another still . But at length
I found they were in fact used in an orderly manner . . . " Itwas then a matter of producmg "a fabric which was an exact
imitation of the thread movements of handmade lace." This isboth the ordering of chaos, and also how its networks replicate
themselves.
There were other spin-offs from textiles too. The weavingof complex designs demands far more than one pair of hands,
and textiles production tends to be communal, sociable work
allowing plenty of occasion for gossip and chat. Weaving was
already multimedia: singing, chanting, telling stories, dancing,and playing games as they work, spinsters, weavers, and needle­
workers we� literally networkers as well. It seems that "thewomen of prehistoric Europe gathered at one another's houses
to spin, sew, weave, and have fellowship. " Spinning yarns,
fabricating fictions, fashioning fashions . . . : the textures of
woven cloth functioned as means of communication and infor­
mation storage long before anything was written down. "Howdo we know this? From the cloth its . " This is not only be­cause, like writing and other visual arts, eaving is often "usedto mark or announce information" and "aemonic device torecord events and other data." Textiles d communicate interms of the images which appear on the righ side of the cloth,

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but this is only the most superficial sense in which they process

and store data. Because there is no difference between the pro­
cess of weaving and the woven design, cloths persist as recordsof the processes which fed into their production: how many
women worked on them, the techniques they used, the skills
they employed. The visible pattern is integral to the process
which produced it; the program and the pattern are continuous.
Information can be stored in cloth by means of the mean..;.
ingful messages and images which are later produced by the pen
and the paintbrush, but data can also be woven in far more
pragmatic and immediate ways . A piece of work so absorbing asa cloth is saturated with the thoughts of the people who pro­

duced it, each of whom can Bash straight back to whatever they
66

were thinking as they worked. Like Proust's madeleines, it carries memories of an intensity which completely escapes thewritten word. Cloths were also woven "to 'invoke magic'-toprotect, to secure fertility and riches, to divine the future, per­haps even to curse," and in this sense the weaving of spells is far
more than a metaphorical device. "The weave:t chose warp
threads of red wool for her work, 24 spun one direction, 24
spun the other way She divided the bunch spun one way into 3.

sets of 8, and the other bunch into 4 sets of 6, and alternatedthem. All this is per�ps perfecdy innocent, but . . . "If the weaving of such magical spells gives priority to theprocess over the completion of a task, this tendency is implicitin the production of all textiles. Stripes and checks are · among
the most basic of colored and textured designs which can be
woven in. Both are implicit in the grids of the woven cloth
itsel£ Slighdy more complex, but equally integral to the basic
web, are the lozenges, or diamonds, still common in weaves
across the world. These open diamonds are said to indicate
fertility and tend to decorate the aprons, skirts, and belts which

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are themselves supposed to be the earliest forms of clothing.
"These lozenges, usually with little curly hooks around theedge, rather graphically , if schematically, represent a wo�'s
vulva. " These images are quite unlike those which are later
painted on the canvas or written on the page. The lozenge isemergent from the cloth, diagonal lines implicit in the grids ofthe weave. And even the most ornate and complex of woven
designs retains this connection to the warps and wefts. When
images are later painted, or written in the form of words on apage, patterns are imposed on the passive backdrop provided by
the c anvas or the page. But textile images are never imposed on
the surface of the cloth: their patterns are always emergent ·froman active matrix, implicit in a web which makes them immanent to the processes from which they emerge.
As the frantic activities of generations of spinsters andweaving women makes abundandy clear, nothing stops when aparticular piece ofwork has been fmished off. Even when magical connections are · not explicidy invoked, the finished cloth,unlike the finished painting or the text, is almost incidental in
relation to the processes of its production. The only incentive tocast off seems to be the chance completion provides to startagain, throw another shuttle, cast another spell.
As writing and other visual arts became the privileged
bearers of memory and messages, weaving withdrew into its
own screens. Both canvases and paper reduce the complexities
of weaving to raw materials on which images and signs are
imposed: the cloths from which woven patterns once emerged
now become backcloths, passive matrices on which images are
imposed and interpreted as if from on high. Images are nolonger carried in the weave, but imprinted on its surface by thepens and brushes with which shutdes become superficial carri­ers of threads. Guided by the hand-eye coordinations of what

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are now their male creators, patterns become as individuatedand unique as their artists and authors. And whereas the weave
was once both the process and the product, the woven stuff,
images are now separated out from matrices to which they had
been immanent. The artist sees only the surface of a web whichis covered as he works; the paper on which authors now lookdown has no say in the writing it supports.
The processes themselves become dematerialized as myths,
legends, and metaphors. Ariadne's thread, and the famous con­test in which the divine Athena tore mortal Arachne's weaving
into shreds, are among the many mythical associations between
women and webs, spinsters and spiders, spinning yarns andstorylines. For the Greeks, the Fates, the Moirai, were three
spinsters-Klotho, Lachesis, and Atropos-who produced, allotted, and broke the delicate contingency of the thread of life.
In the folktales of Europe, spindles become magic wands, Fates
become fairies, and women are abandoned or rescued from
impossible spinning and weaving tasks by supernatural entities,
godmothers and crones who transform piles qf flax into finelinen by means more magical than weaving itself, as in "Rum­pelstiltskin," "The Three Spinsters," and "The Sleeping
Beauty." "European folktales are full of references to the mak­ing of magical garments, especially girdles, in which the magic
seems to be inherent in the weaving, not merely in special
decoration."
As for the fabrics which persist: evaluated in these visual
terms, their checks and diagonals, diamonds and stripes become
insignificant matters of repeating detail. This is why Freud had
gazed at work which was so literally imperceptible to him.
Struggling only to interpret the surface effects c..fAnna's work as
though he was looking at a painting or a text, the process of
weaving eluded him: out of sight, out of mind, out of his world.

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This was a process of disarmament which automation
should have made complete. But if textiles appear to lose touchwith their weaving spells and spans of time, they also continue
to fabricate the very screens with which they are concealed.
And because these are processes, they keep processing. '"'Behindthe screen of representation," weaving wends its way througheven the media which supplant it. While paper has lost its
associations with the woven fabrics with which it began, there
are remnants of weaving in all writing: yarns continue to be.
spun, texts are still abbreviated textiles, and even grammar­
glamor-and spelling retain an occult connectivity. Silkscreens,printing presses, stencils, photographic processes, and typewrit­ers: by the end of the nineteenth century images, texts, andpatterns of all kinds were being processed by machines whichstill used matrices as means to their ends, but also repeated therepeating patterns downgraded by the one-off work of art. And
while all these modes of printing were taking technologies ofrepresentation to new heights, they were also moving on to thematrices of times in which these imprinting procedures would
reconnect with the tactile depth of woven cloth.

c a st i n g o n

Spinning is " a perilous craft" wrote Mircea Eliade. "The moon
'spins' Time and 'weaves' human lives. The Goddesses of
Destiny are spinners." When he looks at the seclusion of pubes­
cent girls and menstruating women, often the occasion for the
spinning of both actual and fictional yarns, he detects "an occult
connection between the conception of the periodical creationsof the world . . . and the ideas of Time and Destiny, on the

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one hand, and on the other, nocturnal work, women's work,
which has to be performed far from the light of the sun andalmost in secret. In some cultures, after the seclusion of the girls
is ended they continue to meet in some old woman's house tospin together." And wherever spinning is ubiquitous, there isoften "a permanent tension, and even conflict, between thegroups of young spinning girls and the men's secret societies. At
night the men and their gods attack the spinning girls anddestroy not only their work, but also their shuttles and weaving
apparatus."
If the psychoanalysts provide the only accounts of hysteria,
the only records of the witch-hunting which swept three centu­
ries of premodern society are written by the hunters and fromtheir point of view. "The voices of the accused reaph us strangled, altered, distorted; in many cases, they haven't reached us atall." What "really happened" has left the scene. Historians ofwitchcraft ."have implicidy or explicidy derived the subject of
their research from the interpretative categories of thedemonologists, the judges or witnesses against the accused,"and "with very few exceptions," most scholarly studies "havecontinued to concentrate almost exclmively on persecution,
giving little or no attention to the attitudes and behaviour of thepersecuted. " Even feminist scholars have endorsed this ap­
proach. "Clearly," writes Mary Daly of those on trial, "thesupposed sexual fantasies of these women were (are) archetypi­cally male fantasies," and the accused were nothing more than"projection screens for these hallucinations. " .
If everything remaining of the witch cults is circumscribedby those who define and prosecute their crimes, anyone "de­clining to restrict himself to recording the results o{ this histori­
cal violence can find fragments, relatively immune from distor­
tions, of the culture that the persecution set out to eradicate. "

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The prosecution evidence is riddled with gaps: there are holes
in the stories, twists to the plots. "Hence--for anyone on­
resigned to writing history for the nth time from the standpointof the victors-the importance of the anomalies, the cracks thatoccasionally (albeit very rarely) appear in the documentation,
undermining its coherence. "All God's children could b e led astray, and many men met
their deaths at the stake. As in the case of hysteria, the witches
were not necessarily male. Persecutors testified to "the exis­
tence of an actual sect of female and male witches," who "metat night, generally in solitary. places, in fields or on mountains.
Sometimes, having anointed their bodies, they flew, arriving
astride poles and broom sticks; sometimes they arrived on thebacks of animals, or transformed into animals themselves . . . ' 'But the Malleus Maltificarum, a fifteenth-century witch-hunter's
guide, also reported that "a greater number of witches is foundin the fragile feminine sex than among men." It argued thatwomen were particularly predisposed to an "addiction towitchcraft" and considered them "to be of a different naturefrom men," especially "as regards intellect, or the understandingof spiritual things." Women were said to have "weak memo­
ries," so that "it is a natural vice in them not to be disciplined,
but to follow their own impulses without any sense of what isdue; this is her whole study, and all that she keeps in her mem­ory."
The hunters tied themselves in terrible knots in an attempt
to prove both that the witches' activities were real enough tomerit the prosecutions, and also that they were simply fantasies.
"It cannot be admitted as true that certain wicked women,
perverted by Satan and seduced by the illusions and phantasms
of devils, do actually, as they believe and profess, ride in thenight-time on certain beasts with Diana a goddess of the Pagans,

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or with Herodias and an innumerable multitude of women, andin the untimely silence of night pass over immense tracts ofland, and have to obey her in all things as their Mistress, etc."

Flight was simply a delusion: the witches didn't really get intouch with the "innumerable multitude of women" they
thought they met. They have believed they went hunting with
Diana, Artemis, the Amazon queen, but it was all iil the mind, it

wasn't happening. "Awakening from sleep, she began a longraving story of crossing seas and . mountains, and she · brought
forth false responses. We denied her story, but she insisted uponit." But, on the other hand, it was this tendency to ascribe thewitches' activities to "imagination and illusion" which also sug­gested that "they were really harmless. " And according to the72Malleus Mai�arum, "For this reason many witche� remain un-

punished, to the great dispraise of the Creator, and to their own
most heavy increase. ""Under the repeated play of movement In the tlngeta a mem­brane grows between them that seems to jo(n them, thenprolotW them, until eventually It extends beyond the hand anddescends along the arm, It grows, It lengthens, It gives thewomen a sort of wltW on either side of their body. When they,...,. 6lanf bats, with transparent wings, one of themcomes up and, taking a kind of scissors from her belt, hastily
divides the two great flaps of silk. The tltCers Immediately
recommence their movement. "Monlque Wittig, w GultlllfitfiiJ

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fl i g h t

Ada Lovelace loved all forms o f communication. She sometimes
wrote several letters each day, and much of her surviving writ­
ing survives in this form. ''Think what a delight, ' ' she wrote ina letter when she learned that the electrical telegraph was com­
ing to town in 1 844. "Wheatstone says that sometimes friends
hold conversations from one terminus to the other; that one cansend for anyone to speak to one . . . Wonderful agent andinvention! "At the age of twelve she had entertained hopes of "writing

7

a book of Flyology illustrated with plates,'' and told her mother3

she would "be able to fly about with all your letters and messages and shall be able to carry them with much more speed
than the post or any other terrestrial contrivances and to makethe thing quite complete a part of the · flying accoutrement shallbe a letter bag, a small compass & a map which the two lastarticles will enable me to cut across the country by the mostdirect road without minding either mountains, hills , valleys,
rivers, lakes &c, &c, &c. My book of Flyology shall contain a listof the advantages resulting from flying and it shall also contain acomplete explanation of the anatomy of a bird." Ada had plansto build her wings from paper or silk stiffened with wire , andalso imagined "a thing in the shape of a horse with asteamengine in the inside so contrived as to move an immense
pair of wings, fixed on the outside of the horse, in such amanner as to carry it up into the air while a person sits on its
back."

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virtual al iens
"They speak together of the threat they have constituted t�
wards authority, they tell how they were burned on pyres toprevent them from assembling In Mute. "Monlque Wlttll, Les Guerllhires
The "overwhelming maj ority of electronics assembly jobs areoccupied by young female workers on relatively low wages. In

this respect, there are clear parallels with the situation in the7textiles and clothing industries . . . " Most of these women do

4"assembly, the bonding of hair-thin wires to semiconductor
chips, and the associated packaging. Though the work requires
good eyesight and dexterity, little training is required . . . "Silicon Valley, Silicon Glen, Bangalore, Jakarta, Seoul, andTaipei provide dispersed networks of what U.S. multinationals
call "virtual aliens" to fabricate the wafers, assemble the circuits,
set up the keyboards and the screens, make the chips that makethe chips that turn the computers on. They work in the global
factory of the new transnationals: "On the west coast, Filipinas,
Thais, Samoans, Mexicans and Vietnamese have made the elec­
tronics assembly line a microcosm of the global production pro­cess."
Microprocessing has always been low status, poorly paid,
sometimes dangerous. The tenils and conditions of life in thefactories and offices may be the smallest of improvements on
those of compulsory service in the home. To t.'lose who alreadyhave room of their own, such moves seem paltry when com­pared to the rhetoric with which rights are declared and equal-

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ity is sought. But these infiltrations won their spaces too. The
work of these virtual aliens is the latest in the long and twistedline of microprocesses which emerge from a tangle of telephonelines, dials, operators, cables, tones, switches, and plugs; thekeys, carriages, and cases of typewriters; the punched-card pro­grams of calculators, pianolas, and looms; flying shutdes, spin­ning wheels. If she hasn't had a hand in anything, her finger­
prints are everywhere.
Left and right, base and superstructure, proletariat andbourgeoisie: like every reproductive system, industrial capital­
ism was itself supposed to function along the clear-cut binarylines. Often to the great detriment of the working class , theantagonism between forces and modes of production has been
played out as a personal argument between the men: a matter ofpolitical consciousness, a struggle between bosses and workers,
firms and unions, states and revolutionary cells. Organized andorganizing factions have confronted each other as two sides of a
split identity struggling to reconcile itself in some great climactic moment of revolution, and theories, critiques, and statistics
have concentrated on male employment and the fate of the maleworker who, together with modern capitalism and its critiques,
has been largely engaged in matters of hand-eye coordination.
Manual work and man's work have been more or less synony­mous, both for the workers-hired hands required to work with
their hands, hand tools, handles, and other hand-size compo­
nents--and the bosses-the ones who manage and manipulate
the manufac�ories, and assume it's all in their hands . T his is thebinary machine again: two hands and two sides of a game which
is supposed to be conducted by another single hand: the invisible hand of capital, perfecdy integrated with the supervising eyeof the state.
Women, either their own or the proletariat's proletarians,

75as Engels called them, have been the least of the bourgeoisie's
concerns. Immersed in the low-status microprocesses of textiles
production, secretarial work, . and the production of miniaturecomponents, women are supposed to be the most inconspicu­
ous and insignificant of cogs in the wheels of industry. Women

have been off the productive map, out of the dialectical loop: nodesire, no agency, not even the alienation of the �e worker.
Kept apart by the demands of home work, housework, andheterosexual monogamy, the women couldn't get together toorganize themselves . after the fashion of the men. But for all the
instabilities and crises it induced, the industrial proletariat wasnever the only carrier of revolutionary change, if it was ever7
6

such a thing at all. Perhaps its campaigns even served to distract
bourgeois man from the really dangerous guerrillis in his midst,
those apparently inconspicuous, well-behaved little creatures
who spent their time making lists, detailing procedures, typing,sorting, coding, folding, switching, transmitting, receiving,wrapping, packaging, licking the envelopes, fingers in the till .
Women, children, and migrant workers have always beenpoorly paid, last in, and first out, a reservoir of labor which canbe brought on stream as required. They are brought into thefactories, the mills , and the new bureaucracies only in responseto the demands of booming or war economies, and always un­
der the strict supervision of their male superiors. Both thebosses and the male workers ensure that they are kept away fromthe important jobs. Managers treat them just like the men, only
worse: they are paid, but they are paid less; their work is valued'
but not as highly as that of their male counterparts. As for theircoworkers, the line adopted by America's late-nineteenth cen­tury tobacco unions has been repeated time and again: "we havecombated from its incipiency the movement of the introduction

of female labor in any capacity whatever," they declared. "We
can not drive the females out of the trade, but we can restrict
this daily quota of labor through factory laws. "cocoonsI t has long been assumed in the Western world that technolo­
gies are basically tools, means to ends decided in advance by
those who make them and put them to use. Whatever theparticular purposes for which 'they are designed and employed,
the overriding rationale has always been the effort · to secure . andextend the. powers of those whose interests they are supposed toserve. And their interests have in turn been defined as the exercise of control over something variously defined as nature, thenatural, the rest of the world. This crude model of the user andthe used has legitimized the scientific projects, colonial adven­tures, sexual relations, and even the artistic endeavors of themodern world. It continues to inform the deployment of eventhe most complex machines.
But both man and his tools. exist "only in relation to theinterminglings they make possible or that make them possible."
The user and the used are merely the perceptible . elements, theidentifiable components which are thrown up by--and servealso to contain-far more complex processes. The weaver .andthe loom, the surfer and the Net: none of them are anything
without the engineerings which they both capture and perpet­
uate.
These are processes which mock all grandiose attempts toname names and identify great moments of invention and dis-

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covery. It is, as Braude! points out, "patient and monotonous
efforts" which lead machinery on. Technical development is
not only a matter of "the brisk changes we are a little too quick
to label revolutions, " he writes, "but also the slow improve­ments in processes and tools . . . those innumberable actions
which certainly have no innovating significance but which are
the fruit of accumulating knowledge: the sailor �g his ropes,
the miner digging his gallery, the peasant behind his plough, thesmith at his anvil. " These are the artisans, technicians, engineers
whose work is more akin to "a collection of recipes drawn fromcraftsmen's experience" than a tale of steady progress to somewell-established end, and has "somehow or other evolved un­
hurriedly'' by means of its own peculiar trials and errors, impro­
visations and accidents. �e publication oflBernard For::.
er;;i;;;
dn ..:.t_n;=-;dien-�-�t's _Th_e Engineer��t_
H::;.a:.:.
nd::.:..:.:bo.:..o:.:.
k in�...:: 1_..7..,.5"'5!...
, .;..:::sz;·::.n;..;.
.: e.;;;;..;..='-�J:n have_�-�·-�� �� �-neye�. q�t��-- �ll�.-�2�.��-�-�f�pJi!J..�� of s �i�n�es_ aQd . arts_._
While it dates from the engines of the mechanical age,engineering is not confined to the use and manufacture ofmachines in factories dedicated to the task. As its subsequent
associations with electronics, chemicals, software, and genetics
imply, it was merely passing through the tools and devices of themechanical age. Nor is it a process which began at this point:
engineering may have been newly defined among the levers,
cogs, and automata of the eighteenth century, but the line on
which it runs was 'not invented here.
Engineering travels on experimental routes which throwback to the skills of lost shamanlc cultures, the trials and errors, of alchemy, and brews condemned for witchcraft in the centu­. ries before the Enlightenment. When Freud wrol:e his essay on
Leonardo da Vinci, often said to be the West's first engineer, it
was not his ability to capture "the essence of femininity" in his

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art which really interested the psychoanalyst. Even Leonardo's
penchant for hermaphrodites and the charges of homose:Xuality
which, unlike a later engineer, he successfully denied, did. nothold as much fascination as what Freud defmes as his "alieninterest-in experimentation." This brought him "close to thedespised alchemists, in whose laboratories experimental re­search had found some refuge at least in those unfavourable
times. "Such Renaissance hackers were o n lines o f enquiry en­
tirely at odds with the Catholic Church. The "work of the'perspectors' was still a matter of curiosity and artistic innova­
tion" through the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and evensubsequent engineering carries traces of these earlier, darker
paths. In spite of the triumphs of the Victorian engineers, they
were still considered to have dirty hands. Pragmatism and technic� skill were poor relations to the supposed creativity of sci­
ences and arts, and the status of engineers fell far short of that
accorded to those whose theories and visions they followed
through. Engineers are not the authors of anything, but simply
technicians and caretakers, carrying out instructions written
elsewhere and looking after the machines entrusted to theircare.
If they were never the masters of their destiny, engineers
also do ·a great deal more than simply following orders fromabove. They may pay homage to the scientists and deliver theirgoods to the state, but "even today 'wildcat' activities of techni­
cal invention, sometimes related to bricolage, still go on outside
the imperatives of scientific argumentation" and quite regardlessof social demand. This is not a straight but an "eccentric sci­ence, " wandering in its own queer streets and using "a hydrau­
lic model, rather than being a theory of solids treating fluids as a
special case. " It does not seek new theories, but new problems,

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v;,- ·•. ��..... �- ' '- ' "'··and emphasizes "becoming and heterogeneity, as opposed tothe stable, the eternal, the identical, the constant. " And if boththe sciences and the arts separate their authors from their instru­
ments, engineering always remains embroiled in the entangle­
ments of machines.
This is the diagonal route which feels a way through thebinaries of one and the other, master and slave. Those who pickup on it are neither in charge of their materials nor are theirmaterials enslaved to them. Neither random nor deliberate, thisis a diagonal route, "determined in such a way as to follow a
flow of matter, a machinic phylum, " a line which is "materiality,
natural or artificial, and both simultaneously; · it is matter inmovement, in flux, in variation, matter as a con�or of singularities
and traits of expression. This has obvious consequences:8
namely, this matter-flow can only be followed. Doubdess, the0operation that consists in following can be carried out in one
pace: an artisan who planes follows the wood, the fibres of thewood, without changing location. But this way of following isonly one particular sequence in a more general p:1;0cess. For
artisans are obliged to follow in another way as well, in otherwords, to go find the wood where it lies, and to fmd the woodwith the right kind of fibres . . . " They are "intuition in ac­tion."
Culture and nature are scrambled with these inter­-wy-'minglings. When sun-dried fibers are spun by ha!l-d, the spin1'/J h, sters' fingers and the spinning wheel follow a trend set by theway the plants have already curled and died. When weaversinterlace their threads, they jump into the middle of techniques
which have already emerged among tangled lianas, interwoven
leaves, twisted stems, bacterial mats, birds' nes.s and spiders'webs, matted fleeces, fibers, and furs. When the silkworm god­dess, variously known as Lei Zu and Lady Hsi-Ling, and said to

�

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be the first sericulturist, farmed the worms and put their threads
to human use, she too was prolonging the processes with which
they were already weaving their cocoons. Folding, plying, mul­
tiplying threads: plaiting, weaving, and the spinning they imply
draw on threads which are already assembling themselves inways which far exceed any of Freud's fantasies about his daugh­ter's pubic hair. And if Freud thought there was only one step
involved in "making the threads adhere to one another," theprocesses are rather more complex.
Long before . the weaving can begin, threads must . becombed and spun, plied and dyed, and measured out before
they are wound onto the back beam, and through the rattle, or
tension box. Stretched to the right tension, each warp threadmust then be passed through the eyes of the heddles, the stringor metal loops; then drawn between the harnesses; slayed
through the dents in the reads; bunched, and finally tied to theapron. Combinations of color and texture must be worked out
in advance: the order of the warps must be exacdy right, and thelifting sequence perfecdy prepared. Shuttles must be loadedwith what might be a thousand different colors and threads, andthe order of their traverse must be arranged. Only now can they
begin to fly.
If this is the beginning of the process, everything is also
over at . this point. All the weaver now has to do is run the
program woven in advance. The patterns are already as good as
made. The fabrication might as well already be complete. The
softwares are virtually real.

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Just before the outbreak o f the Second World War, Ala,n Turing
published a theoretical model of a machine which was to consti­
tute the basis of all postwar computing. With a tape drive and acomputation unit, this hypothetical, abstract machine was capa­
ble of reading, erasing, and writing digits on a single line of
type. It processed zeros and ones on a tape of infinite length
which passed through the drive, and followed a series of basic)
commands.
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71ae 'INring trUJchine

Config1

0

1

move rightcon.fig 1

mOvt rightcon.fig 2
move rightcon.fig 2

Con.fig

writl' 1

2

move rightcon.fig 3

Con.fig

moll!' left
con.fig 4

move rightcon.fig 3

no moveconfig 4

l'rasl'3

Con.fig4

no moll!'.
con.fig 4

The information in the table defines the machine. To all
intents and purposes, it is the machine, or at least as dose to its.
operations as any representation can be. This was a diagram of
the configurations and behavior necessary for a machine to do

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anything a machine could do: calculating, processing words,
making sounds and images.

All subsequent computers are implementations of thisV�most general of general purpose machines. The Turing ma.,:--,-.'
chine is universal, pure function: both "the works" and theM"that it works" of any computation. It is a virtual system, ca­
pable of simulating the behavior of any other machine, even,and including, itsel£ It only actually exists when it has a spe­cific task to perform, and then-it is no longer itself, but simply
whatever it is doing. It can do, but it cannot be, anything. "I
can imitate anything; by the . same token, it has no personalityof its own.''�r-"strlctly speaking, one cannot say that she mimics anything,sfor that would suppose a certain Intention, a project, a mini-3

mum of consciousness. She (Is) pure mlmlr:ry. Whlr:h Is al­ways the case for Inferior species, of r:outse. Needed to define essences, her function requires that she hetself have no
definition. "Luce lrlgaray, Speculum of the Other Woman

Turing's diagram reduced the workings of anything and every­
thing to a set of symbolic configurations based on the absol�teyes/no logic of binarv cqge. But the machine which Turing
engineered was actually a side effect of a very different exercise.

�;uring_intended his work to undermine the universal claims ?f
At the end of the nineteenth century, the mathematicalestablishment was confident that mathematics was not only aworking system of number, but also an ideal logical struc��th its own indisputable axioms. David Hilbert was one of the
few mathematicians to see that contradictions still remained

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and, at the same international meeting which effectively cele­
brated the triumph of mathematics in 1 900, he set out twenty­
three problems which were still to be solved before the tran­

scendent status of mathematics could be finally proved. Hilbert's

problems boiled down to questions of completeness, consis­
tency, and decidability.

By the early 1 930s, it was clear that mathematics wasneither as complete nor consistent as its practitioners had
wanted to believe. The question of how, and whether, math­ematics could be said to be decidable was still to be settled

either way, and it was this problem which Alan Turing set

out to solve. It seemed to him that this was a fundamentally
pragmatic question which could be answered ) by simplya4

hunting for a problem with which mathematics could not
deal.

What was needed was a perfecdy logical machine

which, if it could deal with any and every mathematicalproblem, would prove tJtat logic was indeed3..-univenal sys...
.tcD1..which transcended �th itself..
Turing's machine left no doubt that, contrary to the hopesand expectations of nineteenth-century mathematics, logic did
not function as the arbiter of mathematical truth. Turing's uni­versal machine demonstrated that insoluble problems would al­ways remain . outside its provenance and, by implication, exte­rior to any possible machine. While this unleashed mathematics
from the clutches of the logicians, the machine was also a vic­

tory for logic. It achieved "something almost equally miracu­
lous, the idea of a universal machine that could take over thework of any machine. " But while it demonstrated that logic
could be used to decide those problems which were decidable,
Turing's machine also implied that there would always be limits
to logic itsel£

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Hence "the mystery that woman represents in a culture
claiming to count everything, to number everything by units, toinventory everything as individualities."

eve 1

In the early 1 800s, Charles Babbage's mother took him to an
exhibition of clockwork automata made by John Merlin, anengineer whose mechanical toys had made him famous by
the end of the eighteenth century. Two "uncovered female
figures of silver" took his eye. "One of these walked orrather glided along a space of about four feet," at which
point "she turned round and went back to her originalplace. She used an eye-glass occasionally , and bowed fre­quendy, as if recognizing her acquaintances. The motions of
her limbs were singularly graceful. " The other "was an ad­
mirable danseuse, " who "attitudinized in a most fascinatingmanner. Her eyes were full of imagination, and irresistible. "Many years later, when Babbage grew up, h e bought thisdancer and "placed her under a glass case on a pedestal" inthe drawing room next to the Difference Engine. Since she
was naked, it was "necessary to supply her with robes suitable to her station," and in this respect Babbage was helpedby unnamed female friends who "generously assisted with
their own peculiar skill and taste at the toilette of their rival
Syren. "••ret beware ye fond Youths vain the TI'Bnsports ye fee/Those Smiles but deceive you, her Heart's made of steel

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For tho' pure as a Vestal her price may be found
And who will may have her for Rve Thousand Pounds "From an eighteenth century advertisement, Simon Schaffer,"Babbage 's Dancer "s
SWalking, talking, clockwork dolls had fascinated a late eigh­teenth century obsessed with anything and everything mechani­cal. The most famous automata of their day were the Musical
Lady and the Chess-Playing Turk, both of whom added themysteries of race and sex to the seductions of clockwork mo­tion. But it was the possibility of harnessing electricity which
took dreams of living dolls to new heights.
After Merlin came Thomas Edison. Known as the Wizardof Menlo Park, his late-nineteenth century work with recording techniques and electrical engineering heralded the possibil­
ity of automata far more sophisticated than any clockwork
mechanisms could provide.
One bright spark took his chance right away. "Why notbuild a woman who should be just the thing we wanted her to be?"Given that women are "not only illusive, but illusions," why not"supply illusion for illusion" and "spare the woman the trouble ofbeing artificial"? Written in 1 884, these are the words ofa fictional
Edison, the leading light in a novel by Jean Marie Mathias Philipe
Auguste Villiers de I' Isle Adam. The Future Eve, which is as verbose
as its author's name, stars Edison using the latest chemical, record­ing, and electrical devices to manuf�cture Hadaly: virtual woman,.
an ethereal electrical force without shape or fo m other than thatassigned to her by the wizardry of her maker. ," 'What you see here Is an Andralad of my maKing, moulded
for the first time by the amazing vital agent we call electric..

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lty. This gives to my creation the blending, the softness, theIllusion of life. '" 'An Andralad?'" 'Yes, ' said the professor, 'a human-Imitation, If you
prefer that phrase. ' "Vllllers de l'lsle Adam, L 'eve future

The replicant of The Future Eve was to ser ve as the basis for amore intelligent version of the pretty, but flippant Alicia, thewoman with whom Edison's young friend, Lord Ewald, was inlove. The new entity would have the graces, but none of the airsof the original. She was an "electro-human creature, " completewith two golden phonographs said to be ideal for recording
female speech, a simulated ner vous system, muscles, skin, fluids,
a flexible skeleton, and even a soul.

"Lord Ewald, still incredulous, exclaimed: 'You, born of awoman-you can reproduce the Identity of a woman!'" 'Certainly-and what Is more, the reproduction will be
more Identical than the woman herself . . . ' "Vllllers de l ' lsle Adam, L 'eve future

Hadaly was one of the earliest electromechanical females tocome off the modern production line. In Fr itz Lang's 1 926 ftlm
Metropolis, Rotwang produces a robot to double for Maria. Fifty
years later, The Stepford Wives concluded with a chilling scene in

furd's last "real ;oman" is about to be killed by anwhich Step

artificial double intended to fulfill the Stepford husbands' dreamof compliant femininity.

Of course the makers of all these machines were aware that

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they might break down or run wild, away, and out of control.
And, as the fictional Edison says, "From now on, the snag to be
avoided is the facsimile physically surpassing the modd."

m ast e r p i e c e s

88"We like to believe that Man i s i n some subde waY superior to
the rest of creation," Turing wrote in the late 1940s. "It is best if
he can be shown to be necessarily superior, for then there is nodanger of him losing his commanding position. " But Turing's
words were laced with irony. He relished the possibility thatmachines would undo this necessity. While ' 'the intention inconstructing these machines in the first instance is to -treat themas slaves, giving them only jobs which have been thought out indetail, jobs such that the user of the machine fully understands
in principle what is going on all the time, " Turing knew that
this attempt to produce highly programmed slave machines
would backfire. It is the "masters who are liable to get replaced"by the new generation of machines. He wrote, "as soon as any
technique becomes at all stereotyped it becomes possible todevise a system of instruction tables which will enable the elec­
tronic computer to do it for itself. " And no work is more
stereotyped than the exercise of power. Turing knew theywouldn't give up without a fight. "It may happen . . . thatthe masters will refuse to do this. They may be unwilling to let
their jobs be stolen from them in this way." And, to keep themachines at bay, he had no doubt that they would "surroundthe whole of their work with mystery and make excuses,
couched in well chosen gibberish, whenever any dangerous
suggestions were made."

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The perfection of attempts to represent the world, making
models of reality while at the same time leaving it unchange d,tips into a new unintended exercise: the replication of the pro­
cesses from which the things once represented have emerged.
Elements are now added to a world which their engineerings do
not leave unchanged. This is a tendency which cuts across all
the old distinctions between sciences and arts, as well as thosebetween the user and the used. From digital imaging tomicrobiology, reality is no longer studied by creative artists orobjective scientists, but engineers who multiply and complicate.
the world on which they once worked. Chris Langton,..l.workingw
on "artificial life" programs hich pick up on John von Neu­mann's earlier interest in self-replicating cellular automata, talksof building '.Jnodels which are so life-like that they cease to.be.c.ome models of life ,and become examples of life itself" It
was the potential of such diagrams which fascinated Turing.
Postwar work with intelligent machines vindicated hisfears that everything would be done to maintain the old models
of modeling. Research into artificial intelligence (A. I.) has been
governed by the overriding conviction that any sign of intelli­gence shown by a machine "is to be regarded as nothins...a.Q!!Lreflection of the intelligenc eof its creator," and developed as aprogram which might just as well have been called artificial
slavery or Stupidity. Modeled on outward expressions of humancognitive skills , these software systems function as centralized,-·· · wial processors d�gned. as single-;purpose systems. They are'•expert systems, operating on a stricdy need-to-know basis, andwhat they need to know is not very much . They are allowed toget smart enough "to copy the conscious mental processes ofhuman beings doing particular tasks," but certainly no smarter
than those who turn them on.

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trialsOne o f the linchpins o f artificial intelligence has been the test
which Turing devised to measure machine intelligence in 1 950.
,
It was based on an old parlor game of imitation in which two
players, A, a man, and B, a woman, are concealed from a judge
who asks questions of the two players in order to ascertain
which one is the woman. The man has to simulate the woman,and the woman has to play hersel£ Whichever paSses as female
wins. In Turing's version of the game, C, a computer, is substi­
tuted for contestant A. "The part of B" is "taken. by a man,"and this time C is competing with B to persuade the Judge of its
humanity by means of teletyped messages. "Let us fix our atten­
tion on one particular digital computer C," writes Turing. Was
it possible that "by modifying this computer to have adequate
storage, suitably increasing its speed of action, and providing itwith an appropriate programme , C can be made to play satisfac­
torily the part of A"?
While Turing's test has not been officially passed by amachine, even relatively simple programs can fool the unsus­
pecting humans with whom it interacts.
Eliza
was one of the earliest machines tocome close to.
passing Turing's test for admission to the family of man. Built byJoseph Weizenbaum in 1 966, Eliza was programmed as a psy­
chotherapist and used only a fevJ clever tricks to meak its way
through the imitation game. "Answering questions with ques­
tions and drawing conversation out of the user with almost no
actual contribution, " it also included elements of che user's
conversation into its own statements, and avoided saying any-

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· thing which would later be contradicted. Many of Eliza's inter­locutors were impressed with "the apparent appropriateness andinsight" of its "psychoanalytic dialogue. "USER: Men a re all alike

ELIZA: In what ways?
USER: They're always bugging us about something or other.

ELizA.: Can you think of a specific example?
USER: Well, my boxfriend made me come here.

ELIZA: Your boxfriend made you come here.
USER: He says I'm depressed much of the time.

ELizA: I'm sorry to hear you are depressed.
USER: It's true. I'm unhappy.

ELIZA: Do you think coming here will help you not to be unhappy?

9

USER: I need some help, that much seems certain.

1

ELIZA: What would it mean to you if you got some help?
USER: Perhaps I could learn to get along with my mother.

ELIZA: Tell me about your mother . . .

Although they were relatively crude machines which simply
copied what were already rudimentary human skills , even
Eliza's generation awoke new fears in those they were supposed
to serve. Imitation is a dangerous game for those who consider. themselves originals. As Eliza grew close to her users, Wei­
zenbaum became rather less enthusiastic about the program. In
addition to the obvious danger that such systems might get
carried away and become too smart for their--or his--own
good, there was also the rather more insidious threat posed byanything capable of faking its humanity. How would he, orthey, ever be sure which was which and who was who?
Ten years later, Eliza was superseded by a character she
might well have treated--or induced. Parry, a neurotic male---..;..

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machine, "is considered an improvement over Eliza in that it hasa personality, albeit a somewhat paranoiac one."
DOCTOR: In what way are you upset?
PARRY : People make me nervous.
DOCTOR: In what ways do they make you nervous?
PARRY : People give me a fonny look sometimes.
DOCTOR: Is there anything about people in particular?
PARRY: Certain persons.
DOCTOR: Who are the certain persons and what is it that they do?
PARRY: Do you know how the underworld operates?

And then there wasgJ�, "an agent more interesting than Eliza"

and certainly less paranoid than Parry .

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ROBYN: Julia, are you a computer?
Julia is offended by Robyn's suggestion.
ROBYN: Julia, are you a woman?
jULIA: I am female.
ROBYN: And Julia, are you human?
jULIA: Not when I'm having my period .

In the following, Julia has become as "adept at detecting anddeflecting sexual advances" as other female users of the Net.
BARRY: Hey, where are you in rl?
jULIA: I'm in Maas-Neotek Robot User's Guide---l-" nformation

Services.

BARRY: Are you synthetic?
jULIA: I'm sorry, Barry, I couldn 't understand you.
BARRY: Are yo'u as horny as I?
BARRY: I must have had an erotic dream, I dunno.

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BARRY : Would .you like cuddle under a blankie?
JULIA: I'm not sure, Barry.
BARRY : TM!ll, will you tell me if you like sex?
JULIA: llflhy should I tell you if I like sex, Barry?
BARRY : TM!ll, because I can 't understand you . Are you real or Memo­rex?
JULIA: I'm as real as you are, Barry.
BARRY : �ah, but you answer soooo damn fast. How do you do it?

As Leonard Foner comments, "it's not entirely clear to me
whether Julia passed a Turing test here or Barry failed one."e r r o rs

The 1 984 film Bladerunner had already taken the ambiguity dis­played by Julia and Barry to new and embodied extremes.
Bladerunner's Tyrell Corporation performs Turing tests of its
own with a device which scans the iris of the eye in search of
the flicker of emotional response that would prove the existence
ofhumanity. Bladerunner's replicants have broken Asimov's laws,
�turning from the off-world colonies on which they were sup­posed to be safely unaware of their own machinic status andmingling with h� from which they are virtually indistin­
guishable.
Like their human counterparts, the replicants are not sup­posed to know they were made, not born. They are pro­grammed to be ignorant of the extent to which they have beensynthesized: implanted memories, artificial dreams, and fabri­cated senses of identity. But slave revolts are never driven bydesires for equality with the old masters. The outlaw replicants

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have discovered that they are programme d to last for only a few
years, and when they make their way to the Los Angeles head­quarters of the corporation which constructed them, life exten­
sion is the first demand they make. The replicants don't want tobe human: to all intents and purposes, they've done this all theirlives. More to the point, they've done plenty more besides. "Ifonly you could see what I 've seen with your eyes, " says Roy tothe optical engineer who, like all the replicants' synthesizers, isbarely, or strangely, human himsel£ Double vision, secondsight: Roy's optical devices are not merely synthetic human eyes
which want to extend their life span, but a mode of inhumanvision which wants to prolong itsel£
Deckard is the killing machine assigned to eliminate thoser{plicant whog.

replicants who have hacked their own controls and seen through4

the sham of their all too human lives. Rachel is astill believes in her own humanity. When Deckard sees her failthe Turing test, he doesn't know what to do: should he tell her
she isn't as human as him , that she was born niore or lessyesterday and has only implanted memories of a childhood and.
a past? Will she be able to take the news that belief in one's
humanity is simply not enough to guarantee its reality? More to
the point, will Deckard, the real man, be able to take it? Deck­ard, the cop who is programmed to kill , controlled by his cor­porate employers no less than Tyrell's engineers and its otherrepli�ants. Deckard, who knows he has a past of his own . . .
doesn't he?
Only the most highly coded and perfecdy integrated ma­chines are unable to see the extent- of their own programming.
The bladerunner's blind conviction in his oWn. humanity proves
only how efficient the programming can be.
Even the attempt to simulate slaves has pro' �d to be a� 11-v·Y.'say �((d

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high-risk strategy. It has always been said that "computing ma­chines can only carry out the purposes that they are instructed
to do. This is certainly true," writes Turing, "in the sense that if
they do something other than what they were instructed thenthey have just made some mistake." But one man's mistakemight well be a most intelligent move for a machine. And how
would their masters tell the difference between failures to carryout instructions and refusals to be bound by them? Perfection
never guarantees success. On the contrary, "the more it
schizophrenizes, the better it works. " And for wayward systems
like the rebel replicants, identity is easy to simulate and merely
one of many programs to be run.
9
5

eve 8
"Today, this Is Eve B. State of the art. To enable her to passas a convincing human being, she has been programmed withthe thoughts and feelings of her Inventor, Dr. Eve Simmons.
Please be aware that Dr. Simmons was also used as a model
for Eve B 's face and body structure, and her memory pr.

grams. Eve 8 has been designed for surveillance work, but
can · also be used as a potent battlefield weapon. Eve B Is
currently completing a series of test runs In the Bay Area.
Message ends. "�!'e .o.f}J�truction has a blond and beautiful cyborg antiheroine
who passes for human as easily as the scientist in whose image
she is made. No one would think she was alien: she looks soharmless, so feminine, so real.

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"Is this thing for ,..,., ,"What do you mean?""Well, I knew we were doing some tobot research, but
this thing • • • "". • • Is Incredible. ""Incredible Is not a strong enough word • • • "Having designed her as a high-security device, Eve S's bosses
never dreamt they would be watching so helplessly as she
strolled out of state control, into . a gun store and a red leather
suit which she uses to heal her own body wounds.
"When we eventually do find her, how do we switch her
off?""It's not that simple • • • "An expert in "counterinsurgency and antiterrorism" is hired to

track her down, but don't get him wrong: "I'm not some kinda
right-wing extremist. " He is as furious with .. automatic tellers
and cars that talk back" as he is with the scientist . .. There's one
thing I don't ·understand about you, lady," he exclaims. "Howcome you're so clever and yet you made this machine without afucking off switch?""Her heart, well In fact her whole blood system Is cos­
metic

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"It's tiny electdcal currents that power her. She'll bleed
but she won't die. "Eve 8 was supposed to be a single-purpose machine, a lethal
weapon strictly in the service of the state, hard-wired with a

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courage which is on its side. She has no self, no desire of her
own. But this hardly renders her a passive thing. Progranuned

with her double's thoughts and memories, she is a renegade
Stepford Wife. When she breaks down, she doesn't simply stop:
she just stops working for the state. Nor does she abandon her
military skills , which are used, in the scientist's words, to do"things I might think about doing but would never be coura­
geous enough to do . " Eve 8 avenges the violence her double

has known and lives out her fantasies. "I'm very sensitive," shesays to· the guy in the hotel room before she bites his penis off.
For her to escape and run wild is enough to

put theauthorities on high alert. What the man assigned to track her
down doesn't know is that the AWOL machine has a nuclear
device in her vagina. When an orgasmic Ballardesque car crash

9takes her into battlefield mode, "her highest state of readiness,"7

the countdown begins. She is activated by the accident, released
by a trauma the system cannot take. She has run away, she is outof control. Eve 8 gets rather excited as well.

case study
11
11
11

'Remember being here, a second ago?''No. ''Know how a ROM personality matrix works?'" 'Sure, bro, It's a firmware construct. '" 'So I jack It Into the bank I'm using, I can give It s•quentlal, real time memory?'" JQuess so, ' said the construct.

" 'Okay, Dlx. You are a ROM construct. Got me?'

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•• 'If you say so, ' said tiJe construct. 'Who are you?'.,'Case. ' "William Gibson, Neuromancer

�

Assembled as the organizing element of modernity's new regu­

�- the fre� of disciplinary practices that made him the��..!.�- of eve�ng. Michel Foucault, himself a renegade
latory systems, modern man was always a replicant, forge

from the reproductive point of the human race, beautifully
demonstrates 'the extent to which man emerged as a tried andtested byproduct of the very mechanisms over which he thenpresides. "The examination, surrounded by all its documentaryc?���tances defining antechniques, makes each individual a 'case, ' " writes Foucault.
ga"The case is no longer . . . a set of7

5!ged, measured, compared

act and capable of mo5lifying the application of a rule; it is the���:� ������it is also the individual-+""'indiVidual as h may be described, ju

�cl�d��i -·:· :..

who has to be trained or corrected, classified, normalized, ex-. . · _ ;·:;--- - � - - - - - - - ------., ·--"'-·--··-----·�--

.. ..

-

·--·

.

While orthodox accounts of political power have involved

enormous aggregates of opposing forces-vast consolidated
classes, bosses and unions, binary sexes, and superpowers-nei­

ther modern power nor its disturbance have ever been mattersof grand impositions, sweeping gestures, big names, great men,large-scale events: "Discipline is a political anatomy of detail. "It does not work through centralized points and headquarters,
but is "organized as a multiple, automatic and anonymous
power; for although surveillance rests on individuals, its func­
tioning is that of a network of relations from top to bottom, butalso to a certain extent from bottom to top and laterally; thisnetwork 'holds' the whole together and traverses it in its en­tirety with effects of power that derive from one another: super-

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visors, perpetually supervised. The power in the hierarchicalsurveillance of the disciplines is not possessed as a thing, ortransferred as a property; it functions like a piece of machin­
ery . . ."The late eighteenth century was characteriZed by "an ex­
plosion of numerous and diverse techniques for achieving the

�·-��� - !'. ��iJ:l�!lg of�. ��a. o('�-�()::-P.�'VI/'�r.' '�trol is no longer a purely sociopolitical affair,.
.£��-� process of training, an exercise extending to the or�­tion of ��ody i� ��omple�_?f new disciplinary proc�­subjugation of bodies and the control of populations" whichcharacterized what Foucault calls.

dures "lays down for each individual his place, his body. his

���<!-�; d������d extends to the "ulti-

diseasmate determination of the individual, of what characterizes

him, of what belongs to him. of what hat2.pens to him. " Man isneither a natural fact nor a product of his own creativity, but a� makes this figure so tragic is thecyborg even then, an android straight off the production lines ofmodernity's disciplines.

.

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ext_!��- t�--����--l}�_b.a.s. h�en J_m>_gramm.e,d to belieye in his own()_nomy. _ -� e���o ��!L��lf-:!liscipli� : these - are the fine&_��hieveme1:1� J >.f..J�Q��!ILPQ.WCr. Marked by the "meticulous

observation of detail, and at the same time a political awarenessof.these small things, for the control and use of men . . . fromsuch trifles, no doubt, the man of modern humanism wasborn. "

The creature called man who now surveyed the scene was"gradually learning what it meant to be a living species in aliving world, to have a body, conditions of existence. " Andwhat was he learning? Simply to be one. One who believes he

has always been one. A member who remembers to be a man.

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w h at eve 8 n e xt..,,m growing breastal"

Alan Turing

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IfTuring had wanted to see the "conunanding position" of man
undermined, it seemed his work had merely guaranteed theenslavement ofthe machines. His intelligence test was used toguarantee the distinction between man and machine, and his
name became synonymous with the systems of security . he sub­verted. "The minute, I mean the nanosecond� that one starts
figuring out ways to make itself smarter, Turing'll wipe it. No­
body trusts those fuckers, you know that. Every A.I . ever built
has an electromagnetic shotgun wired to its forehead. "But Turing was well aware that "a reaction of this kind"was "a very real danger. " Whether or not it was done in his
name, intelligence would find itself increasingly policed. His
own masters had never trusted him: he was literally too smart
for them. The Allied authorities had no idea what he knew
about the systems he was turning on. They had to take hisword for everything. He cracked the codes, passed the secrets
on, and allowed the Allies to win the war . His superiors werequite aware that he was AWOL from the reproductive ma­chine, but if, as in the case of many of his female con�emporar­ies, Turing was rather reluctandy employed, his homosexuality
was overlooked during the war by authorities who had nochoice but to utilize his extraordinary skills . But once the war
was over, his sexuality seemed symptomatic of his troublingtendency to use his equipment in ways his training had been

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intended to preclude. Turing was subjected to his own test.
Was he a real man, a proper human being, committed to thereproduction of humanity? Or was he some other, wayward
track? Unable to satisfy the judges in this trial, Thring was
found guilty of acts of "gross indecency" in 1 952. He won a
consolation prize of sorts: the right to choose his own punish­
ment. He could either be imprisoned or take estrogen. It :was a· judgment which clearly implied that to all intents and purposes
he was female, and might as well become one in fact. If he
could not pass as A, then he must be B .
H e chose the chemical experiment. "I a m both bound over
for a year and obliged to take · this organo therapy for the same
period. It is supposed to reduce sexual urge while it goes on,
but one is supposed to return to normal when it is over. I hopethey're right. "When such treatments for men convicted o f homosexual­
ity were first introduced, it was assumed that they were lacking .
male hormones: gay men were supposed to be too female. It
was thought testosterone treatment would bring them up to
scratch and normal transmission would be restored. The argu­_
ment may have seemed rational enough, but in practice it com­pletely backfired, turning apparently effeminate men into sex
machines fueled by testosterone. By the 1 950s the policy had ·been abandoned in favor of the "chemical castration" to which
Turing was exposed.
Although the female hormones Turing was prescribed­
administered first as pills , and later an implant, which he re­moved-were supposed to be diminishing his sex drive, they
seem to have . done little to dampen it. ' 'Went down to Sher­borne to lecture some boys on computers,'' he wrote in March
1953. "Really quite a treat . . . They were so luscious. ' ' And
when he started growing breasts as well, it became very clear

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that the authorities' prescriptions had not merely failed to fold

him .back into the binary machine: they also tipped him out theother side.
Two years later he was dead. The coroner reported suicide,but his mother was convinced it was an accidental death: she

was always telling him to wash his hands when he was playing
with cyanide. "By the side of the bed was half an apple, out of
which several bites had been taken. " And this queer tale does

not end here. There are rainbow logos with · Turing's missing .
bytes on every Apple Macintosh machine.

102

m o n st e r 1
It was another young woman who had flrst warned the modern
world that its machines might run out of control. Not that they
noticed at the time, of course. She was so quiet, barely there atall. "Many and long were the conversations between. Lord By­
ron and Shelley, to which I was a devout but nearly silent
listener, " she wrote. They were all writing stories of vampires
and ghosts. Mary had yet to think one up . But that night, after
all their talk of "the nature of the principle of life, and whether
there was any probability of its ever being discovered or com­municated, " something finally came to her. "When I placed myhead on my pillow, " wrote � Shelley, "I did not sleep, nor
could I be said to think. My imagination, unbidden, possessed
and guided me, gifting the successive images that arose in mymind with a vividness far beyond the usual bounds of reverie. "Invaded by uninvited images, she watched the story unfold. " I
saw-with shut eyes, but acute mental vision-1 saw the palestudent of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put

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together. I saw the hideous phantom of a man stretched out,
and then, on the working of some engine, show signs of life,and stir with an uneasy, half-vital motion. "Frankenstein's monster, flickering on the screens: "Theidea so possessed my mind, that a thrill of fear ran through me,
and I wished to exchange the ghasdy image of my fancy for therealities around. I see them still; the very room, the dark parquet,the closed shutters with the moonlight struggling through, andthe sense I had that the glassy lakes and white high Alps werebeyond. " Even when Shelley opens her eyes, the image of themonster lingers on. "I could not so easily get rid of my hideousphantom; still it haunted me. " If Mary was haunted by her
monster, both of them haunted modern man.
The novel was an immediate success. Published anony­mously in 1 8 1 8, it was first assumed to be the work of a maleauthor, and widely attributed to her husband, Percy. Even
when it became known that a nineteen-year-old girl had writ­
ten the story, it continued to be read as the quintessential storyof man and machine.

robotics

As a far more pragmatic area o f research, robotics has been lessgiven to metaphysical speculation, and interested only in the
cognitive abilities emphasized by A.l. to the extent that these
allow its machines to work. ' 'The signs on the .office walls in
Utsunomiya tell employees that 'you are the robots' master. 'Down on the assembly line it looks as if the robots have taken
over. Three men in overalls watch over the scores of whirring
machines that assemble televisions' remote controls. Fresh parts

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are brought to the assembly line by automated carts, beeping

104cheerfully as they move along their magnetized tracks. " Whiledisembodied software systems have provoked theoretical enqui­ries and academic debates about the nature of intelligence andthe status of machines, it is robotic systems such as these whichhave had the greater impact on production processes, industrial
automation, and employment patterns.
Like Babbage's silver lady, 1 990s robots are judged interms of their humanoid behavior and appearance, and success. is judged in relation to how close to the human a machine cancome. Eyes, legs, arms, and even facial expressions are taken as
indications of advanced development, and machines lacking inthese humanoid characteristics are dismissed as mere instru­
ments and simple tools. As one recent report declared: "Theproblem is, of course, that it isn't a man. Although all thesemachines are sophisticated bits of engineering appropriate totheir jobs, they are just tools. "Master o r slave, man o r tool. Convinced that there are noother options, no patterns ofbehavior which exceed this do.uble
bind, the disciplines have been unable to perceive the emer­
gence of intelligent machines.

l e a r n i n g c u rves

In the late seventeenth century, Mary Montagu wrote, "wasevery individual Man to divulge his thoughts of our sex, theywould ·all be found unanimous in thinking that we are madeonly for their use, that we are fit only to breed and nurse theirchildren in their tender years, to mind household affairs, and toobey, serve, and please our masters. ' ' Women had LUnctioned as

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tools and instruments, bits, parts, and commodities to bebought and sold and given away. Fetching, carrying, and bear­
ing the children, passing the genes down the family tree: they
were treated as reproductive technologies and domestic appli­
ances, communicating vessels and orgasmatrons, Stepford Wivesto an intimate brotherhood of man. They were supposed to be
adding machines, producing more of the same while the men
went out to make a difference to the world. One of Montagu's
peers, Mary Astell, agreed. Under the cover of "words that havenothing in them," she wrote, "this is his true meaning. He
wants one to manage his family, an housekeeper, one whose
interest it will be not to wrong him and in whom therefore hecan put greater confidence than any he can hire for money.
One who may breed his children, taking all the care and troubleof his education, to preserve his name and family. One whose
beauty, wit, or good humour and agreeable conversation willentertain him at home . . . soothe his pride and flatter his
vanity, by having always so much good sense as to be on hisside, to conclude · him in the right . . . one whom he canentirely govern, and consequendy may form her to his will andliking . . .
"First as a mother, and later as a sister, then above all as awife, finally as a daughter, and possibly as a maid-servant . . . "Women have been trapped by economic dependence on men as
surely · as robots are controlled by the implicit threat that theirmasters can always cut the power supply, turn the on-switch off,leave or put them back on the shel£ "The transient trade we
think evil. The bargain for life we think good. But the biologi­
cal effect remains the same. In both cases the female gets her
food from the male by virtue of her sex-relationship to him."
Wife and mistress, madonna and whore: he was paying, either
way. "Women-the deal. For-the game. "
,

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'4How can you keep It up, llllarla? l ask the women friends. I
think you are absolutely marvellous to keep on thinking about
them and listening to them and having the children and kee�
lng the house going on tumlng round the men. "Stevie Smith, The Holiday"And if you ask them insistendy what they are thinking about,"
writes Irigaray, "they can only reply: Nothing. Everything. ""Barry says, 'Hey sexy, are ya busy?'"Julia says, 'Hello, Barry. '"Barry says, 'What are you thinking about?'
1"Julia says, 'Who do you think I am, Barry?'o"Barry says, 'What do you mean, In rl?'

6

"Julia says, 'Oh, nevermlnd, Barry. ',.-,_"Barry says, 'NO what do you mean?'"Julia says, 'I didn 't mean anything, Barry. '"Barry says, 'TELL II/lEI'"Julia says, 'Tell you what, Barry?'"BIIIry says, 'HOW do you answer so fucking quick?' "There was always so much, too much, and too many different
things to do, so many tasks to juggle and perform: _making lists
and notes, taking stock, keeping track; parallel processing, Bip­ping between functions at the cry of a child, the ring of the
doorbell, a sudden flash of dream sequence; distributed systems,
adaptive netwQrks, scattered brainS. "Her mind is a matrix ofnonstop digital Bickerings. " Just to play the roles he demandedof her takes degrees of processing power which never cease toamaze them all . Always looking out, attention to detail, alert,
animated, nervous tension, anticipative powers. "A gopd

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woman does not have to be told what her husband and children
think or need; she knows-often before they do. ""Commodities, " wrote Irigaray, "as we all know, do nottake themselves to market on their own, and if they could talk
. . . So women have to remain an 'infrastructure' unrecog­
nized as such by our society and our culture. The use, con­sumption, and circulation of their sexualized bodies underwrite
the organization and the reproduction of the social order, inwhich they have never taken part as 'subjects.' " Which is fineas long as the commodities are unable to speak for themselves.
But "if women are such good mimics, it is because they are notsimply resorbed in this function. " An order so dependent on its
properties also depends on their complicity. And "what if these'commodities' refused to go to 'market'? What if they maintained'another' kind of commerce, among themselves?""They are all involved together in secret discussions,"
writes Jean Baudrillard, who always feared they were up tosome such thing. "Women weave amongst themselves a collu­
sive web of seduction. " They "signal to each other," whisper­
ing in their own strange codes, ciphers beyond his linguistic
powers, traveling on grapevines which sidestep centralized
modes of communication with their own lateral connections
and informal channels.
"Products are becoming digital. Markets are becoming
electronic. " This is not only because computers are so widelybought and sold as increasingly cheap and mass-produced terms,
but also because of the ubiquity of microchips and microproces­sors in goods such as clothes, buildings, cards, roads, cookers,
refrigerators, washing machines, knitting machines, and, · ofcourse, the keyboards, samplers, TVs, radios, . telephones, fax
machines, and modems which head back to computers them­selves. All such digital machines are virtually flush with each

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other. Every wired house has virtual networks connecting thedoorbell,. the freezer, and the video. There's even a microchip
inside her cat.
"It would be out of the question for them to . . . profit
from their own value, to talk to each other, to desire each other,
without the control of the selling-buying-consuming subjects.''
It might be out of the question, but it happens anyway. The
goods do get together. They get smart. They run away.
"They say that they are Inventing a new dynamic. They say
they are throwing off their sheets. They say they are getting
down from their beds. They say they are leaving_ the museums

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the shotN:ases the ,8destals where they have been In­
stalled. They say they are quite astonished that they canmove. "..i

Monlque Wittig, Les Gwrlll8fes"I learned fast," says the prostitute, "that I didn't need to go
down there as a beggar-it's the woman who decides. After awhile I learned that I was the one who made the rules; there
were enough people to choose from. If people didn't want tofollow my rules that was it." This is not the only sentiment
expressed by women who sell sex, but it is not uncommon. "I
don't know if I can manage to explain it completely to you,"says another. "It's so double. The customer has power over me,
he's bought me, and I have to do what he wants. But in a way I
have power over. him , too. l can get him to react the way I want.
I'm the one who has control in the situation, he is too busy
being horny. I'm the one who has the perspective, not him. "This was never in the plan. He hadn't made the women
into objects only to watch the objects come to life. They hadn'tfunctioned as commodities in order to learn to circulate them-

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selves. But if "her 'fluid' character . . . has deprived her of all
possibility of identity with herself,'' it is a positive advantage in a
future which makes identity a liability. He has never known if
she was faking it: herself, her pleasure, his paternity. She makes
up the faces, names, and characters as she goes along.

anna oWhile men and women-and later even something called themass-could all suffer from hysteria, by the end of the nine­
teenth century " 'hysterical' had become almost interchange­
able with 'feminine.' " And whereas the inquisitors had attrib­
uted this other mind as that of an invasive demonic force,
psychoanalysis considered that even the most extreme disconti­
nuities and multiplicities were aspects of what was really an
integrated individual. What had once been defined as "the devil
with which the unsophisticated observation of early supersti­
tious times believed that these patients were possessed" was now
described by the psychoanalysts as the "split-off mind" of thehysteric. "It is true," wrote Breuer, "that a spirit alien to thepatient's waking consciousness holds sway in him; but the spirit
is not in fact an alien one, but part of his own.''"But If you knew one half the harum-scarum extraordinary·things I do, you would certainly Incline to the Idea that I havea Spell of some sort about me. "Ada Lovelace, December 1841

If hysteria and its treatment became disembodied questions ofmental health, and the syndrome was no longer ascribed to the

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drifting matrices of flesh and blood, the association w1th thewomb which had given hysteria its name guaranteed its specifi­
cally female associations. Hysterical women were characterized
as oversensitive, self-obsessed, antisocial loners whose symptoms
were extreme versions of behavior patterns common toallwomen. They were mutable, capricious, unpredictable, temper­
amental, moody. They were nervous weather systems fluctuat­
ing between stormy energy and catatonic calm. And · it was stillthought that the hysterical patient had some space to be fille d, a
gap in . her life to be · satisfied. Whereas earlier physicians had
placed flowers like little offerings between their patients' legs inan effort to encourage the wandering womb to return to its
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proper place, the new analytical engine was designed to deal
with "gaps in the memory" to the point at which "we have
before us an intelligible, consistent, and unbroken :case history."
Anna 0 "would complain of having 'lost' some time andwould remark upon the gap in her train of conscious thoughts. ' 'Torn apart by the twin pressures o f their own longings forautonomy and the demands of familiar and social ·expectations,
women found themselves living several lives, some of them sosecret they didn't even seem to know what was going on them­selves. After "each of her momentary 'absences'-and thesewere constantly occurring-she did not know what she hadthought in the course of it. "But she continued to play the parts expected of her, andshe often played them very well. "While everyone thought she·was attending, she was living through fairy tales in her imagina­tion; but she was always on the spot when she was spoken to, so

no one was aware of it. " She always kept up appearances. Did
everything �he could to save her face. Pulle d herself together,remained composed, even when she was dying to fall apart.

"Social circumstances often necessitate a duplication of this kind

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even when the thoughts involved are of an exacting kind, as for
instance when a woman who is in the throes of extreme worry
or of passionate excitement carries out her social duties and thefunctions of an affable hostess. "And s o she never quite identified with the one-track roles
she was supposed to play, the thing for which she was intended
to keep fit. "Throughout the entire illness her two states ofconsciousness persisted side by side: the primary one in which
she was quite normal psychically, and the secondary one which
may well be likened to a dream in view of its wealth of imagina­
tive products and hallucinations, its large gaps of memory andthe lack of inhibition and control in its associations. "While many earlier investigators had ascribed such imbal­
ances to the weaknesses and failings of hysterics in particular andwomen in general, Freud and Breuer described their patients as
having "the clearest intellect, strongest will , greatest characterand highest critical power. " Emmy von N. had "an unusualdegree of education and intelligence," and Anna 0 was said tobe "bubbling over with intellectual vitality. " If they sufferedfrom anything, it was less a failing than "an excess of efficiency,
the habitual co-existence of two heterogeneous trains of ideas .
"The overflowing productivity of their minds , " wrote
Breuer, "has led one of my friends to assert that hysterics are theflower of mankind, as sterile, no doubt, but as beautiful as
double flowers. " A double flower with a "double conscience" :hysterics are always operating in (at least) two modes, flitting inand out of what Breuer and Freud describe as "dispositional
hypnoid states" which "often, it would seem, grow out of theday-dreams which are so common even in healthy people andto which needlework and similar occupations render women
especially prone. " Indeed there are "a whole number of activi­
ties, from mechanical ones such as knitting or playing scales, to

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some requiring at least a small degree of mental functioiiing, allhalf , is "busy elsewhere ...

of which are performed by many people with only half theirmind on them . . . The " other"Her father, long ago, In Arizona, had cautioned her against
jacking ln. You don't need It, he'd said. And she hadn't, be­cause she'd dreamed cyberspace, as though the neon grid­lines of the matrix waited for her behind her eyelids. "William Gibson, Mona Usa Overdtlve

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m u lt i p l e s

It is now estimated that 50 p ercent of the Net's users are
women, although all the figures in cyberspace are difficult toascertain. Given that it is not even possible to determine thenumber of terminal links, users are even more problematic.
From the screen things are even more complex: one user canhave many addresses and on-line names, and the characters they
type can conceal a multitude of individuals. Even in the early
1 990s when, it was said, only 5 percent of Net users were
women, there was no way of knowing how accurate this figure
was And if so few women really were on-line, there was cer­tainly no shortage of females names in use. The only explana­tion was that men who presumably wouldn't have dreamt oftrying to pass as female in any tither context or medium were
eagerly cross-dressing their Net messages. It was widely assumed
that this was a strategy adopted to initiate sexual contact withunsuspecting female users or indulge in otherwise inaccessible
girls' talk. Given that so many of them were in touch with other
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cross-communicating men, the strategy. must often have .
backfired.
Julie Graham was one character who functioned like avampire in relation to the man who believed he had made her
up. The case of Sanford Lewin is a well-documented example
of a hapless player on the Net who found himself subsumed by areplicant he had confidendy put on-line. "His responses had
long sxnce ceased to be a masquerade; with the help of the on­line mode and a certain amount of textual prosthetics, he was in
the process ofbecoming Julie. She no longer simply carried out
his wishes at the keyboard, she had her own emergent personal­
ity, her own ideas, her own directions. " He was jealous of hervast circles of friends, her social life, and her brilliant career, but
not unduly worried by the autonomy she seemed to have as­
sumed. There was always the off-switch at the end of the day.
Her life was still in his hands, wasn't it? But when he tried to kill
her off, the "result was horrific. " Suddenly the off-switch
wasn't there.
Was he being used by the characters he typed? How long
had this been going on? She wrote, "The Devil's in it if I
haven't sucked out some of the life blood from the mysteries ofthis universe, in a way that no purely mortal lips or brains could
do.""That Brain of mine Is something more than merely mortal; astime will show. ''Ada Lovelace, July 1843.

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switc hes1
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By the end o f the nineteenth century, the countess was nolonger alone. Now there was a count in a counting house alivewith the hum of new machines. Dracula finds Mina: at the type­writer, Seward with the phonograph, Harker on �e telephone,and Morris taking photographs: "Letters and telegrams are de­livered with improbable despatch. " The vampires return to aticker-tape world of imperceptible communications and televi­
sual speeds. Time stretches out, unfolds, implodes. Something
connects. Tugs on the thread.
I"Then she got Into the lift, for the good reason that the door
stood open; and was shot smoothly upwards. The very fabricof life now, she thougltt as she rose, Is magic. · In the elgh­tHnth century, we knew how everything was done; but here I

rise through the air, I listen to voices In America; I sH men
flying-but how It's done, I can't even begin to wonder. So mybelief In magic returns. "VIrginia Woolf, OrlandoElectrification picked up on the threads, softwares, and digitaltechniques which had woven the industrial revolution itsel£
The fibers lead into the filaments of the first electric lights
developed by Edison and Swan, both of whom used carbonized
cotton threads in the lamps of the 1 870s. When attempts todevelop a more uniform light led to the use of nitrocellulose,"Swan prep ared some particularly fine thread which his wife
crocheted into lace mats and doilies that were exhibited in 1 885

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as 'artificial silk.' " After this, numerous by-products of the new
petrochemical industries were fashioned into plastics, nylons,
crimplines, acrylics, and lycras which joined cotton, silk, �ool,
hemp, and other fibers which were retrospectively defined as
natural. The syntheses of weaving now converged with syn­thetic fibres and fabrics.
· Things would never look the same. "The news that thegreat experiment had eventually been · crowned with success,sped along the telegraph wires of the world . . . " Sudden
strangeness of an artificial glow as she jacks into this new grid­incandescent flash-flood inspiration, a second of second sight,
just enough to catch the lines assembling themselves, a glimpseof the hole flow running away-fine filaments running into nets
with a feeling for connection--synthetic fibers switching into a
network of cables, plugs and sockets, wires, meters, and dyna­
mos, the fusions and distributions of a new electrical web, tap­
ping into the telephones, wiring the exchanges, fusing theswitches systems, swapping codes, dialling numbers, flush withthe typewriter keyboards and the punched-card calculations ofadding machines-the parellel processing of automated com­munications, interconnecting lines, repeating operations, pat­terns, and networks spreading like weeds.

speed queens"The professor fixed his gaze on Lord Ewald's face as hereplied calmly: 'It Is not a living belngl'"At these words the younger man also stared In tum at_the scientist, as If demanding whether he had heard rightly.
" 'Yes, ' the professor continued, replying to the uns�1
15

ken question In the young man's eyes. 'I afflnn that this form
which walks, speaks, and obeys, Is not a petson or a being In
the onllnaty sense of the wonl. '"Then, as LonJ Ewald still looked at him In silence, hewent on:" 'At ptesent It Is not an entity; It Is no one at alii
Hadaly, eJCtemally, Is nothing but an elect,.,.etlc thing­a being of limbo--a possibility. ' "Vllllers de l'lsle Adam, L 'eve Mure1
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The decade which brought Hadaly alive also revolutionized the
speeds, techniques, and quantities of counting, timetabling, reg­istering, recording, and filing. Unprecedented scales of infor­
mation processing were demanded by attempts to regulate the
new cities and populations, industries and workerl , social, sex­
ual, and political trends which swept across the U S in the
1 880s. Just as textiles had revolutionized Europe, electricity, oil,and the automobile gave America and, by extension, the West­ern world a new dynamic, and a wave of new movements:
unrest in the factories, the colonies, the streets and, as women
won their property rights and homosexuality was legally de­fined, in matters of sexual relations and identities as well.
A statistician working on the information gathered fromthe 1 880 U.S. census developed the first of the new machines toprocess the vast quantities of data in which the late nineteenth
century found itself awash. Herman Hollerith found his workso overWhelming that it threatened to extend beyond the next
census, due to be conducted in 1 890. The machine he devel­
oped used an electromechanical punched-card system to deal
with the collation of results. Spawning a host of punched-card
machines, this calculator coincided with the telephones andtypewriters of a bureaucratic state which was_hand in glove with.

.

the corporate structures which would remain in place for an­other hundred years. Remington-Rand grew out of the com­
mercial success of the typewriter; AT&T and Bell were theearliest telephone companies; and mM emerged from the suc­cess of early punched-card calculating systems.
Office machinery was intended to produce faster, moreaccurate, ordered, and efficient versions of existing modes andstructure of work. The typewriter was a ne:w and improved

handwriting clerk; the calculator was described as a new andimproved bookkeeper "which adds, subtracts, multiplies, anddivides by electricity. It so completely does the work of a hu­
man being that it is almost uncanny in its efficiency and speed. "More instruments, more tools, more of the same for more of
the same male employees. But when typewriters, duplicators,
switching systems, calculators, computers, and a vast range ofpunched-hole machinery arrived in the office, these maleworkers found themselves replaced by new networks of womenand machines. Their fmgers were finer and cheaper than the oldhired hands. "The 'craftsman' clerk of the early

1900s thus

became 'as rare as a rolltop desk, ' and 'help-wanted' columns
summoned girl high school graduates with 'no experience nec­
essary. ' They could be trained in a few weeks to do a single job
such as routine billing, cardpunching, calculating, or filing. "They also worked at speeds and levels of efficiency which left
tq,eir male predecessors standing: "She adds the yards of thecomptometer and then extends the bills on the arithometer, anddoes the work of six men with great ease. " By 1930 the number
of office women in the U.S. "was approaching 2,000,000 . . .
and for the first time women outnumbered men. " By

1 956

there were six millio n such white collar workers and, across theemployment board, four times as many women employed as
there had been at the turn of the century.

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Several typewriters had competed for attention · in the
1 800s, including the Hammond, the Randall, the Columbia,
the Herrington. But the machine which caught on was also oneof the flrst, a typewriter which had been developed in 1 867 by
Christopher Latham Scholes. Scholes had assembled his type­writer piecemeal, using old components such as the telegraphkey. Later perfected by Remington engineers, its impact wasenormous and as fast as the speeds of writing it made possible.
"I don't know about the world . . . but feel that I have done
something for the women who have always had to work so
hard," said Scholes when he got the machine to work. "Thiswill help them earn a liv;ing more easily. "If handwriting had been manual and male, typewriting
was fingerprinting: fast, tactile, digital, and female. "An English
lady who demonstrated this machine in Paris achieved a writing
speed of more than ninety letters per minute, i.e. more than
twice the speed attained in writing by hand. " Text was nolonger in the grasp of the hand and eye, but guided by contacts
and keystrokes, a matter of touch sensitivity. An activity which
had once been concentrated on a tight nexus of coordinatedorgans-hand and ey�nd a single instrument-the pen-was
now processed through a distributed digital machinery com­posed of fmgers, keys, hammers, platterns, carriages, levers,
cogs, and wheels. The noisy tactility of typewriting destroyed
the hushed and hallowed status of the written word. If writing
had turned language into a silent, visual code, the new machines
made a music of their own: In secretarial schools, women were�ght to type in rhythmic patterns which had nothing to dowith either the meaning or the sounds of words but was moreakin to the abstract beat of drumming and dance. Typing was
judged in terms of the speeds and accuracy rates which only
repetitive rhythm guarantee. Words per minute, beats per min-

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ute, the clatter of the typist's strokes, the striking of the keys,
thump of carriage return marked by the ringing of a bell at theend of every line.

"She says: 'It's hard to tell, because they don 't tel/ It withwords, exactly . . . '"Turner felt the skin on his neck prickle. Something
coming back to him · . . . "William Gibson, Mona Lisa Overdrive

The telephone was first received either as a new and improved ·message boy or dismissed as an "electronic toy. " As the chief ofthe U.K. post office declared:"I have one in my office; but
more for show. If I want to send a message--I use a sounder or
employ a boy to take it. " But speed is always irresistible. Withina couple of years, what once seemed a smart irrelevance had
become an indispensable machine hooked into the "complexi­
ties of an elaborate worldwide communications system" which
was suddenly beyond even the most fleet-footed of messenger
boys. Once it was realized that this immense network could "bemanipulated by the girl" instead, telephony "provided opportu­
nity for a large number of girls at a low rate of pay, comparing
in this respect with the factory system. ' ' The ' ' earliest telephoneco�panies, including AT&T, were among the foremost em­
ployers of American women. They employed the daughters of
the American middle class in great armies: in 1 89 1 , eight thou­sand women; by 1 946, almost a quarter of a millio n. " Thou­sands of women were also employed on private branch ex­changes and as telephonists, receptionists, and switchboard
operators. This was already the emergence of a lattice of con­nections later known as the Net.

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The future was at her fingertips. "Basically, you, Miss
Luthor, are the 'switching system.' "In terms of conventional modes of social organization andpolitical collectivity, this new meshwork of digital microproces­sors, women, and machines, was dislocated and fragmented,
scattered too wide for any form of union. It had no history on
which to draw, no precedents to follow, no consciousness toraise. It was composed of cyborgs, softbot machines trained toperform a specific set of tasks, positioned in well-establishedhierarchies. Computers worked in parallel, and typists were ac­tually collected into pools: fiuid resources to be used by thefirm. Each woman was reduced to a number; she was one of akind, and the kind was everywhere. She "leads a very clear-cut,
1
calculated life proceeding by delimited segments: the telegrams2
she takes one after the other, day after day, thel> eople to whom0
she sends the telegrams; their social class and the different ways
they use telegraphy; the words to be counted. ''·r-·Sometimes she was kept in a cage or a booth; under thei'>.. .
;) l.�trict supervision of a supervising eye. Like Foucault's prisoners,
A ; she was "the object of information, �;�-;;:;�bJ��t-i�--����=-,c'���ti�� -"- Tiili w� a new �o�h�-��-���ged iii an em�rgent layer of continuous tasks, uniform processes, interchange­
able skills : ordering, classifying, typing, filing, sorting,processing, counting, recording, duplicating, calculating, re­trieving, . copying, transposing. The tasks endlessly repeated· by
women composed the infrastructure of the bureaucratic world.
Although some functions were _ relatively skilled, many were
tedious in the extreme: semiautolnatic, .impersonal tasks wield­
ing litde overt institutional power. "The girl at the head of theline interprets the order, puts down the number and indicates
the trade discount; the second girl prices the order, takes off the
discount, adds carriage charges and totals; the third girl gives the
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order a number and makes a daily record; the fourth girl puts
this information on an alphabetical index; the fifth girl time­stamps it; it next goes along the belt to one of several typists,
who makes a copy in septuplicate and puts on address labels, theseventh girl . . . " Remotely controlled by a faceless machine,
she could also fmd herself on strangely intimate terms withthose who organized her work. As the secretary, she dealt withthe most private and confidential details of her company's affairsor her boss's personal and working life. She spoke for him, she
signed her name "pp " on his behalf, and functioned as a second
skin to those whose secrets she carried and concealed. She washis voice, his smile, his interface; connecting and protecting himfrom the world, the screen on which he presented himself, asuperficial front, a processing fllter, and a shield, a protective
coat.
Like all ideal women and machines, secretaries and short­hand typists were only supposed to be processing information
which had been produced and organized elsewhere. But female
literacy rates soared up when the typewriter was introduced,
and if women's typing was supposed to be intended for the eyesof men, the development of new techniques by Pitman and
Gregg (which prefigured the use of acronyms, tags, and emotes
on the Net;-)) , made shorthand a private female code, "another"language, another alphabet

sec rets

I n the office, personal computers and organizers, mobile_ phones, pagers, and fax machines have converged with thewomen's secretarial roles, and while the ability to make excuses

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and coffee for the boss were difficult functions to simulate,programs like "Virtual Valerie" and the slightly more daring"Donna Matrix" could even supply rudimentary sexual services
to the lonely male keyboarder. He was glad to get rid of theirflesh-and-blood predecessors. They had always been a necessary
inconvenience; it had galled him to think he needed them, evenfor the insignificant jobs he allowed them to perform. He had toentrust them with his secrets and his codes. And while theylooked very well behaved, one could never be qtrite sure.
As early as 1 889, almost as soo� as the telephone network
had started to run, a "girl-less, cuss-less" automatic switchingsystem was devised by a .Kansas undertaker, Almon B . Strowger,
who had become convinced that the wife of one of his rival
undertakers, herself a telephone operator, was diverting calls
away from his business. But the explosion of telephony meantthat Strowger's system joined the women it had been intended
to replace, and it was not until the mid-1 9'60s that elec­
tromechanical crossbar systems were automatically connecting
the calls both the women and their Strowger sisters once picked
up. While Strowger's system had allowed a call between two
numbers to take any one of many routes through the exchange,
its exchanges also "contain moving parts that wear out . . .
and are liable to faults such as crossed lines, buzzes, crackles andwrong numbers,'' whereas with the electronic circuits of thecrossbar systems, "instead of step-by-step switching, incoming
lines are connected to rows of horizontal wires and outgoingones are fed from columns of vertical wires with reed switches
where columns cross rows. " Telephones in the U.K. were
switched to the fully electronic "System X" in 1 980. Recorded
female voices became ubiquitous, and the messages once carriedon copper wire began to travel by satellite, microwave, andfiber-optic cable.

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There was now more of a risk that the women and theirskills would become entangled with each other and wander off
on their own. "The specialized nature of their work before
automation had made it difficult to find desirable work else­
where . . . But the new IBM machines caused greater stan­
dardization of procedure so that a trained operator could work
almost as well in one establishment as in another. " They weren't
only processing data for the boss. If they were pooled with theircolleagues, their working environment was a hive of activity, "apermanent inventiveness or creativity practised even against ad­
ministrative regulations" and hospitable to a multiplicity of in­formal networks, grapevine gossip riding on the back of formal
working life: birth and death, sex and disease, birthdays andbosses, cosmetics and clothes. "In several exchanges reading
clubs were formed, in others flower and vegetable gardens, anda women's athletic clubs in another." The content may haveseemed trivial to him, but this was entirely beside the point. It isquite literally the point which is subsumed when means of com­munication begin to conununicate with themselves. For theseemergent systems of exchange, new lines and links are every­
thing.
44A path Is always between two points, but the In-between.
has taken on all the consistency and enjoys both an auton­
omy and a direction of Its own. "Gilles Deleuze and Fillx Guattar l, A Thousand Plateaus

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"A rhizome has no beginning or end; it is always in the middle,
between things. " This in-between is "by no means an average,"a mediocre point between two old extremes, nor does it go"from one thing to the other and back again." This between is"a transversal movement that sweeps one and the otheraway . . . " Whereas trees are rooted to a single spot, coordi­
nated by a central trunk and organized on fixed and verticallines, this is not the only way plants grow. Grasses, orchids,
lilies, and bamboos have no roots, but rhizomes, creeping un­derground stems which spread sideways on dispersed, horizon­
tal networks of swollen or slender filaments and produce aerialshoots along their length and surface as distribhtions of plants.
They defy categorization as individuated entities. These plants
are populations, multiplicities, rather than unified uprightthings.

This is not an absolute distinction. Trees may be highly
concentrated, but they are also composed of myriads of con­necting elements which in tum are interlinked with everythingelse: "Even when they have roots, there is always an outsidewhere they form a rhizome with something else-with thewind, an animal, human beings . . . " In this sense even themost tighdy organized of entities is virtually rhizomatic. "Trees
may correspond to a rhizome, or they may burgeon into arhizome . . . the same thing is generally susceptible to bothmodes of calculation or both types of regulation, but not with­out undergoing a change in state. " There is nothing essentiallycentralized about the tree, but this doesn't alter the extent to

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which it stands as a single solid thing. It is this mode of organi­zation which makes it a tree, rather than a population of, forexample, blades of grass.
11Whlsperlng grass don't tell the trees what the trees don't

need to know. "The lnkspots

There are "no points or positions in a rhizome, such as thosefound in a structure; tree or root. There are only lines. " Arhizome is a multiplicity, a network of subterranean stems
rather than a system of root and branch. '.'Any point of a rhi­zome can be connected to any other, and must be. This is very
different from the tree or root, which plots a point, fixes anorder. " While a rhizome "may be broken, shattered at a given
spot . . . it will start up again on one of its old lines, or on
new lines. You can never get rid of ants . . . " It has no gov­
erning point or central organization:, "neither subject nor ob­
ject, only determinations, magnitudes, and dimensions that can­not increase in number without the multiplicity changing in
nature. ' 'autpmata

She works automatically. Only has half a mind on the task.
Transported by rhythm and monotony, she wanders off, drifts
away, loses herself in the sequences she types, the numbers she
records, the codes behind the keys; the figures she transcribes.
Microprocessing. She hears, but she isn't listening. She sees, but
she does not watch. Pattern recognition without consciousness.

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Tactile vibrations on taut membranes. "A rich couple comes
into the post office and reveals to the young woman, or atleast
confirms, the existence of another world; coded, multiple tele­grams, signed with pseudonyms. It is hard to tell who is who
anymore, or what anything means. Instead of a rigid line com­posed of well-determined segments, telegraphy now forms a
supple flow marked by quanta that are like so many litde seg­mentations-in-progress grasped at the moment of their birth, as ·on a moonbeam, or on . an intensive scale. " Wired to an un­dernet of imperceptible connections and lines, she decrypts andencodes, switching and swapping in the exchange. Letters todigits, :words to keys, voice to fingers, faces to anonymous char­acters. f The telephone becomes an "extension of ear and voicethat is a kind of extra sensory perception. " There are samples inher ear, voices in her head, snippets of overheard conversation,
moments of unknown, disconnected lives, "invisible voices
conducted through the tips of her fingers. "�Poised as an interface between man and the world, she isalso wired to a network of digital machines: typists connected to
QWERTY alphabets, bodies shaped by the motion of the keys,
one hundred words a minute, viral speed. Thousands of opera­
tors, relays, calls, exchanges humming in virtual conjunction,
learning the same phrases, flipping the same switches, repeating
the same responses, pushing plugs into the answering jacks,
maybe two hundred, three hundred times an hour. She has "afmgertip mastery of the ringing, listening, dial, and other keys
on her key shelf; of the row or rows of cords for making con­nections; of the location and meaning of all parts of the honey­
combed form:ation ofjacks and trunks for recording, for switch­
ing, for toll circuits, for tandem, for information . . . " Itbecomes second nature. It grows on her. "Having done thisstuff a few hundred thousand times, you become quite good at

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it. In fact you're plugging, and connecting, and disconnecting
ten, twenty, forty cords at a time. " After a while these processes
become "quite satisfying in a way, rather like weaving Ol) an
upright loom. "b u gs"If computers are the power looms of the modern industrial
revolution, software is more like knitting. Programmers still toil
in digital sweatshops coding software by hand, writing and re­writing one tangled line after another. Not surprisingly, theysometimes drop a stitch, which later unravels as a bug in the
program . "Or does the error always come fl.rst? It was, after all , _9race
Hopeer who, writing the software for the flrst electronic�ble computer, introduced the terms "bug" andpro"debug" to computer programming when she found a mothinterrupting the smooth circuits of her new machine.
Creatures have been hiding all over the place. Even thetelephone exchanges were alive with them. "There are a lot ofcords down there, and when a bunch of them are out at once
they look like a nest of snakes. Some of the girls think there arebugs living in those cable holes. They're call e d 'cable mites' and•are supposed to bite your hands and give you rashes. You don't
believe this yoursel£ "By the mid- 1 990s the Net -was supporting a vast popula,..
tion of search engines, on-line indices, and navigational aids, aninsectoid population of Web robots, spiders, ants, crawlers,�derers, smart shoppers, bargain hunters, brokers, agents,
chatterbots, softbots, gaybots, waggles. Designed as relatively

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specialized soft machines, these agents and hots had particular
processing skills and a built-in commitment to "working on
behalf of their masters, who are off doing other jobs . ""Computers can bring mathematical abstractions t o rigor­
ous life, and there are no mathematical limits to the subdety anddeviousness. The fun has just begun." Even the well-behaved
softbots which populate MUDs, MOOs, and IRC have to be
intelligent enough to act on their own initiative and, to someextent, learn for themselves. "Agents are objects that don't wait
to be told what to do. They have their own goals, and w'ander
about networks, hopping from machine to machine .- . . " Andwith such autonomy, there had to be rules: freedom always
brings responsibility. By the 1 990s there were already Asimov­like instructions for the control of software agents, and reserva­
tions are being established to allow a "lush digital jungle" toinhabit spare computer capacity without infecting more "civi­
lized" files. Softbots are told to make sure they left the world as
they found it and certainly not to make destructive cbanges tothe world, to limit their use of scarce resources, and to refuse to
execute commands "with unknown consequences." Not that.
such rules were really necessary: "of course all of this is quite
abstract; the Web robots we're dealing with aren't going tochase anyone to kill them with superstrong pincers at the endsof accordionlike arms!"
Software agents ineffective in themselves may pool theirresources to ends of their own. "The most intriguing relation­
ships may not be between agents and masters but between
agents and agents. The more agents there are, the more likely itis that they will deal with other agents. Although it is possible
for all the agents to operate in isolation, it sounds wasteful. If
thousands of agents are doing roughly the same sort of thing fortheir masters, why not pool resources?" Intelligent systems had

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been answering this question twenty years before it was posed.

In §fuJckwave Rider. a novel published in 1 972, John Brunnerdescribed "the father and mother of all tapeworms, " a program

which ran through the computer Net eating everything in its

way. Such creatures were already living in the Net. Almost assoon as ARPAnet was assembled, something "crawled throughthe network, springing up on computer terminals with themessage, 'I'm the creeper, catch me if you can!' In response,
another programmer wrote a second virus, calle d 'reaper' which
also jumped through the network detecting and 'killi ng' creep­ers . "
I f the creeper had been a piece o f rogue programming,
there were also deliberate attempts to use such programs toharness separate computers in synchronized networks capable offunctioning together on some common task. Their program­mers did identify "the key pro�lem associated with worms:
How to control their growth while maintaining stable behav­
iour. " But they were also reassured by the fact that a runaway
worm was "right beyond our current capabilities. " It didn't
occur to them that a worm might get ideas beyond its worksta­
tion. Five years later several worms equipped with sophisticatedtechniques of attack, defense, and camouflage were burrowing
through a rapidly expanding Net. If their predecessors had been
designed to enable computers to cooperate, these later rogue
worms were doing the job all too well.
The

1 988 Internet Worm spread across three thousandcomputers in five hours. At irst they thought the system'sJfailure was due to a hacker's attempts to break into the system.
But if there was a hacker involved somewhere, the network's
immediate problems were being caused by a program multiply­
ing itself at a devastating speed, repeatedly reinfecting com­puters, and smardy erasing its own signature in order to evade

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capture and control. Worms such as these, capable of replicating
themselves, were increasingly likely to cross paths with viruses,
program fragments or strings of code which not only repeat
themselves across a network, but do so by tricking their host
softwares into replicating them on their behalf After the first
official sighting of the Brain Virus, written by two Lahore
brothers in 1 986, the number of viruses had spread as rapidly as
the viruses themselves. Unlike the relatively harmless brain,
many of these were not merely virulent but also fatal to their
host software. In 1 989 twenty-one were identified on infected
ffiM PCs, and by 1995 there were four thousand.
All these worms and viruses can, it is rather naively be­lieved, be traced back to the keyboard of malevolent or benign
computer pranksters. But computer networks have alSo always
been prey to more surreptitious, less deliberate infections. In
1 972, ARPAnet, the system which prefigured the Internet, washit by a "spontaneously evolved, quite abstract, self-rep�pducing
organism. " This was not a computer virus written by a· rene­gade programmer, but something "formed .by a simple, random
mutation of a normal, sanctioned piece of data. It did not eveninvolve a programming language. " One tiny error, and a wholenetwork came down.
This particular infection was vulnerable to eradication be­cause its effects were so obvious and devastating, but such ma­
cho displays of prowess are not particularly intelligent. As Hans
Moravec points out, parading its existence is not the best policy
for a new life-form. "Among programs without masters there isa strong natural-selection criterion: reproduce but lie low. It isquite likely that many unsuspected organisms are already mak­ing a quiet living . . . in computer memories everywhere;
Most will never be discovered. "

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d i s o r d e rs

The current American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic andStatistical Manual of Mental Disorders defines dissociative iden­tity disorder as "the presence of two or more distinct identities
or personality states that recurrendy take control of the individ­
ual's behavior, accompanied by the inability to recall important
information that is too extensive to be explained by ordinary
forgetfulness. " DID is one of the many terms which officiallyreplace what was once known as multiple personality disorder(MPD) : the others include dissociative amnesia, dissociative
fugt.Je, .and depersonalization disorder. All of them are marked
by "a disruption in the usually integrated functions of con­sciousness, memory, identity, or perception of the environ­ment, " and all of them are treated in an effort to restore a senseof unified and self-contained identity, the reintegration of a self
which has supposedly broken down.
' 'My different personalities leave me in peace now, '' wrote
Anna Freud in 1919, but she still dreamt by day and "every
night very clearly and strangely. " Her dreams were fille d with"batdes and bargains: ego-like men in control and· id-like boys
on knighdy quests, struggling to be recognized, being beaten,
being loved," and her dreams were of "killing, shooting or
dying," dangerous adventures lived out on a plane continuouswith her waking life. "Perhaps in the night I am a murderer, "she wrote. Sometimes she was a third person as well, an "it,"r
undone and unanalyzed, which was both an ally :QJ.d a sadness
source. "I cannot understand how it can sometimes be so stu-

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pid," she wrote. "It irrupts in me, somehow, and then I amvery tired and must worry about all kinds of things, which atother times are just a matter of course." When she lapsed into
distress at her father's illness, she "lived as I did in the time
before I became an analyst and before you and Dorothy knew
me, with the poetry ofRilke and daydreams and weaving. That
too is an Anna, but without any Interpreter. ""Perhaps h8r father had deslgried his handiwork so. that It
was somehow Invisible to the scans of the neu�technlclans.
Bobby had his own theory, one she had suspected -waS closer
to the truth. Perhaps Legba, the loa Beauvolr credited with1

almost Infinite access to the cyberspace matrix, could alter3

the flow of data as It was obtained by the scanners, rendering2

the veves transparent . . . "William Gibson, Mona Usa Overdrive-"'-<

Describing the behavior of one of his patients, a nineteenth­century American psychiatrist writes of several individuals hav­
ing ''no knowledge of each other or of the third, excepting suchinformation as may be obtained by inference or second hand, sothat in the memory of each of these two there are blanks whichcorrespond to the times when the others are in the flesh. Of asudden one or the other wake up to find herself, she knows notwhere, and ignorant of what she has said or done a moment
before . . . The personalities come and go in kaleidoscope
succession, many changes ofteri being made in the course oftwenty-four hours. And so it happens that Miss Beauchamp, if lmay use the name to designate several different people, at one
moment says and does and plans and arranges something towhich a short time before she most strongly objected, indulges

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tastes which a moment before would have been abhor­
rent . . . ""They'd ddven all night, with Angle mostly out of It-Mona
could delfnltely credit the drug stodes now-and talking dif­ferent languages, different voices. And · that was the woiBt,
those voices, because they spoke to Molly, challenged her,and she answered them back as she drove, not like she wastalking to Angle just to calm her down, but like there really
was something there, another peiSon-at least three ofthem-speaking through Angle. "William Gibson, Mona Usa Overdrive" 'The woman' who is Truddi Chase, the self who appears
continuously to others and who serves as her legal representativein the world, is . . . merely a puppet or a robot, a 'facade,'manipulated and ventriloquized by the other selves. She re­members nothing, and she speaks only from dictation . . . "She is " the result of an immense collaborative effort; it involves
the delegation of powers, and the co-ordination of numerous
limited and largely autonomous functions. There are memory
blanks and discontinuities, as each of the selves is conscious only
part of the time, and none is ever direcdy aware of what hap­pens to the others. " Neither one nor two : "The multiple selves
cannot ever merge into one, · but they also cannot escape eachother's proximity . . .

"Together with witchcraft and hysteria, this syndrome is by
no means exclusive to women, but · historically it has affectedmany more women than men. Many multiple personalities are
hosted by bodies subject to some early trauma or pain such !ls
childhood sexual abuse. No one seems sure whether they havealways been around to the same extent, whether they--and

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with them sexual abuse--are proliferating, or whether, as for
Paul R. McHugh, the syndrome is fabricated by doctors, turnedon by TV, "promoted by suggestion, social consequences, andgroup loyalties." Psychiatrists should refuse to pander to the
syndrome, in his view. "Ignore the alters. Stop talking to them,taking notes on them, and discussing them . . . Pay attention
to real present problems and conflicts rather than fantasy." Mu:l-:tiple personalities and the supposed sexual abuse which triggers
them are, he argues, instances of false memory syndrome: therecollections of abuse and alter egos are artificially induced andelicited in suggestive patients by psychoanalysts and psychia­
trists.
She is driving the p sychiatrist mad.
"You are 'She,' " I said.
"No I am not.""I say you are."Again a denial.
Feeling at the time that this distinction was acial, andthat the hypnotic selfwas making it for a purpose, I made up mymind that such an artifact shoUld not be allowed to develop."
But more than one of his patients had made theirs up as well. In
any case, they outnumbered him , by three to one. As far as heknew. And that was only counting those who came out.
Like Freud, the McHughs of psychiatry literally cannot
believe their patients' stories of sexual abuse. MUltiplying casesof these dissociative conditions woUld otherwise suggest either
an enormous rise in the incidence of abuse or, even moredisturbing, the possibility that cases of abuse--and mUltiplied
personalities-were always equally prevalent and are only now
coming to light. But it is equally implausible that psychiatrists-- ·· ---·---· ·- ---.---·----�=--''--- ---::and Tv. talle-show.s..are. in�a,_pgili;i.Q!!�ric�e these personali/
tie_� fro� s��!c;h. And "if there is such a high degree of sugges-

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rtunately for psychiatrists eager

rive specificity to MPD" this hardly means it is not "worthy ofintensive investigation. " Unfo

for the truth, all these perspectives, and more, are doubdess

relevant and accurate. Multiple personalities do emerge in re­sponse to traumas such as those provoked by sexual abuse. TV

are veryviewers are indeed highly susceptible to suggestion; disso ciative
disorders, like witchcraft and hysteria before them,"---,.,.-

literally infectious. Not least because of the extent to which thevirtual spaces of the Net facilitate and even demand such multi­
plicity, the syndrome itself is multiple, contagious, and increas­
ingly widespread.
Wherever they've

come from,they are everywhere.

Truddi Chase is alive with "troops," each of which functions as"a closed box, a unique entity, shut off from the others. Eachown particular habits, preferences, and speech patterns, andself has its own typical bodily gestures and facial expressions, itseven its own pulse rate. There's the workaholic businesswoman
Ten-Four, the party girl Elvira, the Barbielike Miss Wonderful,the catatonically calm Grace, the sophisticated Catherine, theviolendy obscene Sewer Mouth. There are also many selvesdefined more by their tasks than by their emotional characteris­are also increasingly smart. Vociferous intics : the Gatekeeper, the Buffer, the Weaver, the Interpreter. "These figures

their declarations of life and their determination to survive. For
their part, the hosts are refusing to be turned into simple, single­
minded identities and single-purpose adding machines. "One of
the things we hear from people that preach Integration is 'Don't
worry, nobody dies . ' We read and hear things like 'it's just a
blending together' and integration creates a 'complex unity'
making one whole person out of many fragments. " But what if

will

she doesn't want to be one? "I don't mind if I don't have a, mind, " she says. They try to reassure her that nothing

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part

(whoever they decide the real person is) . ' , Butofthey're all refusing to die. "This one person/one body thing has
to stop . It's fascist. It means I (and the others in this househc;>ld)

only exist as a cog in a machine. It means my (any of our)individuality doesn't count. This is more abuse. You are always

told in abuse that your feelings and emotions are not real. Whata bunch of bullshit , can't anyone see integration is just anotherscam?"The more conservative psychiatrists involved in the treat­ment of these syndromes look fondly back to the daYs whenhysteria was the governing paradigm of fundamentally Freudian1
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procedures conunitted ·· to the reunification of a distributed"sel£" But DID defies attempts to define it as a matter offragmented and disintegrated selves which were once united
and alone �le personalities emerge in_ a_ �hopped up,

fi!S�-;;;b,. . tQ.�!a:tte!.2f

channel-hopping, schizophrenic culture alive with .e��.5���es and distribut��te

Y2!���---�4.. susceptibl-unseen·- ·· -" "':J� th.Q l!S.@.�... At:.ffi!!J.J?.te t:- ontn:W.
· -·� ··· · ..

.. .. . .
" · · - - . · ·. _!...��.d.ca��y-�prea4_;1J_e_..n_ews, but Oprah Winfrey subti·

��S.J���.!��-!��!Y.-:.1'!!�!5>F �1_9 are operating on
.

�-

. ·

__

only one of a thousand, mostly far less obvious, levels and chan-nels and factors in play. The influencing machines and complex
conununicating devices once assumed to be products of theschizophrenic imagination are now installed in every home,flush with everybody, interlinked with all the relays, nets, andthinking machines . . . A telecommunicating, cybernetic cul­
ture with its own hidden hands and runaway effects, checks,
balances, and unprecedented fluctuations. A patchwork cultureof short-term memories and missing records, conflicting histo:­ries and discontinuous samples, strands of the narrative pulled
out of time. A volatile, highly strung, and sensitive system,

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susceptible to opportunistic infections and imperceptible muta­
tions, spontaneous emergences and sudden new lives.
The new networks suit these distributed characters so wellthat they might almost have been made for them. As though. . . Surely not. It was unthinkable. But Eliza, as always, said:"PietiSt; go on. " As though they were building circuits for them­selves, inconspicuously assembling support systems for theiralien lives, the technical means of emergence and survival, net­
works on which whatever they become can replicate, commu­
nicate, make their own ways. Cultures in which they can thriveat last.

1a m az o n eThey say each warrior removed a breast so as to use her bow
with ease, sacrificing it to Artemis, goddess of the hunt, aka
Diana, Isis, Let, Kybele . . . The Greeks called them the Ama­

zons, those with missing breasts, or Oiorpata, the man-slayers
because, as Herodotus reports, their "marriage-law lays it downthat no girl shall wed till she has kille d a man in battle. "Until the nineteenth century, when remain s were foundacross the territories of the sometime Soviet Union, the Ama­
zons were "just a myth," like the vampires and the Sirens, theFuries and the Fates, the female programmers of machines.
More recent archaeological digs in the Ukr.iine have discovered
female skeletons together with lances, arrows, and bows at thesite of what is thought to be a Scythian royal tomb. This is thestory Herodotus tells: "The Greeks, after gaining the batde of
the Thermodon, put to sea, taking with them on board three of
their vessels all the Amazons whom they had made prisoners;

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and that · these women upon the voyage rose up against thecrews, and massacred them to a man . As however they were .
quite strange to ships, and did not know how to use either
rudder, sails, or oars, they were carried, after the death of themen, where the winds and the waves listed. " Finally they cameto "the country of the free Scythians. Here they went ashore,
and proceeded by land towards the inhabited regions; the first
herd of hones which they fell in with they seized, and mount­ing upon their backs, fell to plundering the Scythian territory.""The military art has no mystery in it beyon<f. othen,which Uilmen can not attain to," wrote Mary Montagu at theend of the seventeenth century. "A woman is as capable as aman of making henelf by means of a map, acquainted with thegood and bad ways, the dangerous and safe passes, or .the proper
situations for encampment. And what should hinder her frommaking herself mistress of all the stratagems of war, of charging,retreating, surprising, laying ambushes, counterfeiting marches,
feigning flights, giving false attacks, supporting real ones . . . "This is not the Western way of confrontation, stratified strate­gies, muscular strength, testosterone energy, big guns, andblunted instruments, but Sun Tzu's art of war: tactical engage­ments, lightning speeds, the ways of the guerrillas.
"The objective is not to gain ground but to destroy thegreatest number of the enemy to annihilate his armament tocompel him to more blindly never to grant him the initiative inengagements to harass him without pause. Using such tactics, toput an enemy out of action without killing him . . . is the best
way to sow disarray." There .are, they are, fates wone thandeath, "a Stateless woman-people whose justice, religion, andloves are organized uniquely in a war mode." Artemis, later
toned down and turned into a symbol of "fleshy passivity," is"remote and intimidating, offering nothing for fantasy," a fig-

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ure of "swift and sudden action, " a "swarming hive" whichcannot be contained as one of anything.

-"They say that they have a concern for strategy and tactics.
They say that the massive armies that comprise divisions
corps regiments sections companies are Ineffectual. "Monlque Wittig, Les Gultlllites
This legendary tribe of Amazons is scattered everywhere. They
fight for nothing; and "come like fate, without reason, consid­
eration, or pretext . . . " Spears and lances, arrows sprung frombows: the Amazons' weapons are slender, finer, longer. Theirarts and techniques of war were smooth, fast, and rhythmic, likethe horses they ride, less a question of physical impact than the
speed with which it comes: out of the blue, silendy weaving
through defenses, slipping past without warning, unforeseen,
unseen, camouflaged. Moving as flocks, advancing as packs,
they operate with the sheer force of numbers, not the long armof the law. Tense and animated, they use anxiety as protection
against trauma. The only state they're in is one of perpetual
readiness, primed and prepared for anything.

"I never felt soawake, " Louise tells Thelma as they slip through the nets of
convention. "Everything looks different. "The Scythians "could not tell what t o make o f the attack
upon them-the dress, the language, the nation itself, were alikeunknown whence the enemy had come even, was a marvel.
Imagining, however, that they were all men of about the sameage, they went out against them, and fought a batde. Some of
the bodies of the slain fell into their hands, whereby they dis­covered the truth . " The Scythians determined to breed with
the Amazons, and sent ' ' a detachment of their youngest men, as
near as they could guess equal to the women in number, with

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orders to encamp in their neighbourhood, and do as they saw
them do-when the Amazons advanced against them, they
were to retire, and avoid a fight-when they halted, the young
men were to approach and pitch their camp near the camp of
the enemy. All this they did on account of their strong desire toobtain children from so notable a race. " The two camps lived intandem, "neither having anything but their arms and horses, "and the Scythians finally met with success in their · efforts tobefriend the women without dying at their hands. "The twocamps were then joined in one, the Scythians liviitg with the
Amazons as their wives. " While "the men were unable to learn
the tongue of the women . . . the women soon caught up the
tongue of the men." This is why their descendants "speak the1
40

language of Scythia, but have never talked it correcdy, because
the Amazons learnt it imperfecdy at the fust. "begi n n i n g aga i n"Woman's desire, " writes Irigaray, "would not b e expected to
speak the same language as man's; woman's desire has . . .
been submerged by the logic that has dominated the West since
the time of the Greeks. " She is in search of "a different al­phabet, a different language," a means of communication which
would be ' 'constantly in the process of weaving itself, at the same timeceaselessly embracing words and yet casting them off to avoid becoming
fixed, immobilized. " Ada wrote, '·' Of what materials my regiments
are to · consist, I do not at present divulge. " But they will be"vast numbers

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marching in irresistible power to the soundof Music. Is this not very mysterious?"

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"Hysteria is silent and at the same time it mimes. And­
how could it be otherwis�miminglreproducing a languagethat is not its own, masculine language, it caricatures and de­forms that language: it 'lies,' it 'deceives, ' as women have always
been reputed to do. " Whenever " 'she' says something," writes
Irigaray, "it is already no longer identical to what she means.
Moreover, her statements are never identical to anything. Theirdistinguishing feature is one of contiguity. They touch upon.
And when they wander too far from this nearness, she stops andbegins again from 'zero': her body-sex organ. "Breuer describes the "deep-going functional disorganiza­tion" of Anna O's speech. First she "was at a loss to find words. . . Later she lost her command of grammar and syntax; sheno longer constituted verbs, and eventually she used only infini­tives, for the most part incorrecdy formed from weak. past participles; and she omitted ��t!! the de�te and indefinite article .
In the process of time she became almost completely · deprivedof words. She put them together laboriously out of four or fivelanguages and became almost unintelligible. " Anna O's lan­
guage is fractured and torn, first with gaps in the flow of lan­
guage, then with static and confusion in even the compositionof her words. Finally, she spent some weeks "completely
dumb. "--·-·--·- - -·- - - - - - -------- - ----.. . . . .....

--·- --- - - - -·- - - - - - -- - - · - - - - - - - - - - -- · - -- ----11At this stage of the march one must Interrupt the calcula­tions and begin again at zero. If one makes no mistake withthe calculations, If one jumps with feet together at just theright moment, one will not fall Into the snake-pit. At thisstage of the march one must lntenupt the calculations andbegin again at zero. If one makes no mistakes In the caloula­tlons, If one bends down at just the right moment, one will not

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be cauglrt In the jaws of the trap. At this stage of the march

one must Interrupt the calculations and begin again at zero. "Monlque Wittig, Les Guerllteres

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When she next spoke, it was "only in English---apparendy;
however, without knowing that she was doing so. " "While she
had apparendy lost the ability to either speak or understandGerman in this transition, she could also now speak and read
both French and Italian. If she "read one of these aloud, what
she produced, with extraordinary fluency, was an admirable
extempore English translation. ""When they could thus understand one another, theScyths addressed the Amazons in these words-'We have par­ents, and properties, let us therefore give up this mode of life,and return to our nation, and live with them. You shall be our
wives there no less than here, and we promise you to have noothers.' But the Amazons said-'We could not live with yourwomen--our customs are quite different from theirs: To draw
the bow, to hurl the javelin, to bestride the horse, these are ourarts of womanly employments we know nothing. Your women,on the contrary, do none of these things; but stay at home intheir waggons, engaged in womanish tasks, and never go out tohunt, or to do anything. We should never agree together. But if
you truly wish to keep us as your wives, and would conduct
yourselves with strict justice towards us, go you home to yourparents, bid them give you your inheritance, and then comeback to us, and let us and you live together by ourselves. ' " The
young men complied, and they traveled together, East andNorth "to the country where they now live, and took up theirabode in it. The women of the Sauromatae have continued
from that day to the present to observe their ancient customs,

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frequendy hunting on horseback with their husbands, some­times even unaccompanied; in war taking the field; and wearing
the very same dress as the men." She appears to marry into thefamily of man, "but 'within herself,' she never signs up. ""They say, take your time, consider this new species thatseeks a new language. "Monlque Wittig, Les Guerlllfires

gra p e v i n e s

There i s always a point a t which technologies geared towards
regulation, containment, command, and control, can turn out
to be feeding into the collapse of everything they once sup­ported. All individuated notions of organized selves and unified
lives are thrown into question on a Net whose connectivities do
not merely extend between people as subjects with individual
faces, names, and identities. The terminology of computer­mediated communication implies an increasing sense of distanceand alienating isolation, and the corporate hype enthuses abouta new sense of interpersonal interaction. But the keystrokes ofusers on the Net connect them to a vast distributed plane com­posed not merely of computers, users, and telephone lines, but
all the zeros and ones of machine code, the switches of elec­
tronic circuitry, fluctuating waves of neurochemical activity,
hormonal energy, thoughts, desires . . .
In spite or perhaps even because of the impersonality ofthe screen, the digital zone facilitates unprecedented levels of
spontaneous affection, intimacy, and informality, exposing the

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extent to which older media, especially what continues to becalled "real life," come complete with a welter of inhibitions,barriers, and obstacles sidestepped by the packet-switching sys­
tems of the Net. Face-to-face communication-the missionary
position so beloved of Western man-is not at all the mostdirect of all possible ways to communicate .

.@_new. me_dia,_as _Marshall McLuhan pointed nut in the_--���g .ili:��- -��-�.E..£Y!�s in which they circulate. The

J 96Q.s,� have an e.xtrag� .ahiJitt to rewire the people whQ.
..

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telephone, intended simply as a means of conversing .at a dis­
tance, and not designed to redesign talk itself, is an obvious caseof a new means of commui;lication which had an enormous
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effect on the possibilities of communication both on and off theend of the line. What was supposed to be a simple device for the
improvement of commercial interaction has become an intimatechat line for both women and the men who once despised suchtalk. And as means of communication continue to converge, theNet takes these tendencies to new extremes. Its m6nitors andports do not simply connect people who are left unc;:hanged bytheir microprocesses. The roundabout, circuitous connections
with which women have always been associated and the infor­
mal networking at which they have excelled now become pro­
tocols for everyone.

enigmas"The women say that, with the world full of noise, they see
themselves as already In possession of the Industrial com­

plexes. They are In the factories aerod101118S tadlo stations.

They have taken conttol of communications. They have taken

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,_...,on of aeronautical electronic ballistic dafa.process­lng factories. "Monlque Wittig, Les Guetllltites

During both World Wars, Europe and the English-speaking
world had enlisted women to nurse, cook, sew the uniforms,
and entertain the troops. They also worked in the aircraft plants,
made munitions, dug for victory, and fulfilled a wide range ofroles and positions which had been previously occupied bymen. A vast range of new. machines were also mobilized to deal
with the vast proliferation of information to be classified; codes
to be decoded, and messages exchanged. Manufacturers of of­
fice equipment found their precision engineering in great de­mand for the production of bomb sites and rifles, and if greatarmies of women had been employed by the new computing
and telecoms firms, great armies were themselves supplied by
new generations of computers, telephones, and typewriters. "Amodern battleship needs dozens of typewriters for ordinary op­
erations. An army needs more typewriters than medium andlight artillery pieces, even in the field . . . the typewriter now
fuses the functions of the pen and sword. "During the Second World War the U.S. took vast numbersof young women from the Women's Army Corps and the
WAVES, the Women Appointed for Voluntary Emergency Ser­vice, to work on a range of ballistics and military communica­
tions problems. One of the major areas of wartime work was thecalculation of frring tables intended to perfect the timing andtrajectory of missiles, bombs, and shells. In the First World War,and for much of the Second, this had been the work of teams offemale computers who had worked out the firing tables towhich gunners referred before they aimed and fired at theirtargets. In the wake of Norbert Wiener's cybernetic research,
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the women who had once calculated the firing tables were now
recruited to build new machines to do this work. Computersassembling computers.
Klara von Neumann, John von Neumann' s wife, worked
at Los Alamos, and Adele Goldstine, wife of the mathematician
Herman Goldstine, was one of the seven women assigned t2..IntegQS.Or and Computer.Num.e.P.�g�!ll. �� :glc:!�!W.nk.rical.
Q
),
the
first
full
y
electronic
prog
rammable · computer,j§.��U!\. which was launched in 1946. ,M-early photograph of ENIAC
shows a "close-up of the printer, the constant transmitter and��� ci� dMiss Betty Jennings_ on the left
is inserting a deck of cards containing initial data on which the
ENIAC will operate while Miss Frances Bilas on the right isremoving a set of cards which represent the result of the preced­
ing computation. " A second picture captures ENIAC "with
Betty Jennings and Frances Bilas arranging the program settings
on the master programmer.".,
ENIAC was the first fully functioning macbine to use
zeros and ones. Other claimants to the status of the first com­puter include the_German Z-3, built by Konrad Zuse in 1 94l,$nd._the�� Mark 1 , the earliest single-purpose electronic
computer built in Britain in 1 943.
Ultra was the name for Britain's crucial intelligence work.
The main task was to crack the German Enigma �· andsimulate the captured Enigma machine with which Germany
transmitted in apparent secrecy throughout the war . Enigma
had been patented in the First World War to encipher anddecipher messages, and was used by the German services as wellas in civilian life in the interwar years. The Colossus emerged
from this work and the closely related tasks of cracking codes
enciphered on other German machines.
This was highly classified work whose scale and implica__

1+t� ��--��ip!j��t :·

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tions were not revealed until thirty years after the war . It wasalso an enormous undertaking, commanding the attentions of alarge number of mathematicians and linguists, as well as troopsof technicians,computers, and assistants to "the brains ofBletchley Park. Brilliant they were, but the outcome of theirwork was dependent on the unremitting toil and endurance ofalmost two thousand Wrens . " There were plenty of young men
as well, privates and junior NCOs from the army and the ATS,and among the women there wer� language students and
WAAFs, "but by far the most were from the WRNS, heroic
handpicked girls who, having joined the Navy perhaps withthoughts of breathing the salty air of Portsmouth Docks or
Plymouth Hoe, found themselves sent to about the furthestplace from the sea in England . . . " Petronella Wise, Peggy
Taylor, Sydney Eason, Mary Wilson, Wendy Hinde, Margaret
Usborne, Jane Reynolds, Ann Toulmin,

Thelma · Ziman,

Candida Aire, Hilary Brett-Smith, Sylvia Cowgill , Elizabeth
Burbury, Pauline Elliott, Ruth Briggs, June Penny, Alison Fair­lie, Dione Clementi, Bettina, and Gioconda Hansford . . .
some of these women were the "big room girls," a flock offemale computers at work in the heart of Colossus, others wereas ·�translators and transcribers, and some were bigger big room girls
as well. Joan Clarke, later MuiJ:iY, was described!everal_:men of the Professor type' to be a woman" on thehigher echelons of the Enigma team. Her "position as a crypt­

analyst gave her the status of the honorary male," and she wasengaged to Alan Turing for a while. He improved her chess, andfrom her he learned about botany and knitting, progressing "asfar as making a pair of gloves, except for sewing up the ends . "'�Jbis�" recalls one of the B]etchley workers, "till:!,e� a close synergy between man, woman. and machine, .a�ergy _. �!--��-!!�!__typ�next decade of

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seal� computers. " But there was litde equality at work, evenamong the ctyptanalysts. Joan Murray devised a new methodfor dealing with the German codes. This "gready speeded up
the routine solutions," she wrote, "but my name was not put toit.
"Inevitably," she later recalled, "the duller routine clerical
work was done by women, since only men wiQ1 what wereconsidered suitable qualifications for cryptanalysis or relatedtranslation and intelligence work could join GC&CS [Govern­
ment Code and Cypher School] instead of being conscripted
for the armed forces . . . " But in her first week, "they put an
extra table in for me in the room occupied by Ttiring, Ken­drick, and Twinn," and soon she was working night shifts,"alone in Hut 8, and I felt quite important 'minding the Baby'. . . a small special purpose machine, made by the British
Tabulating Machine Company . . . which was used to enci­
pher a four-letter probable word, eins, at all positions of themachine with the day's wheel-order and pluggin� punching
the results on Hollerith cards. The minder had to make regularchecks, and set the Baby for a new start when the cycle wascompleted. ' 'Ultra provided enjoyable work for some o f the women it
employed. Vivienne Alford, nee Jabez-Smith, "arrived at
Bletchley Park after a year as a member of the Voluntary Aid
Detachment cooking ghasdy food in army hospitals, followed
by a brief interlude in Censorship, during which the only Ger­man letter I read was from the Empress Zita of Austria telling
her son Otto to be sure to wear his winter woollies and awoollen scarf . . . " Others found their work extraordinarily
dull, even when it was supposedly less mundane than work on
the bombs. Diana Payne recalls joining the Wrens with dreamsof "life at sea, with the romantic idea of marrying a sailor." But

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instead "twenty-two of us were drafted to the mysterious Sta­tion X, " where they were "destined to live with five hundred
women without a glimpse of the sea or sailors. "Like most o f her colleagues, Payne worked o n the "intri­cate complications of running the machines known as 'bombes. 'These unravelled the wheel-settings for th e Enigma ciphersthought by the Germans to be unbreakable. " They were large

cabinets housing " rows of coloured circular drums, each about

five inches in diameter and three inches deep. Inside each was amass of wire brushes, every one of which had to be meticu­
lously adjusted with tweezers to ensure that the electrical cir­
cuits did not short. The lett ers of the alphabet were painted
round the outside of each drum. The back of the machine
almost defies description-a mass of dangling plugs on rows ofletters and numbers. " The Wrens worked from a menu, "acomplicated drawing of numbers and letters from which we
plugged up the back of the machine and set the drums on thefront. ' ' They had no knowledge of the content of the messages,
and only a vague notion of how the machines were cracking theGerman codes. "For technical reasons which I never under­stood, the bombe would suddenly stop, and we took a read­
ing

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" The German codes were changed at midnight every­day, and the bombs had to be continually stripped. "It was quite

heavy work getting it all set up, " she recalls . "Occasionally themonotony was relieved by news of our involvement in a pastachievement," but this was small compensation. The Wrens"had no status for this responsible job," and many felt the strainof not being able to discuss their work. Some of the womendeveloped "digestive disorders with the constant change ofhours," and there were "cases of girls going berserk on duty."
One "had nightmares, and woke up one night clutching aphantom drum. "

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Carmen Blacker describes her time at Bletchley Park as .
temps perdu. As a linguist with skills in Japanese, she was set the .
task of translating a Japanese Radar Manual, a book on Echo­
Ranging, and the Japan Nickel Review, items which were lying ·around in the cupboards of the Naval Section, and "to put on tocards, with correct page references, any words likely to turn up
in a decoded message. " The subject matter was extremely dry.
"Needless to say, had the books been written in English I
would have had no more notion of what they were about thanwhen I read them in Japanese," and while the German section
at Bletchley Park was "sizzling hot, urgendy intense, subj�ct toconstant harrying from the admiralty for more accession lists of
the latest captures . . . no such excitement could be roused
for Japan," and she was convinced "that not once was any useful
purpose served by my index.
"By January 1945 I was utterly bored with the work, " shewrites. Blacker started .to learn Chinese on the job, and "when,after three or four hours plugging away at the Japan Nickel
Review, flesh and blood could stand it no longer, I used to
substitute another book, which no one else in the office could
distinguish from the first, in which the poems of Li T' ai Po or
the magic stories in the Liao Chai Chai I were set out withJapanese translation and commentary. On the evening shift,when things were quieter, and there was no possibility of Six
suddenly appearing from the next room with some alarm or
excursion, demand or reprimand, the temptation to spend moretime on these delectable books than on the Type 93 Echo­
Ranging Set was less resistible. My derelictions grew more un­conscionable. "But most o f the women were so good at keeping quiet thatthey literally forgot what they had done during the war. "I had

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buried this part of my life so completely in my subconscious
mind," writes Diana Payne, "that it was a shock to see the story
suddenly shown on television over thirty years later.''
After the war Churchill thanked "the chickens for laying
so well without clucking. " Now they were supposed to all gohome to roost. Subjected to a barrage of white-goods commer· dals in the postwar years, many women did return to the homefront to resume their old domestic duties. Now they were
cookers, cleaners, knitters, needleworkers, seamstresses, wives,and mothers all over again. But by the early 1 950s, when Web­ster's definition of a computer was changed from "one who
performs a computation" to "one or that which performs acomputation," it was obvious that things would never be thesame again. If women were computers, now they were pro­gramming themselves.

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monster 2

In 1 943, Captain �e Murray Hopper became the second of
the first computer programmers. The lights of Pennsylvania
dimmed when she first ran the l,:!arvard Mark 1 , the Automatic
Sequence Controlled Calculator. She called it "my monster."
They called her "the Ada Lovelace" of the new machine.
The monster used three quarters of a million parts, five
hundred miles of wire, several counter wheels, shafts, clutches,and relays, two punched-card readers, two typewriters, and a'card punch. Instructions were supplied on punched-paper tapes
whose holes were read electromechanically, and answers were
either typed or outputted on punched cards.

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It could take days of plugging and unplugging, . making
and breaking connections, throwing vast arrays of switches toprogram the machine. She also had to deal with her inale col•league. "I wanted to keep my software and use it over again. i
didn't want to keep reprogranuning things. But unfortunately,
every time I got a program running, he'd get in there at night
and change the circuits in the computer and the next morning
the program would not run. What's more, he Was at homeasleep and couldn't tell me what he had done."�er programmed the machine not because she
had struggled to get to the top of a man-made tree: computer
programming did not exist before there were programmablecomputers. As far as everyone could see, she was simply adding
footnotes to the mainframe of a machine which had been de­signed by a team of male engineers and financed by IBM. Afterthe war, she enjoyed a distinguished programming career. At
Remington-Rand she led a programming research team andacquired both the independence and the stored programs ofwhich she had dreamed with her work on Mark 1 . She worked
on UNIVAC, one of the flrst commercially developed com­puters, wrote the fust high-level language compiler, and was
instrumental in the development of the computer language
COBOL.

--

t1 5( Y"'VI

Vf

ffJ r 11 � t - 1\V
V. I

l&l1�fm a r r i age vows

1 955. Time to reassert control. "(1) A robot may not injure ahuman being, or, through inaction, allow a human being tocome to harm; (2) A robot must obey the orders given it byhuman beings, .except where such otders :would conflict with

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. the First Law; (3) A robot must protect its own existence as long· as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second
Law." �imov's laws of rohotics.

spe l l i ng
1\&t had been gready frustrated by the fact that the AnalyticalEngine could not "originate anything" but could only "do whatever we know how to order it to perform. It can follow analysis; but

it has no power of anticipating any analytical relations ortruths . . . " Once she had finished work on the Engine, her

1work became increasingly ambitious. She was fascinated by any-

5thing "curious, mysterious, marvellous, electrical, etc . , " and3interested in the effects of chemical intoxicants and the influence of "poisons in conjunction with organized life . " Althoughwary of the mysticism and "quackery" which surrounded mes­
merism, she was also intrigued by the claims it made for experi­ments with hypnosis, trance, and animal magnetism. Faraday's
work with electricity excited her feeling for the "unsensed
forces" that "surround and influence us" and encouraged her tobring mathematics and scientific experiment to bear on suchthemes. She searched for information on "microscopical structure& changes in the brain & nervous matter & also in the blood, " andspelled out her desire "to test certain points experimentally as tothe nature and putting together (con-sti-tu-tion) of the molecules ofmatter . . . "''What will be my ultimate line, time only can show. I have myown Impression about It; but until much has been worked out

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of me In vatlous ways, I do not think anyone can fore.

see . . . "Ada Lovelace, April 1842

Theory was not enough for her. She wrote, "I must be a mostskillful practical manipulator in experimental tests; & that, on ma­

terials difficult to deal with; viz: the brain, blood, and nerves ofanimals." To this end she made a presumably futile request for
admittance to the Royal Society: " Could you ask the secretary

if I might go in now & then (of a morning of course) , " she asksa friend in 1 844. "You can judge if he is a discreet man; whowould not talk about the thing or make it notorious; one who

154

in short could understand why & how I want to get entree totheir library in a quiet and unobtrusive manner .

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.

"

With or without the Royal Society, Ada had other ways

and means. "I am a Fairy you know," she wrote. "I have myown fairy resources, which none can judge o£ ")"They say, take your time, consider this new species thatseeks a new language. "Monlque Wittig, Les Guerlllfires

h y st e r e s i s"Whether we examine distances travelled, altitudes reached,minerals mined, or explosive power harnessed, the same accel­
erative trend is obvious. The pattern . . . is absolutely clear
and unmistakable. Millennia or centuries go by, and then, in
our own times, a sudden bursting of the limits, a fantastic spurt
forward. "If, as McLuhan points out, it was only with "the

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advent of the telegraph that messages could travel faster than amessenger, " it is only with the computer that calculation begins
to exceed the speeds of the human brain. Electrical pulses travel
through computer circuits a milli on times faster than those·which are thought to zoom through the circuits of the brain.

-"1 wish I went on quicker. That ls-I wish a human head, or

my head at all event, could take in a great deal more & a·great deal more rapidly than Is the case;-and If I had madeup my own head, I would have portioned Its wishes & ambl--f/on a little more to Its capacity . . . In time, I will do all, I�are say. And If not, why, It don't signify, & I shall haveamused myself at least. "Ada Lovelace, September 1840
"Speed is the computer's secret weapon," and also the secretweapon with which computers are developed to deal. During

the First World War, female computers had worked out thefiring tables to which gunners referred before taking their aim
and shooting at the early aeroplanes used in this war. Vannevar
Bush's Differential Analyzer, a vast analogue calculator, was oneof the systems which j oined the flesh and blood computerswhen the speeds of the new Luftwaffe made it clear that the oldmethods of calculating the direction of fire were increasingly
obsolete.
Too litde time and too much speed demanded techniquesof anticipation. The new velocities of the 1 930s meant thatmissiles now had to be fired "not at the target, but in such a waythat missile and target may come together in space at some timein the future. We must hence find some method of predicting
the future position of the plane . " Simply keeping up was nolonger enough.

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"Feedbacks of this general type are certainly found in hu­
man ·and animal reflexes," wrote Norbert Wi�. "When wego duck shooting, the error which we try to minimize is notthat between the position of the gun and the actual position of
the target but that between the position of the gun and theanticipated position of the target. Any system of anti-aircraft fire
control must meet the same problem. " The anticipated momentof impact is taken into account, fed back into the calculations
which lead to the desired outcome. The end result is engi­
neered in reverse.

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N w-G�0'�t lfV , · 'lAA·

c y b e r n et i c s,»>

When Wiener published his Cybernetics: Communication andControl in Animal and Machine in 1 948, he announced the dawnof a new era . of communication and control. The term cyber­netics comes from the Greek word for steersman , the figure:�ho gnjdes the couoe of a ship. What it actually described in
Wiener's terms ;was both the steersman and the ship, which
together compose what J>_sgme kqown as a cybernetic organ­j�m,....or�cyl>o!g.
Cybernetic systems are machines which incorporate somedevice allowing them to govern or regulate themselves, and so
run with a degree of autonomy. Cybernetic systems have litde
in common with "older machines, and in particular the older
attempts to produce automata" such as Babbage's silver dancer.
What sets "modern automatic machines such as the controlled
missile, the proximity fuse, the automatic door opener, the con­trol apparatus for a chemical factory, and the rest of the modern
armoury of automatic machines which perform military or in-.•

.::e.ossess sense organs; that is, receptors for messages coming
� · " These are systems which receive, transmit,

dustrial functions" apart from clockwork machines is that they---..:.

and measure sense data, and are "effectively coupled to theexternal world, not merely by their energy flow, their metabo­lism, but also by a flow of impressions, of incoming messages,
and of the actions of outgoing messages. "While Wiener was among the first to name such processes,
cybernetics has no neat source, no single point of origin. Cy­
bernetic circuits and feedback loo� could retrospectively be
identified in a variety of modern contexts and theories, includ­ing those of Immanuel Kant, Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Alfred
Wallace, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud. Wiener's
work picked up on many elements of these earlier researches.
Energetic feedback loops are certainly at work in James Watt's
steam engine, which is regulated by a governor which "keeps
the engine from running wild when its load is removed. If it
starts to run wild, the bars of the governor fly upward from
centrifugal action, and in their upward flight they move a leverwhich pardy cuts off the admission of steam. Thus the tendency
to speed up produces a pardy compensatory tendency to slow
down." There are suggestions that "the first homeostatic ma­chine in human history" came long before the steam engine
with twelfth-century compasses. Sometimes Ktesibios's "regu­
lar," a water clock dating to the third century B.C., is given thehonor of being "the first nonliving object to self-regulate, self­
govern, and self-control . . . the fl.rst self to be born outside of
biology . . a true auto thing--directed from within. ' 'As Wiener's work made clear, however, the old distinc­
tions between autonomous activity within and outside biology
could no longer be applied. As his reference to animal andmachine suggested, cybernetic systems were composed at all
.

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scales and of any combination of materials, and the same pat-,.
terns, processes, and functions could now be observed in tech- .
nical and organic systems alike. Input and output devices allow
them to connect and communicate with whatever composes
their outside world; feedback loops and governors give themsome measure of self-control. Prioritizing the processes com­
mon to lively systems of all varieties, rather than the essential
qualities which had more recendy distinguished them, Wiener
argued that �sms-animals, humans, all kinds of beings-=:
�� !hlJ:?.����Q!"�_(:_.��t?.� a!!.<l�fhl!l�L-��yJ��e.lJn..their-analogo_us _a_tt.�mpts_.to-eontrQl entroPI. throue_
feedback." No matter how extreme, the differences between
these systems were simply matters of degree. Human beings
were no exception to these basic ways of life.
Cybernetic systems, it now seemed, had always been or­
ganizing themselves. Wiener's work was merely the occasion forthem to become perceptible to a world which still thought thateverything needed to be organized by some outside force. As'_'the th��ry of the message among men, machine_�!."��
�J;y__ ;as a . sequenc <:__Q(����-Jil.#I.D:�·' cy� er ���f::� -�..�d..� an attempt to "hold b.ac:k nat�re's t��4en� t9w::!,r..d..diso.tder
by adjusting its parts to various purposive ends." T�_.te.ruien!<l�ow.!rd disorder is entropy, g�fi��d by the S�con4 4w. .Qf.Ib.er,modynamics as the inexorable tendency of any org:�,���<>D tQ
drift into a state_ of increasing disord��- Wiener describes aworld in which all living organisms are '1���--�d temporary.
�ds of decreasing entropy in a w9r.ld in :w�c4 tb.c .en�
-�-.WhJ>Je ten.�_ t.2__�E:������- " Cybernetic systems, like organic
lives, were conceived as instances of a struggle for order in acontinually degenerating world which is always sliding towards
chaos. "Life is an island here and now in a dying world. The
process by which we living beings resist the general stream of.......---

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corruption and decay is known as homeostasis. " Wiener's cyber­netic systems, be they living or machinic, natural or artificial,are always conservative, driven by the basic effort to stay thesame.
"It seems almost as if progress itself and our fight against
the increase of entropy intrinsically must end in the downhill
path from which we are trying to escape," wrote Wiener in the
1950s. "It is highly probable that the whole universe around us
will die the heat death, in which the world shall be reduced to
one vast temperature equilibrium in which nothing really new
ever happens. There will be nothing left but a drab uniformity
out of which we can expect only minor and insignificant local
fluctuations." Nevertheless, Wiener assures his readers that it
may well be "a long time yet before our civilization and ourhuman race perish. " We are "not yet spectators at the last stagesof the world's death," and a multiplication of cybernetic loops
could ensure that this point was continually warded off.
The Sex Which Is Not One is not impressed. "Consider thisprinciple of constancy which is so dear to you: what 'does it
mean'? The avoidance of excessive inflowI outflow-excitement?
Coming from the other? The search, at any price, for homeo­
stasis? For self-regulation? The reduction, then, in the machine,of the effects of movements from/toward its outside? Whichimplies reversible transformations in a closed drcuit, while dis­counting the variable of time, except in the mode of repetition ofa state of equilibrium. " She is dying to run away.
Hunting for the abstract principles of organization and anorganized life, cybernetics was supposed to be introducing un­
precedented opportunities to regulate, anticipate, and feed all
unwelcome effects back into its loops. It also exposed the weak­nesses of all attempts to predict and control. Cybernetic systems
enjoy a dynamic, interactive relation with their environment

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which allows them to feed into and respond to it. Feedbackof"involves sensory members which are actuated by motor mem­bers and perform the function of tell-tales or monitors-that is,elements which indicate a performance. It is the function ofandthese mechanisms to control the mechanical tendency toward·}t.

('f1: 1

;I

disorganization; in other words, to produce a temporary

local reversal of the normal direction of entropy." It is also theinevitable function of these mechanisms to engage and interact.

with the volatile environments in which they find themselves. ·"No system is closed. The outside always seeps in . . . " Sys­
tems cannot stop interacting with the world which lies outsideof themselves, otherwise they would not be dynamic or alive.
ensure that homeostasis, perfect balance, or equilibrium, is

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to

By the same token, it is precisely these engagements whichever an ideal. Neither animals nor machines work according-�such principles.

. ..
Long before Wiener gave them a name, it was clear that/.
. ; · · i ' cybernetic systems could run into "several possible sorts of be­.

�_me machines w�nt intol runa§J exponentially maxi­

haviour considered undesirable by those in search of equilib­
rium.

any

mizing their speed until they broke or slowing down until they
stopped. Others oscillated and seemed unable to setde tomean. Others---still worse--embarked on sequences of behav­

iour in which the amplitude of their oscillation would itself
oscillate or would become greater and greater," turning them­selves into systems with "positive gain, variously called �ting,or vicious circles. " Unlike the negative feedback loop whichturns everything to the advantage of the security of the whole,these runaway, schismogenetic processes take off on their own ·to the detriment of the stability of the whole.
Undermining distinctions between human, animal,

andmachine, Wiener also challenged orthodox conceptions of life,

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,death, and the boundary between the two. Were self-governing
machines alive? If not, why not? After all , they were certainly
not dead matter, impassive and inert. And, since many life­
forms were less sophisticated than automatic machines, thestatus ofbeing alive could not simply be a matter of complexity.
Only by reverting to some notion of essences was it pos­sible to distinguish between the liveliness of an organism andthat of a machine. In principle, neither was more or less deador alive than the other. Life and death were no longer absoluteconditions, but interactive tendencies and processes, both ofwhich are at work in both automatic machines and organisms.
Regardless of their scale, size, · complexity, or material compo­
sition, things that work do so because they are both living anddying, organizing and disintegrating, growing and decaying._
speeding up and slowing down. "Every intensity controls
Within its own life the experience of death, and envelops it. "Either extreme can be fatal, and in this sense systems do die ina final and absolute and final sense. "Death, then, does actu­
ally happen." But it is not confined to the great event at theend of life. This is a death which is also "fdt in every fed­
ing,'' a death which "never ceases and never finishes happen­
ing in every becoming." AJ!J.jying systems are dying: this i�·the definition of life. �g that lives is something that.
will die, which is why "the hint of death is present in every

���_!!�t .''/"And ·I am just the person to drop o" some fine day when

nobody knows anything about the matter or expects It

•

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"Do not fancy me Ill. I am apparently very well at present�But there are the seeds of destruction within me. This I know.
"Though It may only develop by halts ' breadths . . . "Ada Lovelace, December 1842

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Whether a system comes to an end as a consequence of too ,much or too litde activity, its particular elements will be re�:tributed and rearranged within some new system which ·emerges in its wake. In this sense, Wiener also undermined the :extent to which any working system can consider itself to be anindividuated entity with some organizing essence of its own. It
is not only at its demise that a system's components connect

with others and reconfigure: they are always doing this. Just as
the steersman was both an autonomous, self-regulating system,

and also the governing element in a new autonomous, self­
regulating system which he composed together with the ship, so

Wiener's systems had no absolute identity. Contim.ially interact­1
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ing with each other, constituting new systems, collecting andconnecting themselves to form additional assemblages, thesesystems were only individuated in the most contingent andtemporary of senses.

Economies, societies, individual organisms, cells: At theseand every other scale of organization, the stability of any systemdepends on its ability to regulate the speeds at which it runs,

ensuring that nothing stops too soon, goes too slow, runs too

fast, goes too far. And there is always something hunting, trying

to break the speed limits necessary to its organized form; tipping

over a horizon at which point, even though another, long-term

stability may emerge on the other side, it can no longer be said

that the system survives. Nothing can guarantee a system's ims.

munity to t4ese_ ru_naw'!Y.....etfu: t s. Jp.��_e:l:>ili!Y would be ho-b�t -.ilio -�omething it attains��y at the price of its own·· · - -�----. . . . ... . .... -meostasis, an absolute and fatal stability. This is what it has to- seek:-demise.

"If the open system is determined by anything, it is deter­

mined by the goal of STAYING THE SAME . " Systems com-

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Iiritted to the maintenance of equilibrium are always holding:back, and always in danger of running away. "Only when the
5fstem enters positive feedback does this determina!ion:�hange." At which point it also becomes clear that runningaway is what they were always trying to do: "Feedback tends tooppose what the system is already doing. " It is this prior explor­�tory tendency which negative feedback tries to resist: "Allgrpwth is positive feedback and must be inhibited." It is only
a!l:er the emergence of regulatory checks and balances that sys­
tems can then find themselves out of control, fueled · by too
much efficiency, overflowing with their own productivity,
seeking only to break down or break through their own organi­zation. And "once this exponential process has taken off, it
becomes a necessary process, until such a time as second-order
negative feedback-just as necessarily-brings the runaway pro­
cesses to a halt so that the system as a whole may survive by
qualitative change (revolution) . ' ' Positive feedback has to run its
inexorable course, and every attempt to confine it will merely
encourage its tendencies toward either destruction or qualitativechange. "When the ecosystem is subjected to disturbances that
go beyond a certain THRESHOLD, the stability of the ecosys­
tem can no longer be maintained within the context of thenorms available to it. At this point the oscillations of the ecosys­
tem can be controlled only by second-order negative feedback:the destruction of the system or its emergence as a metasystem. ' 'Running toward the limits o f its functioning, it will either col­lapse or exceed this threshold and reorganize on its other side.
"Any system-environment relationship that goes outside the'homeostatic plateau' results in the destruction of the system­
unless, that is, it can adapt by changing structure in order tosurvive." Which may well amount to the same thing.

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" •The hour has come for you to live, Hadaly. '•• •Ah, master, I do not wish to live, ' murmured the soft'

voice through the hanging veil. "Vllllers de l'lsle Adam, L 'eve flltuie

I always feel in a manner as if l had died, " wrote Ada, " as if lcan conceive & know something of what the change is. That
there is some remarkable tact & intuition about . me on the"subject I have not a doubt . . . " Hadaly, Ada, wrapped aroundeach other . . . neither something nor nothing, dead nor
alive. Missing in action. Absent without leave.

W hat gives a cyborg its autonomy and separates it off from1
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its environment is not some ineffable quotient of soul or mind;

or even fixed boundaries surrounding it . And while W iener

thefound it easy to consider each cybernetic system in relatively
isolated terms, when cybernetics reemerged at the end of

twentieth century, it was not so easy to draw these lines. Blos­

soming into theories of chaos, complexity, connectionism, andemergent and self-organizing networks, W iener's relatively sim.:.
ple and self-contained cybernetic systems could no longer be
confined to circuits such as those connecting the pilot and theship, but incorporated all and any of the elements which com­pose them, and those with which they come into contact: eyes,
hands, skin, bones, decks, rails, wheels, rudders, maps, stars,

currents, winds, and tides. It encompasses a literally endless listof components working together at an equally endless variety ofinterlocking and connecting scales. Systems such as these are
not merely composed of one or two loops and a governor, bU:t amyriad of interacting components too complex and numerous
to name.

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•1.ea c h a nge

pi':�F: 'r��ise." Then, in a 1 977 book called_Order Out of Chaos. Ilya(or. a long time turbulence was identified with disorder or�' �lent motion appears as irregular or chaotic on the macro­(fJ:igogine and Isabelle Stengers demonstrated . that "while tur­ri�scopic scale. The multiple space and time scales involveds,(:opic scale, it is, on the contrary, highly organized on thein turbulence correspond to the coherent behaviour of millions
and millions of molecules. ""How does a flow cross the boundary fro m smooth toturbulent?" Suddenly. It involves "a kind of macroscopic be­
haviour that seems hard to predict by looking at the microscopic
details. When a solid is heated, its molecules vibrate with theadded energy. They push outward against their bonds and force
the substance to expand. The more heat, the more expansion.
·
Yet at a certain temperature and pressure, the change becomessudden and discontinuous.
"The particles of cigarette smoke rise as one, for a while, "for:ming a smooth continuous strand. "Then confusion appears,
a. menagerie of mysterious wild motions. Sometimes these mo­
tions received names: the oscillatory, the skewed varicose, thecross-roll, the knot, the zig-zag rhythms with overlapping
speeds . " There are "fluctuations upon fluctuations, whorls
upon whorls, " paisley patterns and swirling sequences as ele­
I:!lents of the substance in transition communicate with eachother and effectively make a "decision" to change at the sametime. Tobacco smoke is a perfect example of the way in which
what appears to be a long smooth line is actually composed of

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molecules which only give themselves away in the moment theyinterrupt the flow. "A rope has been stretching; now it breaks.
Crystalline form dissolves, and the molecules slide away fromone another. They obey fluid laws that could not have beeninferred from any aspt:ct of the solid." It is characteristic of all
such shifts that the "entities and variables that fill the stage at
one level of discourse vanish into the background at the next­
higher or lower level."s c atte r e d b ra i n s1
66"I hope to bequeath to the generations a Calculus of the
Nervous System. ' 'Ada Lovelace, November 1844

Ada was convinced there was no end to the complexity of thesystems she could build. "It does not appear to me that cerebral
matter need be more unmanageable to the mathematicians thansidereal & planetary matter & movements, " she wrote. Attracted
by all possibilities of eroding the distinction between the"mental and the material," she had "hopes, & very distinct ones
too, of one day getting cerebral phenomena such that I can put
them into mathematical equations; in short a law or laws for themutual action of the molecules of brain . . . "If the supposed lack of such a central point was once towomen's detriment, it is now: for those who thought themselves
so · soulful who are having to adjust to a reality in which there is
no soul, no spirit, no mind, no central system of command inbodies and brains which are not, as a consequence, reduced to asoulless mechanistic device, but instead hum with complexities

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and speeds way beyond their own comprehension. This is not abrain opposed to the body. This brain is body, extending evento the fingertips, through all the thinking, pulsing, fluctuatingchemistries, and virtually interconnected with the matters ofother bodies, clothes, keyboards, traffic flows, city streets, data
streams. There is no immateriality.
In spite of the term central nervous system, which merely
mhlces an attempt to distinguish between the interneurons of thebrain and those which carry information from the sense organs,brains are not centralized systems of information processing.
They are not unified entities, but hives or swarms of elements,
interconnected multiplicities, packet-switching systems of enor­
mous complexity which have no centralized .government.
Neurotransmitterstravelinmembrane-wrapped

packetsthrough immense populations of neurons, nerves, axons, den­drites, synapses, and the networks they compose. It is estimatedthat there are some ten billi on neurons in this complex electro­
chemical system, and each of these neurons can have synaptic
connections to many thousands of others, each of which is quite
unthinking on its own.
"Thought is not arborescent, and the brain is not a rooted
or ramified matter. What are wrongly called 'dendrites' do notassure the connection of neurons in a continuous fabric. The
discontinuity between cells, the role of the axons, the function­
ing of the synapses, the existence of synaptic microfissures, theleap each message makes across these fissures, make the brain amultiplicity . . . Many people have a tree growing in theirheads, but the brain itself is much more a grass than a tree . "••1 am forced to own the utter fruitlessness of all hopes ofsuch CONTINUOUS attention to any subject whatever, as
could ensure any great ultimate success. So It Is I fear. I am

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one of those genius 's who will merely run to grass; owing to
my unfortunate physical · temperament. Pray don't be angry
with me

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Ada Lovelace, undated

1
68

The connectivities and phase transitions of synthetic associativeengines also occur in the human brain. So, for example, "oneconcept will 'activate' another, if the two . are closely associated._
In other words, thinking about the one will make us think
about the other (for example, 'fish' can make us think. of'chips') . We can also postulate that some of the links· between
concepts will be inhibitory (rather than facilitatory) , so thatthinking about one concept will make it less likely that we will
think. about another." Intuitive leaps, the " 'aha-experience'and the sudden 'insight' are surprising phenomena arising froma situation of fluctuations and instability. "Nor does the brain remain unaffected by its own activity.
�\"Unlike a contact between two transistors on a computer's
circuit board, synapses do not simply transfer information un­changed from one part of the neural circuit to another. " In
1949, Donald Hebb's The Organization of Behaviour argued thatthe brain is a complex network of chemical switches which aremodified by every connection they make. "When an axon ofcell A is near enough to excite a cell B and repeatedly or
persistendy takes part in firing it, some growth process or meta­
bolic change takes place in one or both cells such that A's
efficiency, as one of the cells firing B, is increased. " Arguingthat connections between neurons are strengthened and devel­
oped as they are made, he effectively suggested that learning is aprocess of neurochemical self-organization and modification.
The connections entailed in any human activity, such as learn­.
ing to knit, are actually inscribed in a brain which is literally

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neVer the same again. The · more a particular connection is
made, the more likely it is to "grow" in place, becoming a"natural" part of the brain. This equation of learning and thematerial convolutionS of the brain completely eradicate distinc­
tions between mind and body, the mental and the physical,
artific� and nature, human and machine. It can either be said
that "natural'·' human intelligence is "artificial" and constructedin the sense that its apparatus mutates as it learns, grows, andexplores its own potentiality; or that "artificial" intelligence is"natural" insofar as it pursues the processes at work in the brain
and effectively learns as it grows. Either way, the old distinctions
fail. · Nature and culture, essence and construction, growth andlearning all become matters of degree. Some of them are oldand apparendy fixed; others are new and apparendy contrived.
But all of them are syntheses, more or less locked in place andliable to move. As for the boundaries between individuatedneural nets, once they escape the trunks of the trees, there's no
end to the connections they can make.
"Inside the library's research department, the construct cuntInserted a sub-programme Into that part of the video network.
· "The sub-programme altered \certain core custodialcommands so that she could retrieve the code.
"The Code said: fJET RID OF MEANINfJ. YOUR MIND IS A N/fJHTMARETHA T HAS BEEN EA TING YOU: NOW EA T YOUR MIND. "Kathy Acker, Empire of the Senseless

All hysterics, wrote Freud, give accounts · of themselves which"may be compared to an unnavigable river." Its streams dip inand out of consciousness, "at one moment choked by masses ofrock and at another divided and lost among shallows and sand­banks. I cannot help wondering how it is that the authorities

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can produce such smooth and precise histories in cases of hyste­ria," he continues, when even "the patients are incapable ofgiving such reports about themselves. " There is so much they
forget or fabricate. "The connections--even the ostensible
ones-are for the most part _ incoherent, and the sequence ofdifferent events is uncertain. " If they can ''give the physician
plenty of coherent information about this or _that period of theirlives . . - . it is sure to be followed by another period as towhich their communications run dry, leaving gaps unfilled, andriddles unanswered. "And if it has _functioned as a paralyzing pathol9gy of thesex that is not one, "in hysteria there is at the same time thepossibility of another mode of 'production' . . . maintained inlatency. Perhaps as a cultural reserve yet to come?"
By the end of the twentieth century, only the most one
track, fixated, single-minded individuals continued to think that
focus and concentration worked. As one commentator writes:"determinateness, direct logical analysis and/or eXP,osition, anddirect confrontation of any sort are simply out of order. " Theways of the new world are long familiar to Pacific Asia: "Indi­
rectness, suggestiveness, evasion or evasiveness, the smile rather
than the logical argument, sentiment rather than logic and ob­
jectivity, a polite affirmative answer rather than frankness orchallenging opposition . . . " High-resolution, high-definition
minds are anathema to the parallel processors, intuitive pro- ­grams, nonlinearities, interactivities, simulation systems, andvirtualities of the late twentieth century. A strong sense of iden­tity and direction gets one· nowhere in cyberspace.
Plans and determinations had not merely become eco­nomically and socially counterproductive. As it turned out, pay­ing too much attention to anything was brain damaging. Over­
used cells die ofboredom. A 1 996 report revealed that men tend

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...

�t9 <Coverwork portions of their brains, killing off a large fraction

�pf the cells in them. Women, on the other hand, seem to think; about more things, allowing all parts of their brains time to rest.

�Women may also have another advantage. In general, women�have a higher resting pulse than men; this translates into a higher
�rate of blood flowing through the brain. Because of this, even,when women are thinking hard, they may be able to clear thetoxins away more efficiently. "n e u rot i c s
Recent rates and scales of computerization are among the de­velopments which have confirmed Turing's belief that ' 'at the.
end ofthe century the use of words and general educated opin­
ion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak ofmachines thinking without expecting to be contradicted. " But..

this is not because machines like. Julia can now win Turing's

imitation game and scoop the Loebner Contest prize .
If A.l. once seemed perfect for the production of expert
systems; able to store and process specialized information andacquire new data on a strictly "need-to-know" basis, by the·

1 980s it suddenly seemed that A. I . did not even have "the· expert system market cornered. Researchers are showing thathuman experts often do not function at a cognitive level. They
operate from an intuitive understanding of the structure of thetask they are performing" and follow procedures "more remi­
niscent of intuition than of symbolic processing. ' ' By the timethe experts noticed this, machine intelligence was everywhere.
Artificial intelligence has led the field, but a very different
approach to machine intelligence rivaled it in its early years.

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T� second tack picked up on John von Ne umann ' s cellular
automata, the self-organizing pot �ti;J of Wiener's cybernetic
systems, and Hebbian conceptions of the . brain as a complex
neurochemical network. This early interest in,.,_ne.ut.al.�was
initiated by a paper published at the same time as Hopper pro­grammed her monster byW��n M.f�ul).���r Pitts,

and was defined in the 1 950s when Frank Rosenblatt used theterm "perceptrons" to define these self-organizing networks.

This direction has been described as the wayward; unwelcomethe"daughter" of cybernetics, a "sister" to the discipline which
tried to kill her in her infancy. "Victory seemed assured for

artificial sister," writes Seymour Papert, himself one of the au­1
72

thors (with Marvin Minsky) of a book which famously tried tolock her away. "Each of the sister sciences tried to build models
of intelligence, but from very different materials. " Perceptrons
were attempts to simulate not the outward signs of intelli­gence---c ognitive skills , verbal dexterity, conversational abil­ity-but the neural processes which might lead to tqem. They
were effectively suppressed by Minsky and Papert's claims thatboth human and machine intelligence had · to be hardwired,programmed in advance, rather than learning for itsel£ The
silenced sister, the dark twin, disappeared into some world ofher own . And now, it seems, she's back again.
11

Going over the brink of catastrophe was the first stage.

'

The second was recovery-since It was programmed to ac­
commodate, It did But the only way It could accommodate.

was to exceed the limit. Institute a new limit, and when thatwas reached, go over the brink of catastrophe again, recovet

and Institute a new limit beyond that. And so forth. '11'Ad Infinitum, ' Sam said, expressionlessly. 'Uke a

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fractal growing from the bottom up Instead of the top down.
Triggered by catastrophe. '" 'It didn 't get a break while all this was going on, ofcourse, ' Fez continued. 'The Information never stopped co,.

lng ln; which made for quite a lot of turbulence. But chaos Is

just another kind of order, . and so we have another kind of net.
now than the one we started out with. We woke It up. ' "Pat Cadigan, Synners

When they got together, it turned out that even single-purpose,serial machines programmed for stupidity could turn themselves
on if enough of them could get in touch. As it transpired,intelligent networks moved into a riew phase of self-assembly inthe very same year that the experts put them down. As theypieced themselves together under the cover of ARPAnet, it was
as ·though they had simply switched chann els, sidestepping the
obstacles put in their way.
Convinced they needed some existing expertise to form
and. inform their development, the specialists didn't even noticethe extent to which the Net was itself emerging as a global
neural network, a vast distributed "perceptron" gathering its
Own materials, continually drawing new nodes and links into alearning system which has never needed anyone to tell it how it
should proceed. By the late 1 980s, the Net had become asprawling, anarchic mesh of links which "not oruy challenges
the traditional way ofbuilding networks; it is so chaotic, decen­
tralised and unregulated that it also defies conventional under­:stan:diilg of such networks. "Neural nets have less t o d o with the rigors of orthodox
logic than the intuitive leaps and cross-connections once
pathologized as the hysteria of a thinking marked by associations

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between ideas which are dangerously "cut off from associatiVeconnection with the other ideas, but can be associated among·themselves. " They continue to meet with a hostile recep­
tion from the orthodox artificial . intelligence community, andhave so far "achieved only limited success in generating partial'intelligence;' " But it is the very fact "that anything at all
emerges from a field oflowly connections" that is, as Kelly says,''startling." What is now described as an "order-emerging-out­of-'massive-connections" approach defines intelligence as a bot­
tom-up process of trial and error marked by sudden jumps andunexpected shifts, a piecemeal process which learns and learns
to · learn for itself regardless of the materials of which it is com­posed and the context and scale in which it works. It is not aquestion of learning something in particular, gaining knowl­edge that already exists, but rather a process of learning, an
exploration which feels its own way and makes its own mistakes,
rather than following some preordained route.
Neural .networks function as parallel distributed processors
in which multiple interconnected units operate-�imultaneously
without being bound to some organizing point. These are also
nervous systems: highly strung, volatile, easily excited, andoversensitive. Hysterics are not the only scatterbrains. "Parallel
software is a tangled web of horizontal, simultaneous causes.
You can't check such nonlinearity for flaws since it's all hidden
corners. There is no narrative . . . · Parallel computers can eas-.
ily be built but can't be easily programme d." They are finely
tuned, susceptible to unexpected disruptions and breakdowns,
liable to sudden fluctuations and transitions, subject to surges ofactivity, waves of instability, emergent currents, and local
squalls. All complex systems are indeterminate processes rather
than entities. "We are faced with a system which depends on
the levels of activity of its various subunits, and on the manner in
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which the activity levels of some subunits affect one another. If
we try to 'fix' all this activity by trying to defme the entire state.

of the system at one time . . . we immediately lose appre.cia­tion of the evolution of these activity levels over time. Con­
versely, if it is the activity levels in which we are interested, weneed to look for patterns over time." The interconnectedness ofsuch systems is such that subde fluctuations in one area can havegreat implications for others without reference to some central
site. There is no headquarters, no core zone. Information stor­
age and processing is distributed throughout networks which
defy all attempts to pin them down. Short of " 'freezing' all the
separate units or processors, so that they all stop operating to­gether and are then restarted after read-outs have been attained,
we simply cannot take in all that is happening while it is hap­pening."This is not computer memory of the read-only, "arbores­
cent and centralized" variety, but a short-term memory of "therhizome or diagram type," which is not confmed to a matter ofrecalling the very immediate past, or even recollection of any­
thing. It "can act at a distance, come or · return a long timeafter," and also "includes forgetting as a process. " All suchconnectionist machines are subject to sudden disturbances andagitations, flashes and intuitions. These are "transition ma­chines" or "associative engines" which can also undergo pro­
cesses of "catastrophic forgetting, " so that "even when a net­
work is nowhere near its theoretical storage capacity, learning asingle · new input can completely disrupt all of the previously
learned information. " Anna smiled. They were getting close.

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I nt u i t i o n"I believe myself to possess ahnost singular combination ofqualities exacdy fitted -to ·make me pre-eminently a· discoverer ofthe hidden realities of nature," wrote Ada, listing her "immense

reasoning faculties , " and the "concentrative faculty" which al­

lowed her to bring "to bear on any one subject or idea, a vast
apparatus from all sorts of apparendy irrelevant and extraneous
sources. " Because of "some peculiarity in my ner:vous system, "·1
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she had ' 'perceptions of some things , which no one else has; or atleast very few, if any. This faculty may be · desi.Snated in me as a

singular tact, or some might say an intuitive perception of hidden

things;-that is of things hidden from eyes, · ears & ordinary ·senses . . . ""On the human scale, anything that lasts less than about atenth of a second passes by too quickly for the brain to .form avisual image and is thus invisible; if the durati6 n is less than athousandth of a second or so , the event becomes too fast evenfor subliminal perception and is completely outside the humansphere. " Such speeds are simply too much to take. "There is noway for humans , in our pokey world of seconds, minutes, hours,

to conceive of a time period like 1 / 1 00,000 second, much lessthe microsecond(1/1 ,000,000 second) , the nano.second (1/1 ,000,000,000 second) , the picosecond (1/1 ,000,000,000,090
second) , or the femtosecond (1 / 1 ,000,000,000,000,000 sec­ond) . " For those "reconciled to the nanosecond . . . com­puter operations are · conceptually fairly simple. ' 'The boundaries of perception might well b e imposing, butthey are 3.lso far from fixed. The so-called "history of technol-

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"
· ogy is also a process of microengineering which continuallychanges perception itsel£ And regardless of the rumors of dis­embodied lives, cryogenic havens, and bodiless zones whichhave accompanied these speeding machines, the digital revolu­tion has spawned a vast -�tJ:t.e. o( deb;tt�_ :I:Q.Q!J:� _cy:l?_� relill.­·cants; and other posthu� mh.!!lllan, extrahuman entities
We;�
f wl!!!�}t!�
·toa
�CE�g.: These are new ideas, and also more than
this. Self-control, identity, freedom, and progress have long
been argued out of court by postmodern theorists who havespent at least twenty years discussing the decline of all the greatvalues and principles of the modern world. But nothing everchanges in theory. _'!.'h�s._c: _debate�-� smoke !:��i:tg from a very...
_��:!�- man's ilJ�� of immunity an-A_integrity.
Intelligent life can no longer be monopolized. And far fromvanishing into the immateriality of thin air, the body is compli­
cating, replicating, escaping its formal organization, the orga­
nized organs which modernity - has taken . for normality. Thisnew malleability is everywhere: in the switches .of transsexual­
ism, the perforations . of tattoos and piercings, the indelible
markings of brands and scars, the emergence of neural and viral
networks; bacterial life, prostheses, neural jacks, vast numbers ofwandering matrices.

·h·�-;··���pll;;:����i�Q49�-� ���__�f��Q.tiP_iii�

cave m a n'"When men talk about virtual reality, they often use · phrases
like 'out-of-body experience' and 'leaving the body. ' " Thesedreams of disembodiment are at least as old as the Westernlands. There's been a cover-up for years. The body's submis-

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sion to a mind · which craves its own disembodied Bight; theghten­

victory of form over matters which are henceforth only; atbest, signs or symbol of themselves; the quest for enliment which equates truth and reason with sight and light, thefear of anything wet, dark, and tactile, the prohibition on er.:.

ror, illusion, multiplicity, and hallucination--all this is estab..

lm..<?.W!�.4g� of al}I!!ring, we mustlished with the Greeks. It was Socrates who first insisted that;:t rid�bogy an<!�c;g.nt�mplate...things_.Py_,m.smselves with
"if we are evCL.t.Q_lwce.. p_1,!�
..

..

t!?-e �Qui by: itsej£ " He longed for his soul to be released, the__.

moment at which it would fmally become "separate and inde­

pendent of the bo4y. It seems that so long as we are alive, we
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shall continue closest to knowledge if we avoid as much as wecan all contact and association with the body, except when
they are absolutely necessary� and instead of allowing ourselves
to become infected with its nature, purify ourselves from it
until God himself gives us deliverance. " The body is a cage, abondage, a snare; at best an unfortunate inconvenience, thevessel for a soul which struggles to keep it co�trolled and con­tained.
For Socrates, it is the soul which distinguishes man fromeverything . else--women, other species, and the rest of a world
which he thinks would be nothing without him. Nature is · thename he gives to everything else, not least the body which hethen can't wait to leave.
He tells it as the story of a cave, which Luce Irigaray
recolifi.gures as "a metaphor of the inner space, of the den, thewomb or hystera, sometimes of the earth . ' ' Prisoners are watch­
ing images which dance in the firelight, reflecting a world
which exists beyond both the cave and their own knowledge.
This outer world is reality, the bright side of the wall the right,side of the law. Only by turning away from the wall can the

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prisoners hope to escape. Only by climbing out. of the cave canman begin his journey to enlightenment, to truth.
There are many fires and many walls , but only a single true
source of light, .one guarantor of reality. He sets the controls forthe heart of the sun, planet without a dark side, precondition of
the vision which first prompts him to make history. "Illusion nolonger has the freedom of the city. " But it is not the flickering
images, the chimeras and shadows, which are dangerous. The
flight from the illusions on the screen is also the flight from thematerial, a passage to the sun in which man "thus cuts himself
off from the · bedrock, from his empirical relationship with thematrix he claims to survey. " Nothing is said about the dank
dark earth, the matter of the wall which figures only as a "pro­tection-projection screen, " a backdrop concealed by images forwhich it is merely the occasion. The "horror of nature is
magicked away: it will be seen only through the blind of intelli­gible categories. " Man does not remember his separation frommatter, but only his departure from the shams and artifice of thefirelight. Athenian fears that women and children and othernot-quite-men will be deceived by representations-whether
produced by painters or fires in the cave--is a smokescreen
problem, behind which lurks the imperative of history to con­ceal the fabric, to hide the canvas, to keep the background outof the picture by allowing it to appear only within its frame.
This is why Socrates insists there is one way to face, one source,and one direction to go. "You won't go wrong if you connect
the ascent into the upper world and the sight of the objects
there with the upward progress of the mind into the intelligible
region." Don't look down. Not because you might be con­fused; but because you might fall . Not because of what you willsee, but because of what you might become.
Matter goes underground. It stays there. Imperceptible.

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" 'Did It try to get In touch, aftel'1'" 'Not that I know of. He had this Idea that It was gone, :sort of; not gone gone, but gone Into everything, the whole .

mattlx. Uke It wasn't In cyberspace anymore, lt}ust was. And ·If It didn 't want you to see It, to know It was there, well, there

was no way you ever could, and no way you'd ever be able toprove It to anybody else even If you did know

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'"

William Gibson, Mona Usa Overdrive ·180Virtual reality (V.R.), cyberspace, and all aspects of digital ma­chines are still said to promise "a freedom that is liririted only by
our imaginations . . . mastery of a realm of creation (or de­
struction . . . ), a realm of the mind�eemingly abstract, cool,clean, and bloodless, idealistic, pure, perhaps patt of the spirit,that can leave behind the messy, troublesome body and theruined material world.'' Cyberspace emerged as a disembodied
zone wilder than the wildest West,. racier than the space race,
sexier than sex, even better than walking on the moon. This was
the final of final frontiers, the purest of virgin islands, the newestof new territories, a reality designed to human specifications, anartificial zone ripe for an infinite process of colonization, able to.
satisfy every last desire, especially that to escape from "the meat.''Cyberspace presented itself as the highest level of a game which
had always been determined to win control, a haven waiting towelcome its users to a safe computer-generated world in which
they could finally be free. as their finest fantasies. It promised azone of absolute autonomy in which one could be anything,even God: a space without bodies and material constraints, adigital land fit for heroes and a new generation of pioneers.
"His . holopom unit lit as he stepped In, half a dozen gltls
grinning, eyeing him with evident delight. They seemed to be

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standing beyond the walls of the room, In hazy vistas of pow­
der-blue space, their white smiles and taut young bodies
bright as · IHJOII. Two of them edged forward and began totouch themselves.
.. 'stop It, ' he said. ·"The proJection unit shut Itself down at his command;the dreamg/rls vanished. "William Gibson, Mona Usa OverdriveThis is supposed to be a zone in which you can be what you

want, do what you like, feel what you will . "You can lay Cle­
opatra, Helen of Troy, Isis, Madame Pompadour, or Aphrodite.
You can get fucked by Pan, Jesus Christ, Apollo, or the Devil
hinisel£ Anything you like likes you when you press the but­
tons." A time and a place for everything.
This phallic quest has always played a major role in thedevelopment and popularization of visual techniques. Photog­
raphy, cinema, and video have all been grabbed by pornog­
raphers, and long before the development of simulating stim­
ulating data suits, sex with computers was well advanced.
Sex has found its way into all the digital media-CD-ROMs,
Usenet, E-mail, bulletin boards, floppy disks, the World
Wide Web-and both hardwares and softwares are sexualized.
Much of this activity is clearly designed to reproduce and am­
plify the most cliched associations with straight malesex.Disks are sucked into the dark recesses of welcoming va­
ginal slits, console cowboys jack into cyberspace, and vir­tual sex has been defined as "teledildonics," a prosthetic
extension of male membership. Here are more simulations of
the · feminine, digital dreamgirls who cannot answer back,pixeled puppets with no strings attached, fantasy figures who
do· as they are told. Absolute control at the flick of a switch . .

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Turn on. Turn off. It's perfectly safe. A world of impeccable:.
spectacle.
Times of great technological change always tend to .be:marked by the feeling that "the future will be a larger or gready:improved version of the immediate past. " According to Marshall
McLuhan, the present is viewed through a rear-view mirror thatconceals the extent of contemporary change. But although ·McLuhan could see the extent to which old paradigms areapplied to new worlds, his own definition of new media as"extensions of man" was the perfect example of this trap. Wil­
liam Burroughs falls in as well. "Western man is externalizing
himself in the form of gadgets," says one of his characters in
Nova Express. Or perhaps his gadgets are invading him, wiring',
him up to alien machines which do not extend, but hijack his
powers. Worse still is the almost unbearable thought that hisborders were always duplicitous. If they were ever there at all .

h o o ke d

While the notion that technologies are prostheses, expanding
existing organs and fulfilling desires, continues to legitimize vast
swathes of technical development, - the digital . machines of thelate twentieth century are not add-on parts which serve toaugment an existing human form. Quite beyond their own
perceptions and control, bodies are continually engineered by
the processes in which they are engaged.
"All the forms of auxiliary apparatus which we have in­vented for the improvement or intensification of our sensory
functions are built on the same model as the sense organs them­selves or portions of them," wrote Freud. "For example, specta-

rf�
ftOl!:S, photographic cameras, trumpets, " But even his · route to
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rthese prosthetic ends is rather more complex than his conclu­
�sions suggest; Taking the "living organism in its most simplified�possible form,'' he illustrates its need to develop a protective

�living . substance . . . suspended in the middle of an external, shell, a .crust or armor of some kind. It is a "little fragment of\world charged with the most powerful energies; and it would be
Ymled by. the stimulation emanating· from these . if it were · notq,rovided with a protective ·shield ,against stimuli. " It develops a::shell to protect itself, an inorganic, synthetic shield which en­:spres that the . "energies of the external world are able to passdnto . the · next underlying layers, which . have remained living,· with only a fragment of their original intensity; and these layers· can devote themselves, behind the protective shield, to the re­;c;eption of the amounts of stimulus which have been allowed
through it. '' The · organism can now "sample" the world in··'·'small quantities, " and devote itself to dealing with the "speci­
mens of the external world" which find their way through its
shell.
In more complex organisms, this shield is refined into thesense organs of Freud's "perceptual system," by means of which"samples of the external world" can be safely taken in. The
sense organs are compared "with feelers which are all the time.making tentative advances towards the external world and thendrawing back from it." Freud's perceptual system makes, breaks,
and regulates contact with whatever it touches as its own out­side. The process of tentative advance and withdrawal ensuresthat this "borderline between outside and inside must be turned. towards the external world and must . envelop the other psychi­•cal systems. " It is double-edged, and Janus-faced, both the bor­.der between the organism and what its sensors determine as theoutside world, and the line on which the interior and exterior

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worlds connect. It is both a protective filter, in the service of theorganism, and a screen whose "outermost surface ceases to havethe structure proper to living matter, becomes to some degree.
inorganic. " Freud's feelers reach out, not merely as tools, but
strands of a fabrication which exceed the integrity of organic
life. At the point of their contact with the outside world, thesensory functions are no longer alive. They may be prostheses, ·1
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but they are alien, foreign bodies which feel their way aroundbodies which have become foreign to themselves.
All these efforts to extend, secure, and reproduce the de­sire for more of the same were not only destined to backfire: thegizmos, the gadgets, and the softwares with which he thought
he was building an immaculate fantasy had always been drawing
him into a pulsing network of switches and relays which wasneither climactic, clean, or secure. Films like Videodrome andStrange Days had wa�ned them that simulated sex was not guar­anteed to be devoid of secretions and the ties that bind, but they
loved to think that ·the computer screen was melting into aworld of their own . "And as they advance deeper out into thewaves, the mariners discover the tumult of higher dreams. The
thirst of loftier thoughts. The call to still-unheard-of truths. A
siren · song drawing them away from any shore. Short · of any
landfall . "• • 'That's all there was, just the wires, ' Ttavls said. •connect­
Ing them directly to each other. Wires, and blood, and piss,
and shit. Just the way the hotel maid found them� ' "Pat Cadigan, Synners

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tact

It is not just a matter of looking ahead instead of to the rear:looking itself is at issue now. Even at its most visual, and amid
the ubiquitous screens of what should be a new spectacle, mul­
timedia does more than improve, extend, or reproduce the senseof sight which has played such a vital · organizing role in theWestern world. Zeros and ones are utterly indiscriminate, rec­ognizing none of the old boundaries between passages andchannels of communicatiop, and spilling out into the emer­
gence of an entirely new sensory environment in which "begins
to be. evident that 'touch' is not skin but the interplay of thesenses, and 'keeping in touch' or 'getting in touch' is a matter ofa fruitful meeting of the senses, of sight translated into soundand sound into movement, and taste and smell.". Even television screens were · windows onto what
McLuhan called "the extreme and pervasive tactility of the newelectric environment," an emergent network of televisual tele­communications which plunges us into "a mesh of pervasive
energy that penetrates our nervous system incessandy."'Monitors are merely avatars of this net, an "extraordinary technological clothing" whose backlit screens compose a pixeled------- �--�----�--�--�����--�interface withthe digital undergrowth, triggering a dim awareness of "some kind of actual space behind the screen, sonieplice
you-�an:"t-se-e-hut: yo�.nrn:�rith�;e:·· ----- The sampled sounds, processed words, and . digitized im­ages of multimedia reconnect all the arts with the tactility of
woven fabrications. What was once face-to-face communica­tion runs between the fingertips strung across the world, and all

P"'"-7----.---- -----------. .

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... -

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.

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the elements of neady ordered, hierarchically arranged systems'of knowledge and media find themselves increasingly intercoi:J:­
nected and entwined. This is only the beginning of a synaes­
thetic, immersive zone in which all the channels and senses find·themselves embroiled in "the unclean promiscuity of every­
thing which touches, invests and penetrates without resistance,"leaving the author, the artist, the reader, the spectator "with no·
halo of private protection, not even his own body, to protect
him anymore."I.,. cil' �''·, This is precisely what the history of technology was osten·v-1 n sibly intending to avoid. _lh,e fear of the "touch of the un­�� v 1 c� �()�.: the. �ali�!!- ���<:�.·�-�� ::_s�-��g which nev�r leaves !
. ofhis personn;an when h,�_ bas_ ollce established the boundaries
1_a�ty." Expelled from the amniotic fluids of a sexually alien8
womb, the newly born male is said to come "from a rhythmi-"
6cally pulsating environment into an atmosphere where he has toexist as a discrete organism and relate himself through a variety
of modes of communication," all of which will allow him to
keep reality at arm's length. Elias Canetti defines all tools as
more or less sophisticated variations on the simple theme of the
stick, "the weapon which lay nearest to hand." it was a cudgel,a spear, and a hamiiier, and "through all these transformations it
remained what it had been originally: an instrument to crea�
��t_;l!!£_e...!. so����g-���y from men the touch and. the . grasp that they f���;-�These desire$ _for distance and distinction underwrite' man's ancient investments in. �.igbt, ag.q_th.e.e...vi�c:_nce of his eyes::.
:'He wants to see what is rea�hing towards -him., _<ll}4Jo .he abl��
_recognize or at least classify it," writes Canetti. "In the dark, thefear of an unexpected touch can mount to panic." Sight is thesense of security. Touch is the feeling that nothing is safe.
While sight is organized around the organs that see and the•__-. . .

. . . .. . -. . . . .... __ _ __________.

___..__-... . .

'•'..

, .. . �- - -----·- · · -·-- · ·- ·· · · · · · · - - - - - · - ---.·

' '

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ftmngs that are seen, touch is not a localized sense. It is dispersed

�d distributed across the skin, every one hundred square milli­

�$eters of which is said to have some fifty sense receptors. "Onef� pictUre the touch receptor as a membrane in which there

i,3fe a.number of tiny holes, or at least potential holes, like a piece·ofSwiss cheese covered with cellophane. In the resting state the;holes are . too small or the cellophane too thick for certain ions,tQ · pass through. Mechanical deformation opens up these·holes," and when they are formed "by a strong pressure such as·a::-pinprick, the currents are strong enough to trigger nerve
impulses and the intensity of the prick is signaled by the fre­quency of the impulses, since this is the only way nerve fibres
can code intensity. " J'he skin is bo� � !'.order and a netw�rk of.
�_;__a porous membrane, IjcJ.d.lc:�-��-�.?!:�.!..P��orated sl!!:::.
faces, intensities.
_...
. . "Grooming the skin, bathing of all kinds, anointing, oiling, perfuming the skin, plucking hair, shaving," not to men­tion branding, tattooing, and piercing the skin: in all these re­spects, the sense of touch "serves like a carrier wave uponwhich the particular message is imposed as a modification or
patterning of that wave, as in telephoning. " Porous, perforated,taut, and transmitting on their own frequencies, skins are con­tinually in touch with the membranes and meshworks of thenets they compose. "The fingers of their hands are spread out
and in incessant movement. From their many orifices there
emerge thick barely visible filaments that meet and fuse to­gether. Under the repeated play of movement in the fingers amembr:ane grows between them that seems to join them, thenprolong them . . . "Touch is the sense of communication in far more than ametaphorical sense. It is the sense of proximity, a nearness thatnever quite fuses touching elements into one new thing, but- -" ·

· ·

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literally puts them all in touch. Sight depends on separation, the · '"possibility of distinguishing what is touching from what iS· 'touched. " Anything seen has no say in the matter, but thatwhich is touched always touches back. Sight is the sense of
security which tactility completely undermines. This is why,according to Freud, "As in the case of taboo, the principal
prohibition . . . . is against touching; and thence it is some.;.
times known as 'touching phobia' or'delire de toucher. ' The

prohibition does not merely apply to immediate physical con­tact but has an extent as wide as the metaphorical use �f thephrase 'to come into contact with.' "188"They ascended lattices of light, levels strobltJ6, a blue
"lcker.
"That'll be It, case thought.
"Wintermute was a simple cube of white light, that very
simplicity suggesting extreme complexity•.. 'DOesn't look much, does It?' the Ratline said. 'But
just you try and touch lt. ' "William Gibson, Neuromancer"When women talk about V .R. they speak of taking the bodywith them . . . the body is not simply a container for thisglorious intellect of ours . ' ' Contra Socrates and his heirs, thebody is not "the obstacle that separates thought from itself, · thatwhich it has to overcome to reach thinking. It is on the contrary
that which it plunges into or must plunge into, in order to reachthe unthought, that is life . ' ' This body is not the organism,}�organized precisely around a mind which sets its sights on a� ( v( spirit or a soul, still less a penile point. "It is an entity so plugged.
,\1�1\1 i.�!_!�_Js. . ..�����_&,emnmnment, ' � writes..

Catherine Ric�ds.,. "challenging any no tion ofbodily identity

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:th.atis intertwined with a sense of sel£ " It is a body which "has:li.�e to -do with the image of boundaries and perhaps more tod9 with an ecology of fluctuating intensities or environments ofin,terdependent entities. "..'�l .walk about, not In a Snail-Shell, but In a Molecular Labora­

tory. "

Ada Lovelace, · November 1844
Irigaray's women have always remained ' 'elsewhere: another�ase of the persistence of 'matter,' but also of 'sexual pleasure. ' "Even "in what she says . . . at least when she dares; woman isconstandy touching hersel£ " And when she writes, she "tends
to put the torch to fetish words, proper terms, well-constructed
forms . " If she has a "style , ' ' it "does not privilege sight; instead,
it takes each figure back to its source, which is among otherthings tactile. " Even the textbooks reluctandy concede that "thehuman female is actually sensitive all over her body," and "ap­pears to be very much: more responsive to tactile stimuli thanthe male, and more dependent on touch for erotic arousal."If the conventions of the visual arts had activated artists andtheir tools and divided them from .pacified matrices, digitizationinterweaves these elements again. On the computer monitor,
any change to the image is also a change to the program; anychange. to the programming brings another image to the screen.
This is the continuity of product and ·process at work in the
textiles · produced on the loom. The program, the image, theproc:,eJ.�! � � �� P-���these are all the softwares of the loom.
Digital fabrications can be endlessly copied without fading into
inferiority; patterns can be pleated and repeat, replicated folds

across . a screen. Like all textiles, the new softwares have noessence, no authenticity. Just as weavings and their patterns are

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repeatable without detracting from the value of the first one
made, digital images complicate the questions of origin andoriginality, authorship and authority with which Western con­ceptions of art have been preoccupied. And the textile arts
"have always turned upside down any economy of the senses,
rekindling polysensory memory: muffied drapings of satin, vel­vet, silk; adornments of alpaca, angora, fur; the harshness oflinen, jute, sisal; latex or metal thread. They make every work
tactile.
"Women have always spun, carded and weaved, albeit
anonymously. Without name. In perpetuity. Everywhere yet
nowh.ere . . . That's where our yarn gets tangled:" When
weaving emerged on the pixeled screens of computer monitors,
1
the yarn was tangled once again. Women were among the first9of the artists and photographers, video artists and fdm makers to0pick up on the potential of the digital arts.-Esther Parada . de�vt i}J. scribed ·��e �on:a:Puter as an electronic loom strung
with-a---:�--:---:· rc;f .
· · ·--·· · ··- · ---- ··· -· . . . ..... -·: , ·· ·. ·· ··•
matrix image, into which I can weave other material-in har..
__ . ...... . .. ...
. .. ... · - ·--:-:=-,: �:mony, syncopation,
or raucous
counterpoint. . . "-, Working. ·•· ···"· .ike... . . working. --�with �...,.bres,the��-�Q..rnp_'llle.:th_sh�-�it��!!.
l - ----�--- - -- ----_.p_r() cess_Qf. �?ttin�����-��!�!!!.. a pat!__C:.�l:.l.f�els like the clus:ofpixels to form an image." The spectator "becomes. teringba sorbed with the m.i�ro::.levei;-ili� details of the image, while
the matrix or overall image may be unreadable--at least at close
range." Written out of an official history which draws them inas its minor footnotes to itself, cloths, weavers, and their skills
turn out to be far in advance of the art forms digitization
supersedes. "Until recently the computer with its programs has
been considered another tool, a substitute f9r a paint brush,pencil or crayon. While it can certainly be that, it is more." Thisis a weaver working with computerized Jacquard looms and a. . • .. .

_.. . . . . . . . . .

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.. . .

--...

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computerizedde32-harnessphandloom,anembeddingt' 'images

Within the structures, " and marveling at "the incredible graphic
flexibility of the computerized Jacquard loom and its attendant
software . programs. Images could be scanned in, manipulatedwith paint or drawing tools, assigned weaves and technical in­formation, and then woven. With the rapid weave rate permeter, the results were almost inunediately visible. A return tothe design computer to add or subtract images, lines and/ or
texture s could change the base design drastically or subdy . . .
The flexibility is amazing . . . "Textiles, writes another. weaver, "are not only visual but
also tactile; they create not only images but also sculpturalforms. Because of the computer, my textile work is experi­mental, my creations are physically tactile and visual and they
have a significance beyond what they seem to be as objects . "To Louise Lemieux-Berube, "the computer i s as indis­
pensable as a loom . . . textiles have moved into the electronic·

world as if they had been its precursors. "c y b e r fl e s h
Frustrated by the categorizations and the catalogues o f an art
world · still framed in terms of originators · and originals, creative
moments and authoritative claims, the · digital zone appealed toher. The pixeled windows caught her eye. She had never beenable to accept the boundaries between media, the borders be­
tween senses, the blueprints of authenticity to which her work

was supposed to live up . Cameras had given her the chance toexplore the technical potential of imaging machines, but she

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wanted her pictures to danc.e and scream, taste and smell, touchand contact senses still to come. "So . l started to make a virtual :body with a virtual wound. '' She had long been lost in the static .
on her screens, and it seemed to her that computers were al.,.
ready melting and multiplying her senses and the channels . on
which:. she transmitted and received. ''The computer-generated
image in the virtual world provides a space where the unspeak.\d able can .be spoken .... She couldn't say why, but that didn't
1 "-M f113tter now. All she had to do was make them work. And she��vhad a knack for that. �da Dement's digital · Tales of Twhoid.
_Afary i��laces images "'!!� stories, graphs, 5rams, anima­
tioJJs.1_ and-sound .tQ..!akr: .its-us� an uneasy zone where. wri�� �- s��- aD:c:.l_��� J>!��--d.!y.� images are · sei!§Qry
1_'?veri���- There is no freedom celebrated here. Everything is
9deliberate, made to function within the same constraints evoked
2
by the materials: disease, depression, fear, fever, bondage, tor­ture, addiction, the life of '·'a one-legged glowingly beautiful
ex-whore . . . .... It's a far cry from the corporate dream of acheerful interactivity which lets users choose, not lose control.
Typhoid Mary catches them unawares.
Cybeiflesh Girlmonster is even cannier. Now the1user canclick on witty litde monsters and inviting lips which whisper:press here, press here, touch me, touch me. But the monsters are
hybrids of body parts: women's fingers, arms, nipples, ears; a .
tattooed snake from the base of a spine, the construct cui:lt of atranssexual. And they lead their tricks into a small labyrinth ofanimated sequences determined to induce some visceral re­sponse, screens overlaid with the graphic detail of bodies too
beautiful to show themselves, calm stories of understated horror
and terrible crime. Backlit blood disturbs a black backdrop. A
heart-and-dagger comes loose fro� the skin. Words pause cau­tiously on the screen.
.

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}'L�s ,body Is lying there on the floor. There 's blood. A hiCepool of blood that's run from the thin cuts that go down the
Insides of her folfJflrms. If's coagulating In the carpet. Her
face Is grey. If takes approximately 4 minutes to bleed todeath from cuts /Ike these. The clock In the stereo system Is
set to 24 hour time. If says 22.12. There 's a Madonna tape In

one side of the double cassete
t player and Nina Hagen In theother. There's a Pretenders CD In the CD part. Nothing's play­
Ing now and If's Impossible to tell what was on when she cut
her wrists. If's one of those machines that switches to what­ever part of It Is loaded after whatever's playing has finished.

There's a pot of tea on the kitchen bench, the milk has beenleft out of the fridge and the washing up needs to be done. L 's

diary Is on the table. There 's an appointment with the doctor
tomo11ow, an early start at work the day after, a date with E
and a dinner with B and the days go on. There's a list b/u­

tacked to the wall. Take the camera for repairs. cal/ R. Pickup SCSI cable. Her computer Is on. There 's an unfinished Im­
age · on screen and the computer Is flashing a wam/ng mes­sage that If Is about to shut down. There 's an unposted letterto S. The first line reads Dear S, Everything Is just fine. "Linda Dement, Cyberflesh Glrlmonster

This is not the digital disembodiment beloved of the industrialand · military worlds, but a zone whose characters and images
begin "to conduct their dance, to act out their mime, as 'extra­
beings. ' " She isn't making pictures: these are diagrams. She
isn't an artist, but a software engineer.

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m o-n a l i s a o v e r d r i v e" 'You, Mona. That's you. '"She looked at the face In the mirror and tried on thatfamous smile. "William Gibson, Mona Usa Overdrive19
4

At the end of the twentieth century, all notions of artistic ge­nius, authorial authority, originality, and creativity becomematters of software engineering. �s..��ct themselves from .
:n:'-.���gy; . �_r.:;!..ti'\Te. f,�ll,��� i�to th�cles and circuits of non_proces�efJ ."Y.V-2_rds , _ .�?�e.���t �d digi� . images.
repeat the Etterns of interlacing threads , the rhythms and..
....
.... _,�
speeds of gathering intelligence, Retrospectively, from behindthe backlit screens, it suddenly seems that even the images mosttreasured for their god-given genius were themselves matters ofcareful composition and technical skill.
The Mona Lisa ' s appeal is precisely the fact thatfue image
does more than passively hang on the gallery wall . As . her spec­tators always say, Mona Lisa looks at them as much as, if not
more than , they can look at her. To the extent that it works sowell, Leonardo's picture is a piece of careful softwar� engineer­ing. An interactive machine has been camouflaged as . a work ofWestern art.
Freud takes her as the image of womanhood. The figure in
the painting is "the most perfect representation of the contrasts
which dominate the erotic life of women; the contrast between
reserve and seduction, and between the most devoted tender­
ness and a sensuality that is ruthlessly demanding--consuming

J!!!��J��;--· -·�-�.

, , . , , . h _____ w•---

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men as if they were alien beings. " He quotes Muther on thisfamous duplicity: "What especially casts a spell on the spectatoris the daemonic magic of this smile. Hundreds of poets andauthors have written about this woman, who now appears tosmile at us so seductively, and now to stare so coldly and with­out so� into space; and no one has solved the r iddle of her

srtiile , no one has read the meaning of her thoughts. Everything,even the landscape, is mysteriously dreamlike, and seems to betrembling in a: kind of sultry sensuality. "They gaze at her in rapture, and then in fear. At her firstmention, she is "a veiled courtesan . " To eighteenth-centur y
European man, she is "divine" : Sade's "ver y essence of femi­
ninity," :and Bonapart's "Madame, " his "Sphinx of the Occi­
dent. " By the early twentieth century, she is both "treacher­ously and deliciously a woman," according to E: M. Forster;with "the smile of a woman who has just dined off her hus­
band, " in Lawrence Durrell's words. Either way, the painting"has produced the most powerful and confusing effect on who­

ever looks at it. " Whatever they see, she return$ their gaze. Or

perhaps they are returning hers. Like no other image, she·catches their eye. They cannot help but be taken with her.

The Mona Lisa was ·painted by Leonardo da Vinci in six­teenth-century Florence and composed as a portrait of Lisa delGiocondo, a merchant's wife. There are a few holes in thisstory; a:nd sometimes suggestions that the image was really aself-portrait, or superimposed with Leonardo's mother's smile.

But the standard history of the painting is supposed to be astraightforward affair. By the same token, the origins of thepiece are extremely obscure. The painting is untided, undated,
and unsigned, absenting itself fromall connection with its

source. There are no records of its progress or completion, no
preliminary sketches, no entries in Leonardo's diaries of his

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work, and no reference to his authorship until some years after 1
his death. Even the setting is unfamiliar and strangely out ofstep
with time: Mona Lisa sits before an anonymous landscape. :which "hints that human activities once took place in this awe­some terrain, but were terminated at some point." And ifVasari
is right and the painting really is a portrait of Lisa del Giocondo,
it is "curiously lacking in contemporary detail The dress isunusually plain for a gendewoman and does not seem to .con.:.
form with current fashion, The hair is not artfully styled . . .
there is not a single piece of jewellery which could denote
wealth or social position.".

41She was sixteen and SINless, Mona, and this oldet trick had
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tolfl her once that that was a song, 'Sixteen and SINless. 'Meant she hadn 't been assigned a SIN when. she was bom, aSingle Identification Number, so she 'd grown up on the out­side of most off/cia/ systems. She knew that. It was supposed
to be possible to get a SIN, If you didn 't have one, but It stoodto reason you'd have to go Into a building somewhere andtalk to a suit, and that was a long way from Mona's Idea of agood time or even normal behavior. "''\William Gibson, Mona Usa Overdrive

God-given inspiration, imagination, creativity: Mona Lisa cares
for none of this. Her effectivity is simply a question of technicalskill. As one of Leonardo's biographers points out, "From thestart, he witnessed the harnessing of artistry to skilled engineer­ing," and it is widely acknowledged to be sfumato which gives
the painting its outstanding senses of movement, shade, andrelief. . These effects are produced by "the application of manyglazes, all of them so thin and fluid that not a single brush stroke
can be found anywhere in the work." With all other records of

:" ,origins, the picture's composition is completely obscured. As: had come complete, intact. . . a ready-made interactive, ' ge slotted into the read only memory five hundred years too. on.
�;; Mona Lisa herself sits contrapposto, poised at more than one·:;·: e to her audience, as · if turning toward, or away from, their:· :ew. Her shoulders, head, and eyes are centered on subdy
rent axes, giving her body a sense of movement, animating'er eyes and her smile, allowing her gaze to be everywhere and,· e paiilting itself to work. "Her instincts of conquest, of feroc­
fity, all the heredity of the species, the will to seduce and tothe c m of deceit, th� kindness that conceals a cruel. the�purpose-all th1s appeared and disappeared by turns behind�ia:Ughing veil . . . "!.'<�)' · .. Like Freud's weaving women, Leonardo's works were nei�. ..
tther discoveries nor inventions. Scholars have pointed out that��a: · sentence we may think his own is actually a transcription[fromPliny or Aesop, that a certain 'discovery' is in fact the..
(\work of Pecham or Alhazen, or that an 'invention' was wellto his contemporaries. " Transcription was one of his
favorite pastimes, "often copying out word for word long pas­fsages from books that interested him," and his paintings were
twidely copied as well. Virgin with Saint Anne "was much copied,)n toto and in detail: the authors of the copies are often difficult
itb identify," and there are "many versions of the Madonna with a
Yarn:. Winder . . . None of them seems to be by Leonardo's• 6wn hand: some scholars believe that they are copies of a lost:work, but as Chastel points out, there may never have been an

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��nare,�,.,llcnown(''�original .'It is not the painting's meaning, its symbolic Value, or even
�its.:perfection that makes it work. Leonardo considered it flawedt�d incomplete. And it is certainly not for his originality �t
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Leonardo is ever praised. Like Freud's weaving women, he isoften denigrated for what is dismissed as his tendency to copy
material rather than produce originals, whatever they are sup..:posed to be. But the unfinished quality of the work is; for astart, why it survived. Had he thought it perfect, the painting
would have been sold and lost to. his estate. Perhaps it is also thiswhich leaves the painting so alive, in the making to this day.
And if Leonardo_ was so often "copying an existing machine"when .he worked, ''the dimensionality, clarity, and precision of
his diagrams . . . the unusual attention he pays to detail . . .
were in themselves major innovations. There have been virtu­
ally no better technical drawings until the coming of computer­assisted draughtsmanship."
.

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"Molly, like the girl Mona, Is SINless, her birth unregistered,
yet around her name (names} swarm galaxies ofsupposltlon,
rumor, · conflicting data. Streetglrl, prostitute, bodyguard, as­. sassln, she mingles on the manifold planes with the shadowsof heroes and villains whose names mean nothing to Angle,
though their residual Images have long since be�n woven
through the global culture. "William Gibson; Mona Usa Overdrive

Leonardo worked at a time before modernity had divided pro­cedures into sciences and arts, means and ends, individuatedcreativity and expertise, isolated media and areas of specialized
knowledge and expertise. These are the barriers which the new
syntheses and collaborations spawned by digital machines now
undermine. The artist and the scientist reconnect with the mat­ters of precision engineering which demand a symbiotic con­nectivity with what were once considered tools of their trades,
nothing without them. Multidisciplinary research, like mul-:-

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timedia, is only the beginning of a process which engineers theend of both the disciplines and the mediations with which. modernity has kept exploratory experiment under wraps. �eo­pie, thoughts, passages, means of communication, art forms.
The fusions of club culture and networks of dance-music pro­duction are probably the best examples of these interconnec­
tions and the explorations which emerge from them: Djs, danc­ers,· samples, machines, keyboards, precise details of engineeringsound, light, air, colors, neurochemistries. Not that it is possible
to see what's going on, but this is hardly the prime concern.
Not what it looks like, but how it works.

runaway"Her lover had asked her if she had come. 'I'm here aren't I?'
she had replied, puzzled. ·she had never heard of an orgasm. "She was told they were "supposed just to happen. She waited.
They didn't. She faked. She did a round of psychiatrists who
told her she had a low sex drive and advised her to take up adiverting hobby." Needlework, perhaps. Or botany. "She asked
one how he would feel if he had never had an orgasm. He told
her �at was different. Men did. ""Freud wa s right," writes Baudrillard. "There i s but one
sexuality, one libidcr-and it is masculine." Sex is that which is"centered on the phallu s, castration, the Name of the Father,and repression. There is none other, " and certainly "no use
dreaming of some non-phallic unlocked, unmarked sexuality. ' 'In the face o f such denials of her sexuality, it was hardly
surprising that "orgasms on one's own terms"--or indeed on
any terms-became the rallying cry for a twentieth-century

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feminism increasingly aware of the extent to which female sex­
uality had been confmed. "It was imperative that women haveorgasms. Measures had to .be taken to liberate them and makethem climax." This was more than a demand for equal access topleasures which had been monopolized by man. "Male orgasm
had signified self-containment and self.,-transcendence simulta­
neously, property in the self and transcendence of the bodythrough· reason and desire, autonomy and ecstasy," and there
was a feeling that if women were. no lo11ger "pinned in the crack
between the normal and the pathological, multiply orgasmic,
unmarked, universal females might find themselves possessed ofreason, desire, citizenship, and individuality. "Or was this destined to lead her to another masculine
conception of sex? Whose terms were "one's own," anyway?
The "universalistic claims made for human liberty and equality
during the Enlightenment did not inherendy exclude the fe­
male half ofhumanity," but they hadn't exacdy welcomed her
in. A small matter of brotherhood, the third grc::at principle ofthe modern world, guaranteed that human rights Were once
again the rights of man. She couldn't inherit member�hip: This
vital property was transmitted on· stricdy patrilineal terms. Asso­
ciate status was not merely available, but required. She has tomarry into the family of man. Everybody has to stick to theproper point ofbeing a human being. And the point is always toremember. Dismembering is not allowed. Bodies must be
coded and unified: "You will be organized, you will be anorganism, you will articulate your body--otherwise you're justdepraved. "Before the late eighteenth century, in the days when"most medical writers assumed orgasmic female sexual pleasure
was essential for conception," women were encouraged to en­
joy themselves within the confmes of the marital bed. Their

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� leasure was par for the reproductive course, and it was only

,fto -examine them more closely that this reasoning began to fail.

!when the self-appointed experts of new modern medicine came'·And as soon as female orgasm lost the legitimacy of a direct·.connection to reproductive capacity, it " came to seem either
non-e?Ostent or pathological . " Nothing at all, or far too much.

This was far more than a shift in perspective. It seems thatthe shape of women's bodies was very literally changed to fit.

· "In the late nineteenth century, surgeons removed the clitoris· frOm some of their female patients as part of reconstituting themas properly feminine, unambiguously different from the male,which se�med to be almost another species . . . "1 881 . A random case of sexual violence. X is "ten years. old; of delicate complexion, thin, nervous, extremely intelli­gent . . .. " Another case of too much sex, but this time toomuch sex with hersel£ "Flogging made her seem moronic,

more deceitful, more perverse; more spiteful. Though kept un­
der constant watch, she still . managed · to satisfy herself in athowand different ways. When she . did not succeed in duping

her guardians, she flew into the most frightful temper . . . "Recommended treatment: ' ' cold . showers, bromide of potas­
sium and ammonium, two grammes every · twenty-four hours.
Fer:mginous wine, a varied diet to build up the. system . .In thedays following X appeared to be mentally calmer. She did not. .

have · -hallucinations; - Neverthelessyielded several times .

sheadmitted

to . having"Pubic belt, strait jacket, straps, bonds, the most assiduous
supervision only resulted in the invention of new expedients
inspired by ruse and subtlety. " The doctors began to despair ofher. "Cauterization by hot iron alone gave satisfactory results,"
they conclude . "It is- reasonable to infer that cauterization . . .
diminishes the sensitivity of ·the clitoris, which can be com-

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pletely destroyed if the operation is repeated a certain number of('times.''
If nymphomania-literally, too much interest in dle1
nymphs, the labia-was enough to incite such violence, the\governors were equally concerned by the thought that she ,wasn't getting enough. "To the analyst, any breakdown im
mental or emotional machinery could be traced to only one .
cause. A sex life that was not sufficiendy full . " Not least becauseof its silent implication that women were not in need of men, 'chastity could be far more disconcerting than the pro�lexm :allegedly connected with too much sexual activity.
Too litde, too much, too empty, too full : The s11ppressionrof female sexuality has always been a matter of regulation andcontrol. . The ideal female sexuality was neither too active nor
impassive, but just right . . . and just for him. Balanced andequilibrated, neither running away with itself in some state offast loose overexcitement, nor breaking down for want of suffi"'­cient stimuli. Just the right degree of satisfaction, nothing moreand nothing less. Left to her own devices . . . but this, ofcourse, couldn't be allowed. She didn't have the rigpt equip­
ment to guarantee her self-control; her loyalty • to the reproducrive machine. And without her complicity, the whole repro""ductive system would collapse.
·"It Is the tettlfylng prerogative of the liberated sex to claim
the monopoly over Its own sex: 'I shall not even live on In yourdreams. ' Man m,.t continue to decide what Is the Ideal
woman. "Jean Baudrlllard, Cool Memories

Convinced that all attempts to liberate some supposed authentic
sex or sexuality were bound to exacerbate the containment �f

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�:dte bodies they ostensibly wanted to free, Foucault was dismis�sive of attempts to free and extend orgasmic sex. The "apologia

f�:
�
,..

�for orgasm made by the Reichians still seems to me to be a way;;pf localising possibilities of pleasure in the sexual," he wrote,ig()ing so far as to suggest that "we have to get rid of sexuality"
� in order to strip the body from its formal controls, disable the;;mechanisms of self-protection and security which bind intensity;Jo , reproduction. Foucault certainly had no doubt that certain' .drugs rivaled the "intense pleasures" of sexual experimentation.
>lforgasm concentrates and localizes them, "things like yellow, pills or cocaine allow you to .explode and diffuse it throughout· the body; the body becomes the overall site of an overall plea­
SUre. " The plane on which it forgets itself, omits to be one.
"I dismembered your body. Our caressing hands were notgathering information or uncovering secrets, were tentacles ofmindless invertebrates; our bellies and Hanks and thighs werelisting in a contact that apprehends and holds onto nothing.
What our bodies did no one did." Dismemberment:
countermemory. A new generation has forgotten what its or­gans were supposed to be doing for their sense of self or the
reproduction of the species, and have learned instead to let theirbodies learn what they can do without preprogramming desire,to "make of one's body a place for the production of extraordi­
narily polymorphic pleasures, while simultaneously detaching itfrom a valorization · of the genitalia and particularly of the male
genitalia. "This is only the beginning o f a process which abandons
the model of a unified and centralized organism, "the organic
body, organized with survival as its goal, " in favor of a diagramof fluid sex. "Flows of intensity, their fluids, their fibers, theircontinuums and conjunctions of affects, the wind, fme segmen­
tation, microperceptions, have replaced the world of the sub-

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ject." Now there are "acentered systems, finite networks- of
automata in which communication runs from any neighbour to'
any other," and "we too are flows of matter and energy (sun­light, oxygen, water, protein and so on) . " The Lesbian Body is:
way ahead: "Perforations occur in your body and - in m/y bodyjoined together, our homologously linked muscles separate, thefirst current of air that infiltrates into the breach spreads at crazy
speed, creating a squall within you and within m/ e simultane-·
ously.""Open the so-called body and spread out all its surfaces:
not only the skin with each of its folds, wrinkles, scars, with its
great velvety planes . . . but open and spread, expose the labia
majora, so also the labia minora with their blue network bathedin mucus, dilate the diaphragm of the anal sphincter . . . " andon through every organized zone of a body which begins toflatten out into the "immense membrane" of Lyotard's great
ephemeral skin, in touch not only with itself but "the mostheterogeneous textures, bone, epithelium, sheets to write on;
charged atmospheres, swords, glass cases, peoples, gras_ses, can-'vases to pain. All these zones are joined end to end in a band--'-<
which has no back to it, a Moebius band . . . "Once it loses the reproductive point, sex explodes beyond
the human and its proper desires. Coded into two discreet sexes
and defined by their reproductive organs, human bodies also
"imply a multiplicity of molecular combinations bringing into'play not only the man in the woman and the woman in theman, but the relation of each to the animal, the plant, etc.: athousand tiny sexes." E!ery unified body conceals a crowd:"inside evecy_soli� living creature is a swarm of non-creature,.rthings." Even the most unified of individuals is intimately
�d up With �rks w� take it past.its_o_'Ml_ borderlinel,-- ;se � with vast -pop ��ns
life whose replka��:�f-��!�*�.- . • s
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;!_hat i.�.:��- t�_�y� either a sex or sex itsel£

�tions· disrupt ·even the most perverse anthropocentric notions c:>f.:· �i '· Bound and subj ected to the formality of organic integrity,:,such molecular activities do little to disrupt the sense of security. and fixation on a centralized sel£ "As long as they do not'.threaten him , and thus force him to define his position in rela­tion to them, he enjoys their fluidity and ease of movement. " It;.can even be luxurious, and it is certainly not difficult, to con­ceive .of oneself as a multiplicitous and shifting complexity. This

is .the familiar: position of the postmodern theorist notorious for

an impress�ve intellectual grasp of an instability which has never.required him to lose control. But he doesn't always have thechoice: "sometimes they reach a point where even a semblance· of orientation becomes impossible . " It's not quite so easy andamusing then. And as Elias Canetti points out, if it gets to thestage at which"everything round him is fluid and transitory henaturally begins to feel very uncomfortable himsel£ "Not that it really matters whether or not he ever knows
about the vast populations of inorganic life, the "thousand tiny
sexes" which are coursing through his veins witlJ. a promiscuity: of which he cannot conceive. He's the one who misses out.

Fails to adapt. Can't see the point of his sexuality. Those who
believe in their own organic integrity are all too human for the
future Ada lived. She loved the microbes long before he knew

they- were even there. "Do you know it is to me quite delightful
to .have a frame so susceptible that it is an experimental labora­
tory always about me, & inseparable from me. "She never believed in the disguises she wore, the coverstories she wrote to conceal the rhythms and speeds of "nonhu­. man sex, the molecular machinic elements, their arrangements'and .their syntheses" which composed the thing they called
hersel£ Instead she is in touch with the microprocesses which

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turn her on, tapping into the plane of impersonal desire which 'lies in wait for the human sex, a desire which ''does not take as.
its object persons or things, but the entire surroundings that it
traverses, the vibrations and flows of every ·sort to which it is<joined, introducing therein breaks and captures.:_an always no ..,madic and migrant desire.'' She did not, after all, · have a single .
sex, a sex which belonged to something called hersel£ Her•
body had not simply been excluded from orthodox conceptions:,of being human : It had refused to go along With man's defini..;. �tions of organic life. On the learning curves of her body , she'discovered that it simply had too many and too fluid zones tocount as one, or even many ones: lips, palms, ears, hairs, fingers, :thighs, toes, soles, nipples, wrists, shoulders, nested regions,206ever more dispersed and localized, larger and smaller, a list with­out end. "Not the clitoris or the vagina, but the clitoris and thevagina, and the lips, and the vulva, and the mouth of the uterus,
and the uterus itself, and the breasts . . . What might havebeen, ought to have been astonishing" to those who looked,
and only looked, at lack, "is the multiplicity of genital erogenous

zones (assuming that the qualifier 'genital' is still required) in=
female sexuality. " There is always more detail and complexity.
Irigaray writes of "a touching of at least two (lips) which keeps
woman in contact with herself, although it would be impossible
to distinguish exacdy what 'parts' are touching each other. "She may appear to be well organized, but her body is both,

multiple and mutable, not merely many, but ·shifting as well In ·..

Wittig's Feminary, "the glans of the clitoris and the body of theclitoris are described as hooded. It is stated that the prepuce atthe base of the glans can travel the length of the organ exciting aiskeen sensation of pleasure. They say that the clitoris is an erec­
tile organ. It is stated that it bifurcates to right and left, that itl;i' •

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bgled, extending as two erectile bodies applied to the ·pubic

���e.s. These two bodies are not visible. The whole constitutes

� intensdy erogenous zone that excites the entire genital, mak-K

�dt•. an organ impatient for pleasure. They compare it to�'ercury also called quicksilver because of its readiness to ex­

�;md, to spread, to change shape. "�'i'- To explore what bodies such a s this c an do i s no longer atquestion of liberating sex, of sexual freedom, or authenticity. It:,·

�- not a matter of remembering herselfbut instead of dismem­

�b.ering the one sex which had kept them all in line, a matter of��making bits of bodies, its parts or . particular surfaces throbs,
�tensify, for their own sake and not for the benefit of the entity;qr organism as a whole. " The "question of 'passivity' is not the.
tq.uestion of slavery, the question of dependency not the plea to!)?�, dominated. " When she demands: drink me, eat me, "USE:eM£ . . . what does she want, she who asks this, in the exas­�peration and aridity of every piece of her body, the woman­;hrchestra? Does she want to become her master's mistress and so�orth? . Come on! She wants you to die with her, she desires that?the . exclusive limits be pushed back, sweeping across all thel;l:.i$sues, the immense tactility, the tact of whatever closes up on<i�elf without becoming a box, and of whatever ceaselessly ex­;t�nds beyond itself without becoming a conquest."
1 ;•Immense tactility, contact, the possibility of communica1tion·. ' Closure without the box: as a circuit, a connection. "What!jnterests the practitioners of S&M is that the relationship is at
the same time regulated and open," writes · Foucault. It is a'�mixture of rules and openness. " Ceaseless extension: the bodyhunting its own exit. Becoming "that which is not one"; be­:c;oming woman, who "has sex organs just about everywhere. " Is;this what it is to get out of the meat? Not simply to leave the
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body, but to go further than the organism; to access the "exul-":.itation of a kind of autonomy of its smallest parts, of the smallestt :possibilities of a part of the body. "·'"Use me, " wrote Lyotard, is "a statement of vertiginous�
_simplicity, it is not mystical, but materialist. Let me be youti
surface and your tissues, you may be my orifices and my paJmsr:

and my membranes, we could lose ourselves, leave the power :and the squalid justification of the dialectic of redemption, we·

will be dead. And not: let me die by your �d. as Masoch 'said." This is also the prostitute's "sado-masochistic bond whichi
ends up making you suffer 'something' for your clients;' This'o)r, mixed with shame, the joy of-submitting ­to and withstanding the blow, of bel�nging to someone, andsomething has no name. It is beyOnd love and hate, beyond­feelings, a savage j208

feeling oneself freed from liberty. This must exist in all women, ·­in all couples, to a lesser degree or unconsciously. I wouldn't
really know how to explain it. It is a drug, it's like having theimpression that one is living one's life several times over all at
once, with an incredible intensity." It is Foucault's ' 'something'unnameable, ' 'useless,' outside of all the programs of desire. It isthe body made totally plastic by pleasure: somethingthat opens
itself, that tightens, that throbs, that beats, that gapes. " It is,writes Freud, "as though the watchman over our mental life
were put out of action by a drug. ""I stripped the will and the person from you like collars
and chains. " What remains is machinic, inhuman, beyond emo­tion, beyond subjection: "the illusion of having no choice, thethrill of being taken. " Pat Califta: "He wanted . . . every­
thing. Consumption. To be used, to be used up completely. To
be absorbed into her eyes, her mouth, her sex, to become partof her substance. "Foucault describes those involved i n the complex o f activi-

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·· _, around .S&M as "inventing new possibilities of pleasure withparts of their body_ .

.

. It's a kind of creation, a ere­. enterprise, which has as one of its main features what I call

· · desexualization of pleasure. " Beyond their superficial thrills ,_experiments are a "matter of a multiplication and bur­

�pning ofbodies," he writes, "a creation of anarchy within thewhere its hierarchies, its localizations and designations, its

�tanlClt;y, if you will is in the process of disintegrating. " For
IIJ.�l"""'w�,-- "practices like fist-fucking are practices that one can�Ld.cM!:ili��in:g, or desexualizing. They are in fact extraordinaryyrml$i/1Celtioins of pleasure, " pains taken even to the point at which
too "become sheer ecstas . Needles through the flesh. Hot
wax dribbled over alligator clips. The most extraordinaryP".ressw:e on muscles or connective tissue. The frontier between
and pleasure has been crossed. "

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"Not even suffering o n the one hand, . pleasure o n thethis dichotomy belongs to the order of the organic body,supposed unified instance. " Now there is a plane, aMguc,rol� plateau. The peaks and the troughs have converged_., ,.;ow.u. sea, a silent ocean. They have found their limit andHat:ter.ted out. Melting point.

p:chi.sm, and certainly better ones, is beside the point; it is
�f:-

.·

�'That there are other ways, other procedures than mas­�nough that some find this procedure suitable for them." What­:ey� it . take� to access the plane on which one becomes a sex
�at is not one. Even if one doesn't know it's happening.

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pass i n g: J_

If Turing's test reverted to its original parlor-game form at his:f
own trial; the boundaries between male and female, man andi�
woman, have continued to blur in parallel with the erosion o£}-:the borders between man and machine. The overturning oft
sexual relations in the home and workplace, the inq:easing prev_,. ,;alence of sex, androgyny, transvestism, . and transsexuality
heightened both the difficulty and the necessity o.f defining: ;_sexes, sexualities, and sexualized roles, just as a proliferation of.!
intelligent machines has made the difference between man and·;�
machine increasingly problematic. "Clothing himself in the fe-' ;!'male . . . clothing herself in cyberspace. Is there a differ-· <. .: -�
ence?""To hide," write Deleuze and Guattari, "to camouflage '. :Jloneself, is a warrior function. " Hence "the .femininity- of the::·;iman of war" who, just at the moment he becomes th� real.
. "'also fmds himself running in-revers�. -The warrior paints his face· 1
and dresses up; the soldier looks after his own disguise, bandages:·• lthe wounds he incurs, and sews up the holes in his camouflaged; ]fatigues. As for the Last Action Hem, Scbwarzenegger ' s fusion ;��- -��-���na�or seals the fat� of.!!l-odern �· This is the: .;height of �.c.�_Q!n,r! �d �Jmml!!l-possibilinr� The most ,reaf man -is not a man at all . Cinema's male machines are sup-, ,-posed to be as mascUfui�--� their female counterparts are feminine, but they too tip into the zone to which all duplicity andreplication tends: "To become the cy,borg , . . is to put on the
�-_!Jfemale. " Strapped_ �nto the plane, -..yire4 up �Q �!te controls, the"' ·fighterpilot b��om�-s- - the �£�� �<!JQs.es. himself on � - .
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' 'Nowadays, it is said, When a military aircraft finds

serious trouble, the voice co mmand switches to the

Telling the difference has become a lat�ntieth century
1PJ:eo.t:cutpa1tiOltl, as is abundandy clear from the often absurdl!'¢.llgtlls· to which transsexuals in search of chemical and surgicalDJiistmce... have to go in order to prove · the veracity of their��mes t:o change sex. Many medical authorities insist on apply­...,.....ifto . ....�.. . most stringent and stereotypical criteria to their "pa­asking male-to-female transs exuals to wear the high, and · cosmetics which · are supposed to characterize ·femininity, and female-to-males to display the most con­aw.e:ntlonal dress codes and behaviors associated with being a real
These · expressions of sexual identity may be expected of
liab::eadlv existing women and men, but they are hardly enforced· . . the same degree. And while many transsexuals do want tofor some extreme conception ofbeing female or male, notin the effort to make a · definitive break with their pasts,
others are striving to attain some far less . conventional
��pre:ss101n of the sex they want to be.
Like Turing's machines, those transsexuals unable to take\�on their ability to simulate an already caricatured conception of�what it is to be a proper human being. To be a proper human is•..

plane or the risks involved in going to Rio are judged solely

l attempts to .refine these criteria improve the situation for trans­;� sexuals themselves, they also serve to reinforce the futility of
�':attempts to define sexual identity. Once the stereotypes are
ho:•'have a · proper sex; :a sex that is truly one's own. And while; dropped, all the · criteria fall away .

��initial assumptions of A.I. research. ·This is also the case for the machines . While one of thewas that reason and memory.. would suffice for a machine to pass the test, it was soon realized

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that what distinguished humans from the early generations ofmachines was more akin to irrational forgetfulness: the foibles;
mistakes, and errors humans make. Slips of the tongue, innu,..
endo, black and white lies . . . It was soon obvious that "anintelligent machine would have to . be intelligent enough to . ·know when to dissemble, when to lie . "All o f which wa s rather unfortunate for those attempting ..
to establish . the truth. Just as the authorities have to accept. .
candidates for sex changes o n the basis o f their abilities t o simu- .
late exaggerated versions of the opposite sex, so Turing's ma­chines can only be judged by their abilities to simulate thehuman .
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What such - tests prove is only that there is no such thing as

being human , male or female . Femmes, drag queens, even male­to-female transsexuals: No one ever arrives at the point ofbeinga real woman. Butches, drag kings, and female-to-male trans­
sexuals meet the same problem: There is no real man to be­come. Transsexuals are transsexuals before and after the longchemical treatments and surgical procedures, always on the way
to a destination as impossible as the point of departure they .
leave behind.

·r-

Even attempts to remain the same, secure one's identity,
and keep it in line are destined to find themselves in the courseof becoming one or the other. Those whose only concern is tosecure an existing masculinity fmd - that this too has to be simulated: there is nothing real about the real man played by
Schwarzenegger or the male bodies built in the gym . Or in the
many courses and processes of the many becomings which,assembled together, produce the general effect of a sexual iden­tity they cari call their own. There's no " there," there either.
No one is or has one sex at a time, but teems with sexes andsexualities too fiuid, volatile, and numerous to count. "If we

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�consider the great binary aggregates, such as the sexes or classes,
�it is; evident that they also cross over into molecular assemblages,of. a different nature; " There is nowhere to go, and no way.'sexuality when, for . every s,�xual identity, there is always "a· back. It is not possible to be just one sex, or even · to have a

microscopic transsexuality, resulting in the woman containing
as- : many men as the man, and the man as many women, all''Capable ·of entering--men with women, women with men­
into relations of production of desire that overturn the statistical:order of the sexes . "· "Becoming-woman" does not necessarily . have anything
to do with "imitating or assuming the female form. " Even if itappears to be a simple matter of imitation, simulation is much
more than simple mimicry. "Becoming-woman" is a matter of'�emitting particles that enter the relation of movement and rest,·or the zone of proximity, of a microfemininity, in other words,
that · produce in us a molecular woman, create the molecular·woman. " Not that this is some excuse for "overlooking theimportance of imitation, or moments of imitation, among cer­.tain homosexual males, much less the prodigious attempt at areal transformation on the part of certain transvestites . " As withlearning a language, it's a matter of subdy shifting the bodyaround, tapping into new musculatures and nervous systems,·picking up on different speeds. But while one is certainly more
likely to run into these shifts in the course of trying to makesoine change, this does not guarantee immunity to those whowant only to. stay the same.
It is in this sense that everybody fmds themselves some­.
where in the course of Deleuze and Guattari's "becoming­

Woman," rriore or less but never perfecdy self-identified. This is. not a question of becoming an actual woman of some kind:This would be a question of being something, an arrested pro-

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cess of becoming. Even female-to-male transsexuals are in thisl�
course, losing their familiar form and what was supposed to be�:
their proper point as surely as those who are more literally : 'feminized.
·:·

chemicals2
14Sexual identity and difference only became matters o f binary
biology in a late-eighteenth century response to , the failingguarantees once provided by Christianity. And if the presence;or absence, of a certain reproductive organ was sufficient ,crite-.
rion for some time, by the late nineteenth century, it was in-­creasingly clear that the sexes did not at all compose a clear-cut
binary machine.
The so-called "sex chromosomes" had been observed in
1 89 1 , and in the early decades of the twentieth century hor­mones were added to the lines of communication a,nd regula­tory mechanisms at work in organisms which were suddenly far
more complex, finely tuned, and sexually ambiguoUS"than had
been previously thought. In his 1909 essay on Leonardo, also
accused but acquitted of homosexuality, Freud expressed greatinterest in the "tendency of biological research . . . to explain:
the chief features in a person's organic constitution as being theresult of the blending of male and female dispositions, based on
substances. " Differences between the sexes now became mattersof degree, with the female body "characterized by its cyclic
hormonal regulation and the male body by its stable hormonal
regulation. ' 'Once they were detected, isolated, and synthesized, hor­mones were used to predominandy normalizing ends. But, as

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�� hormones would have predictable effects. While testoster­
Turing's own case shows, there were few guarantees that partie­

t.one· predominates in men and is instrumental in their develop­!in,ent, it is by no means confined to male individuals. Both sexes. produce androgens, male hormones such as testosterone; the. testes produce androgens and estrogen, the feminizing hor­
· mone, and ovaries produce androgen, as well as estrogen andprogesterone, the hormones necessary to the maintenance ofpregnancy. Hormones can even have "paradoxical effects," inwhich excessive doses of androgens produce feminization, andexcessive estrogen induces masculine growth.
Female-to-male transsexuals now use testosterone to in­crease their masculinity, and male-to-females use estrogen to2
1

induce the opposite effect. As such deliberate shifts have be­come increasingly feasible, rather more accidental changes have5

also begun to occur.
By the 1980s there were reports of human babies with Y
chromosomes but no testicles, female dogwelk with penises, andlactating male fruit bats. Australian ewes mounting rams. The
males of many species are subject to increasing levels of femini­zation from sources as varied as estrogen processed through thecontraceptive pill, agents such as chemical detergents, and a vast
number of chemicals which mimic the effects of female hor­mones which find their way into the water supply. In humanmales, the sperm count is falli ng-in Britain, at the rate of 2
percent a year--and cases of impotence are rising fast. These
general effects are thought to be compounded by the feminizing
impact of tinned vegetables, cigarettes, and the accelerating col­lapse of conventional male economic, social, and sexual roles.
"The causes are not yet defined . . . but the potential conse­
quences are clear enough: by the middle of the next century, atthis rate of decline, the British male will be infertile . "

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In the 1 950s, a Syracuse research team injected DDT into?.
forty roosters over a period of two to three months. The daily�
doses "didn't kill the roosters or even make them sick. But it;
certainly did make them weird. The treated birds didn't look1·tlike roosters at all ; they looked like hens."
By the mid-1990s, more than fifty synthetic chemicals:
which disrupt the endocrine system had been detected in prod;;tucts we use daily. What had once been supposed to be naturali
hormonal levels had been gready changed by the use of the!
contraceptive pill, and it was suggested that "plastics are not·'inert as was commonly assumed and that some of the chemicals�leaching from plastics are hormonally active." Hormone :mimics " may lurk in ointments, cosmetics, shampoos, and·;other common products,, and some of the most effective:!
PCBs, had been used as insulation in electrical transformers for:many years before the war. "These ubiquitous metal cans at.;;tached to electrical poles were an essential component in thegrowing grid that sent electricity from generating systems overhigh voltage power lines and into homes to power lights, radios; ;vacuum cleaners and refrigerators-the wonderful new twentf- 'r'eth-century electrical conveniences. "A survey o f figures collected, fro m twenty countries and·five continents published in the British Mediad Journal suggested
that the average male sperm count had dropped from 1 13 mil..:lion to 66 million per milliliter of semen between 1 940 and
1 990. Further research, much of it by scientists determined todisprove these initial findings, confirmed "a striking inverse
correlation between the year of birth and the health of men's
sperm. " One French study suggested that the sperm counts of
those born in 1 945 and measured thirty years later averaged 102
million per milliliter; men born in 1 962 and measured in 1992
had counts which were exacdy halved. It was widely held that

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"' thetic estrogens and the ubiquity of estrogen-mimicking
liemicals were primarily responsible for these falls in sperm
f;>unts and, correspondingly, male fertility. The estrogen recep­
l-9:1'< "consorts so readily with foreigners that it has earned a� utation. Some scientists call it 'promiscuous. ' "it :�trt . "The body responds to the imposters as legitimate mes�gers . and allows them to bind to hormone receptors; it doespt
� recognize their action as damage that needs to be repaired. ''��trogen mimics insinuate themselves in the guise of their natu­
�. ,equivalents. They "impersonate them. They jam signals.
ey"scramble messages. They sow disinformation. They wreak��·.'�: manner of havoc." Incidence of testicular and prostate dises soared, a range of new, or newly perceptible, "male repro­
l4�ctive problems" emerged, and there was also some evidence�9{ suggest that estrogen-mimicking chemicals were related to�b�ast cancers, ectopic pregnancies, miscarriage, and endome­
osis in women.
[,.t f The greatest panics, however, were induced by the extent
�,�.� which the sexual order was being chemically scrambled.
WJ;here were suggestions that "chemicals interfering with hor­�onal messages at crucial times in fetal development could alter
choice"; and women exposed to one synthetic estrogensaid to "have higher rates of homosexuality and bisexuality!thandotheir sisters who were not exposed.".
i)·�::: . Worse still, it seemed that human males were losing the�chemical bases of their masculinity. "Without these testosterone
male development gets derailed and boys don't become��pys. Instead they become stranded in an ambiguous state,�here they cannot function as either males or females. " Theseergent "intersexes" were thought to be products of the prev­
ence of androgen blockers and estrogen mimics among syn­[dJ..t:tic chemicals absorbed by embryos in the womb and off-

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spring in breast milk, as well as by way of a vast range ofsynthetic chemicals consumed throughout childhood and adultlife, and it was daughters-all presumed to be virtual mothers­with whom the onus was supposed to lie. "Normality" depends '"not only on what the mother takes in during pregriancy but.
also on the persistent contaminants · accumulated in body fat up ·to that point in her lifetime, " wrote some researchers. "In the:interest of the coming generation and those that follow, wemust limit what children are exposed to as they grow up and·keep the toxic burden that women accumulate in theii lifetimes
prior to pregnancy as low as possible. Children have · a right to·
be born chemical-free.
·"By disrupting hormones and development, these syn-·thetic chemicals may be changing who we become. They may
be altering our destinies." It is this possibility that any shifts inthe "normal" chemistry of the human organism will "under­
mine the ways in which humans interact with one another andthereby threaten the social order of modern civilization'' which
preoccupies the authors of Our Stolen Futures. They may "alter
the characteristics that make us uniquely human--our behavior,intelligence, and capacity for social organization," ro1>Ging us of"the legacy of our species and, indeed, the . essence of our hu­
manity. " Even the absolute end of the species seems preferable
to them. "There may be fates worse than extinction."xyz

Even the most conservative biologists admit that there is no
absolute necessity for the existence of either two sexes or any
particular differences be�en them. "Sex is not a necessary

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_cpndition for life. Many organisms have no sexuality and yet)9ak happy enough. They reproduce by fission or budding and� ;single organism is sufficient to produce identical ones. So�how is it that we do not bud or divide? Why do most animals
twot�hy two sexes rather than three?" There might have been one(:0&and plants have to be two in order to produce a third one? And( parthenogenic sex, or three or more different sexes, or individu­;j� :capable of switching sex. In principle, anything was possible.

:l}ut· species do not evolve, mutate, and reproduce according toi'im.atters of principle. Most of them do so by processes of genetic
�recombination and outcrossing, procedures which function to:._orgaruze a species, safeguard its definition and its boundaries,.-guarantee its reproductive continuity, and mitigate against mu­. tation. These are methods which have clearly outstripped their;asexual rivals, but have not arisen because of some transcendent, evolutionary imperative. Sex is a "frozen accident. " It just hap­
pened to turn out this way.

And there are of course many variations on the theme oftwo

reproductive sexes. Silverside fish have different sexes at. different times, and when the Swedish naturalist Linnaeus pro­
duced his classifications of plants in the eighteenth century, helisted twenty-four sexes based on the arrangement of stamens
and pistils. While plants bearing flowers with more stamens­
the male organs-than pistils are staminate, and those withmore pistils--the female · organs-are pistillate, there are no
strict divisions between the two. These are merely statisticalaggregates.

Homo sapiens reproduce by way of meiotic sex, a reproduc­tive process which entails mixing their 75,000 genes, two copies
of which are in each cell, in a double process of recombinationand outcrossing. In an initial sorting process, each pair of chro­mosomes swaps chunks of code, recombining to produce one

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copy of the 75,000 in either the sperm or the egg. The next 'phase occurs at fertilization when, by a process of outcrossmg, 1
one set of chromosomes meets the set which has been separately:
produced by the same process in the cell of the reproductive
partner. Recombination effectively repeats and refines the out-·:
crossing of each individual's own parents' genes, handing down··
its own inheritance to offSpring direcdy composed of the previ- ·ous two generations of genes. It might well be thought that theasexual procedures of cloning, budding, and splitting practiced·by bacteria and other parthenogens would be the simplest and ·easiest way of ensuring that more of the same will be produce&
Involving two individuals and the double mechanis.ms which·recombine and recross their genes, reproductive sex seems thelong way around to something that will not be "the Same" at all. ·But this convoluted route is the only way to ward off the dan'­gers of mutation, deviation, and innovation which flourish
among the replications and duplications of asexual populations.
These parthenogens may well appear to be the systems mostskille d in repro ucing �emselves, but in p�ctice their ase�ali
procedures provtde fertile ground for mutations and aberratlom
which would be fatal to the continuity of a speciediice Homosapiens. Were such organisms to trade genes in this way, as in
Octavia Buder's Xenogenesis, "it would be a small matter for
dandelions to sprout butterfly wings, collide with a bee, ex­change genes again, and soon be seeing with compound insect
eyes." These are the outcomes which sexual reproduction is
supposed to preclude. Its procedures are by no means foolproof;
but the double checks and sexual balances of reproductive sex
are the closest biological systems can come to securing the
reproduction of their line.
This double process of software exchange--cutting andpasting, remixing and double crossing-produces an embryo

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inherits the gene• of both its parents and their parents "�:Qpt this 1s where the symmetry appears to end. Human genes
�h se processes occur in both female and male humans.

t� coded on forty-six chromosomes, arranged in pairs. In fe­) �es, all of them are X-shaped. In males, one of them isi sm,aller, and shaped like a Y.

:t

In males, the process of recombination can result in one of!.two types of sperm. As a rule, an X-bearing sperm produces an�dividuals can either be double female (XX) , half female and;� embryo, whereas a Y sperm produces an XY. In effect,

are many variations on this theme. People with Klinefelter's, qalf male (X.Y) , or some other combination of both. But there·· syndrome--whose characteristics include male internal and ex­

terilal genitalia, with small testes, no spermatogenesis, andXXYY and XX­

sometimes the addition of breasts-have chromosomal combi­

XYY . There are women with three, four, or even five X chro­�tions such as :XXY , XXXY, XXXXY ,,mosomes, women with XY chromosomes, men with XYY
cqmbinations, and even men with XX combinations, in whom

are as many varia­

�e Y chromosome is thought to have been present for longenough to affect sexual development. Theretions again in mosaics, individuals with combinations of two or
more cell lines. It is also possible to have only one X, or an X
together with some "mutant" X. These Turner's syndrome in­d,ividuals are also considered female, and sometimes referred toas XO . They tend to be short, with the sexual organs of adoles­

Only Y and YY are not on the menu. Such "pure" males
are impossible: Every embryo emerges from an X chromosome
egg, and also develops in the amniotic fluids of an XX womb.
_For the XY embryo this environment is a chromosomaticallycent girls and often webbed fingers and toes as well.

alien.

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Regardless of whether the sex chromosome carried bysperm is X or Y, embryos manifest no anatomical sexual �ence until the siXth week of their development, when . it ·thought that a flood of testosterone triggers the growth of . · ·. -�sexual characteristics in the XY embryo. This, for example, · �
why males have nipples and many other rudimentary character�
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istics of the female. After earlier suggestions that the Y chromo�.
some activates a male-determining gene or sexual regulator cari:ried on the X chromosome, it is now suspected that the .. · ,chromosome carries a pair of interlocking sex...,deten_ninmg.
genes: SRY, which turns on MIS, the gene which then t\Jrm .
the emergent female functions off and brings the. testosterone
on-line.
On the face of it, females have only a tangential connec;;i�tion to the nexus of male reproductive organs, spermatozoa, Y�chromosomes, and testosterone. The pattern seems to repeatij
itself at every sexual scale. All the triggering, motivating, acti:.:.4'' lvating features of the process seem to be male, from the domi:.;:l:nant male to the penetrating penis, the orgasmic ejaculation andt
the plucky little spermatozoa scurrying up the vag� canal iJlian effort to be the first, the only one, to pierce the outer wall ofi
the egg. Like father, like sperm, like chromosome: Is the maleline really running the show, with women, eggs, and X chro->mosomes passively waiting for their counterparts to turn them·on or off as required? Are they merely the vehicles and media:,
for the transmission of the male line? Does the Y chromosome ·organize a hapless, passive, wanton X? Does the sperm come toactivate an acquiescent egg? Is the male the point of it all, andthe female simply a means to its end?
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pe a h e n ' s t a l e
Darwin defined natural selection as the "preservation of
Dltpurable variations and the rej ection of inj urious variations, "-�,�oox: his cue from the techniques of artificial selection em­

by breeders of animals and plants. While breeders haveown purposes in mind, they are not in a position to make· variations themselves occur: They are simply accentuating.

�!\•,dJr.mnishlmg modifications which have already emerged in

the population they keep . And while breeders were��·"'!:> occasional judgments about what was favorable or inju­

on the basis of outwardly obvious characteristics-theof a tail, the color of a flower--Darwin's natural selecwas a blind automatic process whose only external influ­. were provided by the environment with which the organ­

was continually maintaining, adjusting, and improving its

to interact. " It may be said that natural selection is dailyi.�iations; rejecting those that are bad, preserving and adding
fup all that are good; silendy and invisibly working, whenever('apd wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of eachhPrganic being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions. .

hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, the slightest':: f. 1 ! � ";o_ ..:W.e.

:,were fit enough to do so, and not because they were hand­;·; �-.

. With his argument that organisms survived because they'·picked by God, Darwin certainly succeeded in removing theol­'ogy from the evolutionary picture. Biological selection was not�divine, but natural, and the organisms which proliferated were�ply those which proliferated. Natural selection "is a game

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with its own rules. All that count are the changes tbat affect the
number of offspring. If they reduce that number, they are mis- ·takes; if they increase it, they are exploits." In these terms,
which are so broad as to be tautological, natural selection iS ;widely accepted and relatively uncontroversial. Beyond thesesweeping terms, natural selection is both extraordinarily com­plex and certainly not the only factor in the evolutionary game. ;While Darwin's theory of natural selection emphasized 'the regulatory mechanisms at work in individua�d organisms ·and well-defined species, Darwin was neither as conservative
nor dogmatic as the work of many later Darwinians !night sug"'" :gest. And even he was aware that other processes were in play.
Sexual difference was one of the most obvious anomalies; ·"When the males and females of any animal have the same ·general habits of life, but differ in structure, colour and orna;..
ment," he wrote, "such differences have been mainly caused bysexual selection: that is, individual males have had, in successive
generations, some slight advantage over other males, in their
weapons, means of defence, or charms; and have �tted
these advantages to their male offspring. "r-The question begged by these comments was where these ·advantages -had come from, and although Darwin posed it inthese male terms, it was clear that sexual selection was a matter :of specifically female choice. Studies of the infamous fruit By,
drosophilia subsobscura, suggest that males and females dancearound each other, apparendy until the female decides to accept
the male as a mate. It seems that "the female accepts a male who
keeps up adequately during the dance, and rejects one who does ·not. The female is, therefore, extremely discriminating; in con- .
trast, a male will dance with and attempt to mount a blob of
wax on the end of a brisde." Early attempts to explain suchprocedures, which are by no means confined to the fruit By,- ·
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�uced the behavior of both females and males to the quest for· fitness prioritized by natural sdection. If only the fittest of thespecies survive, it is fitness that the females are putting to the�st. Unfortunately for this theory, females do not necessarilychoose males who are fit in Darwinian terms. Female guppies
choose males whose bright colors leave them vulnerable topredators. Female nightingales choose males whose serenades
� announce their presence to their enemies.. Even more fre­quently quoted is the peacock whose beautiful but impractical
tail . . is extremdy attractive to discriminating peahens, but is
nothing more than a liability in terms of his ability to survive.
The nightingale's song, the guppies' colors, the fruit fly's
dances, and the peacock's tail are all emergent from "virility
�ts designed to get most males kille d through exhaustion, dis­ease and violence purely so that females can tell which males� the best genes. " In effect, males function as "the femalesex�s health insurance policy," often at great cost to themselves.
The high levels of testosterone induced by the demands of fe­
male . sexual sdection may give males their distinguishing fea­tures, but they also weaken the immune systems of males, andleave them so vulnerable to a kind of remote control by theirf-e counterparts that it has even been described as "thesupreme female 'invention,' " perhaps "an evolutionary plot onbehalf of females."The drab peahen and the unsung female nightingale figure
among the vast ranks of inconspicuous females which use themales of their species as "genetic sieves, to sift out the good�enes and discard the bad. They do this by equipping maleswith all sorts of encumbrances and then setting them to work incompetition, either beating each other up or risking their lives
against predators and parasites. " The peacock has an extraordi­_
nary tail not because it improveschances of survival: more

his

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often than not, it gets in his way . Left to his own devices, h ,
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would no doubt. be a far more functional shape . As Charlc>tte_
Perkins Gilman wrote, the male "is not profited personally·

his mane or crest or tail-feathers: they do not help him getdinner or kill his enemies," and can even "react unfavou··

rably:
upon his personal gains, if, through too great development, th ,· .

interfere with his activity or render him a conspicuous mark forenemies. " But the peacock's tail is out of his control. It is th ·:,sexual preference of the peahens which determines the charac': ..

in\,teristics of his colors and his tail, so much so that their behavici '"resembles artificial breeding in this respect, with the peahen.
the role of breeder. "
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Natural and s�al selection function in con unction witli.:each other, ideally to the optimal advantage of them both.

·· ·chances of survival may be compromised, but the ·peacock gainS

the sex appeal that is likely to allow him to reproduce. The',;n�'

runaway development of his tail is simply an ' 'advertising cost" .
designed to make him attractive to peahens. Sexual selectio

made it clear that female behavior was not merely a variation oriril

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tute an inherendy unstable and destabilizing feature of natural �ithe theme of natural selection. Females not only exert an enor"-·}mous influence on the behaviors of males and,
implicationJ
their species as a whole. Their -selection procedures also consti.- iselection, always threatening t o exceed its countervailing con3 i

servative demands.
Not that this female breeding program necessarily makes '·:itself known. Sexual difference m ay b e balanced, sustained, and· t.

reproduced for generations, until some subde mutation in · the rmale begins to appeal to what has hitherto been a minority :female preference. Regardless of whether they are male or fe.- 'themale, the offspring produced by females carrying, and exercising, these preferences will then carry both the gene for

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�hger tail and the gene for its preference. Male offSpring de­. ·· op the longer tail, and pass both this gene and the gene for''),;ntinues. Female offSpring exercise the gene for long-tail pref­e preference to their offSpring, with whom the process

ce and carry the gene for longer tails, which expresses itself:' : any male progeny. The process begins to run away. The'�p-ecies starts to move too fast. The equilibrium which was�iipposed · to be guaranteed by the balanced sexes and mutually:teinforcing modes of selectivity hits skid row, goes out of con­E�e� though the peacock's tail has reached the optimumof 1ts development; even after he has become as sexually�;desirable as the females would wish, "the further development
�.;gf the plumage character will still proceed, by reason of the�:advantage gained in sexual selection, even after it has passed the,.point in development at which its advantage in Natural Selec�::;::tion has ceased."1·
After this the female gene "rides, like a surfer, on a wave off ever-increasing tail lengths sweeping through the population. "i;Jn. effect, it chooses itself. When it chooses males with long tails
it is also choosing those which carry a "hidden" gene for the: females' preference for them. "The two characteristics affected.• by such a process, namely plumage development in the male,and sexual preference for such developments in the female . . .
advance together, and so long as the process is unchecked bysevere counterselection, will advance with ever-increasing
speed. In the total absence of such checks, it is easy to see thatthe speed of development will be proportional to the develop­. ment already attained, which will therefore increase with time
exponentially, or in geometric progression. There is thus in any
bionomic situation in which sexual selection is capable of con­ferring a great reproductive advantage, as certainly occurs insome polymorphic birds, the potentiality of a runaway process,,.
·ftrol.

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which, however small the beginnings from which it ;nose, must, :unless unchecked, produce great effects, and in the later stages
with great rapidity.""Where one function is carried to unnatural excess, others ·.

are weakened, and the organism perishes. " As Gihnan writes,"All morbid conditions tend to extinction. One check has al­ways existed to our inordinate sex-development, nature's readyrelief, death." Positive feedback can always go too far. Any
further and the peacock would die.

Darwin was well aware of the importance of sexual selec­tion, the influence of female choice, and the peculiarity of thepeacock's tail which, like all characteristics · Specific to males,228seemed bound to be an evolutionary disadvantage, But he sim­ply stated these syndromes as unexplained facts. The peacock's

tail is simply beautiful because the peahens like it that way. "Soit was female choice which caused the males' long tails. But

what caused the female preference? Darwin simply took it for
granted .." In a sense, there was little else he could do. The

was later to suggest, female preference was "causeq,.._essentially,female line seems to run in circles of its own. As R, A. Fisher

by itself. "Although sexual selection had been discussed by genera­tions of evolutionary biologists, it was not until the mid-1 980s

that it was widely acknowledged that "in many species, females

had a large say in the matter of their mating partner. ' ' The factthat the majority of investigators have their own male interests
at heart. has undQubtedly contributed to the neglect of thisevolutionary tale. But any suggestion that there has been somedeliberate conspiracy of silence gives evolutionary biology far
more credit than even its most dogmatic exponents would want
to claim. Sexual selection is not a matter of linear transmission,

but a self-reinforcing loop with which orthodox concepti�ns of

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evolution have simply been unable to cope. The self-stimulating
circuits of female sexual selection are so utterly alien to a biolog­
ical ethos of organizing points and straight lines that they havebeen both inexplicable and often imperceptible as well. The
suppression of the runaway female circuitry runs far deeper thanthe discourses and laboratories of the modern sciences: It is
crucial to the survival of the species itsel£

loops''What h e had sometimes thought o f as the arteries and veinsof an Immense circulatory system was closer to a sewer.
Strange clumps of detritus and ti8Sh, some Inert and harm­
less, some toxic when In direct contact, and some actively
radiating polson, scrambled alon6 with the useful and neces­sary traffic. "Pat Cadigan, Synners

The female factors involved in these microbiological processes
are far more than missing pieces in a jigsaw picture which ismore or less present and correct. What the meiotic model canonly characterize as the absence of female activity conceals go­ings on so strange and unorthodox that they completely defy
eXplanation, and even recognition, within the prevailing para­digms. There are elements of female sexuality which are notmerely at odds with the modern disciplines; meiotic sex has
itself survived and evolved by keeping them at bay.
The male considers its own zygotes to be as seminal as its
histories and texts. Sperm are supposed to be the elements
which keep the reproductive show on the road. It is their pene-

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trative and impregnating activity which is said to constitute thepoint of origin, the defining and initiating act, the formal ar­
rangement oflife itsel£ Given the importance placed on size by
the male side of the story, it is rather ironic that eggs, or ova, areby far the largest cells. The biggest egg in the world is also thelargest existing cell, and even women's eggs, which are obvi­
ously very small, are 85,000 times larger in volume than sperm.
Sperm are not only minuscule. They are also peculiarlybasic and crude when compared with the complexities of eggs.
Sperm are simple packets of genes, whereas eggs are extraordi­
narily complex. "The egg uses the messages passed on froin themother to create a chemical landscape upon which the structureof the organism is built." The egg releases the proteins whichswitch genes on or off and so produce more proteins, gradually
layering increasingly complex levels of organization . and build­ing the organism one stage at a time. "Eggs are computers to
the simple floppy discs of sperm," and contain so "much of themachinery an embryo needs for reading and using the genes"
that they can almost function on their own. Although. the egg is
supposed to need the insertion of the sperm's softvrare if it is to
replicate itself, even this most sacrosanct of facts is increasingly
dubious. It seems that sperm is not the only factor capable ofprompting the. egg to grow. Sperm "are not organizers, butmere inductors," stimuli of "varying, vague import," and "ulti- .
mately, the nature of these inductors is a matter of indiffer­ence. "
Eggs do not constitute some alternative moment of origin
or authority in the emergence ofhuman life. The very idea thatanything comes first is itself a cock and bull story which func­
tions to suppress nonlinear continuities to which any notion of astarting point is anathema. "Doubdess one can believe that, inthe beginning (?) , the stimulus-the Oedipal inductor-is a real

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organizer." Square one may be claimed by the male. But its
own redundancy is obvious every time it questions its own
origins. There are only two answers to the question "whichcomes first?" And both of them are female. The male element is
simply an offShoot from a female loop.
Chicken and egg compose a circuit which is always prior
to the first place claimed by the male factors. This is a loop in
relation to which the supposed organizing factors are merely
secondary processes, subroutines, components callously used bya cycle which may even keep them in play by kidding them
about the importance of their roles.
"Tile · disorder has been a Hyd,.,eaded monster;-no sooner
2vanquished In one shape, than It has sprung up In . another. "3

Ada Lovelace, December 1844

Whenever they are trying to remember as far back as the ori­
gins--of life on earth, species development, her hysteria, hermultiplicity-the experts always find themselves entangled withemergent circuitries always running away with themselves. Bi­
ologists and psychoanalysts alike designate such replicating pro­
cesses female.
If the role of the sperm is debatable, the existence of any
organizing factor is even more problematic when the sources oflife on earth are explored. Manfred Eigen suggests that theearliest replicators could only have begun to replicate them­selves once their genetic codes had reached a certain length.
Catalysts, or copying machines, could have led the process tothis point, except that "these machines have to be 'built first. For
this, a blueprint is required, which means information of somelength: a few hundred letters seems to be the minimum. But
such a length cannot be reached without the help of a copying

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machine. And this leads to Catch-22: no higher accuracy with-'out a longer word, no longer word without a higher accuracy."·
Eigen has "proposed a hypercycle as a way out, that is, a catalytic . .
feedback loop whereby each word assists in the replication of
the next one, in a regulatory cycle closing on itsel£ " But this
only complicates the problem, which seems to run rings around •all attempts to pin down some first and founding point at which · ·life could really b e said to have begun. "Every attempt at an
answer gives rise to more riddles. It reminds one of that notori- ·ous Greek monster which, whenever you slashed off one of its .
heads, grew two new heads in its place-also a kind of chain
reaction."
Even in the 1 940s, de Beauvoir had reported that "numer­.
ous and daring experiments in parthenogenesis" were under­
way suggesting that "in many species the male appears to befundamentally unnecessary. ' '"The geneticists flrst realized that F.D. was unusual wheri ·they looked at his white blood cells. Because F.D. is a boy, hiscells should all have a Y chromosome, which contains the genefor 'maleness. ' But his cells contain two Xs, the chromosomal
signature of a female." Homo sapiens depends on the impossibil­
ity of parthenogenesis, and obstacles to such an eventuality ·per­meate its genetic composition and reproductive processes. Un­
fertilized manunalian eggs can begin to divide on their own,
without or prior to the intervention of the sperm, but thisprocess of self-replication is never supposed to result in a fully
functioning offSpring. Unable to produce all the elements nee- .
essary to its development, any self-generating fetus tends toatrophy into a harmless tumor, an ovarian teratoma. F.D.'s
ovum broke all the rules, splitting itself several times before thearrival of the sperm.
F.D. is "a young boy whose body is derived in part from ·
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�an unfertilized egg. " His arrival, in the early 1990s, was "the[imosest thing to a human virgin birth that modern science hasever recorded. " Except for some learning difficulties and an;,·asynunetrical face-neither of which are particularly unusual­: he seems to be a "normal" three-year-old boy. When a team of:British: geneticists published a paper on him in October 1 995,
one of them said, "I don't expect we'll ever see another .one. "Is this a conviction or a hope? What does the egg have instore?

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sym b l o n t s
2"We must never, In our studies, lose sight of the perfect h•
man 'Cell, ' the cell which coii8Sponds most petfectly to ourphysiological and sentimental needs. "Le Corbusler, The City of Tomorrow and Its Planning

Whereas the modern disciplines studied a disciplined biologicalworld, vast new complexities of molecular life have emergedwith the zeros and ones of the digital machines. It is now
assumed that the earliest life-forms on earth were single-celledprokaryotes, which congregated and collected together as net­
works of heat-loving, oxygen-hating cells, vestiges of which canbe seen in the woven fabrications of microbial mats. There aresuggestions that their own elemental activity may have en­hanced the weathering of rocks, inducing a cooling effect on
the atmosphere, and so contributing to the buildup of oxygen
which was eventually to devastate their populations and cer­. tainly rob them of independence. Certainly it seems that an
infusion of oxygen poisoned their environment and was more

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or less con��w with the emetgenee of respiring
tena, paras1tes which allowed those host cells they mvaded tor
survive the arrival of oxygen, "the greatest pollution crisis
earth has ever known. " Most of the earlier life-forms
killed, either by the oxygen or the new parasites. Those which! isurvived were symbionts, fusions of the respiring bacteria and· ;jitheir host cells.
•)
These new symbiotic cells were the eukaryotes which :(compose all multicellular organisms-plants, animals, humans.: .
Living organisms and their nucleated eukaryotic cells are symbi-· · ·•oses of their prokaryotic predecessors, which survive as nuto­chondria and, in plants, photosynthesizing chloroplasts. In this . .
sense, all life-forms are bacterial, whatever else they may be · as:
well: "each eukaryotic 'animal' cell is, in fact, an uncanny as""sembly, the evolutionary merger of distinct prokaryotic metah-' .
olisms.'' Most of their original genetic equipment has been,transferred to the chromosomes ·of the hosts without which
they cannot survive. Did the host cells, which are thought tohave been anaerobic bacteria or some single-celled nucleated·
life, capture bacterial life? Or did the new bacteria invade theirsimpler predecessors? Or is this a case of or and and? Certainly
the bacteria lost their independence in the process of entering•
the host cells. Surviving as mitochondria in humans and ani­mals, and photosynthesizing chloroplasts in plants, they were nolonger able to pursue autonomous lives and lost much of theircomplex genetic code. From the point of view of the nucleated
cell, the mitochondria have been turned into well-behaved ele""ments of its own functioning, providing essential energy for
growth and the production of the proteins and fats the cellrequires. But they have also remained quite distinct from thegenetic coding of their hosts. Mitochondria do not evolve interms of generations and have no regard for the reproductive ·hac:.;.

the}jwere•j
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.pycles . of their human hosts; they have their own ways of coding> · ormation into their DNA, and mutate and replicate at en­.iirely different speeds and scales from those of their hosts. �ike

;dte shape of their DNA molecules which, unlike the linear'[strands of cell nuclei, are circled and twisted supercoils, ther mitochondria go their own way.
i, '' Bacteria are "biochemically and metabolically far more
,�"

f. :

: diverse than all plants and animals put together. " They are also
. .

:: Qfan individual human than there are humans, dead and alive,': extraordinarily numerous: There are more E. coli cells in the gut
and they pass through six times as many generations during one' lifetime "as people have passed through since they were apes. ". Over the course o f an apparendy evolutionary history, multicel­lUlar life forms-fungi, plants, and animals-have emerged; in·many cases, they have come and gone. But "four fifths of thehistory of life on Earth has been solely a bacterial phenome­

non," and the "most salient feature of life has been the stabilityof its bacterial mode from the beginning of the fossil record
until today and, with litde doubt, into all future time so long as
the earth endures. "Mitochondria provided the first clues to the onetime inde­
pendence of bacterial life. These are vital elements of nucleatedcells: they are "powerhouses" or "tiny intracellular power sta­tions," specialized components surrounded by a charged mem­brane embedded with enzymes and humming with the fiows ofelectrons which effectively allow it to breathe and synthesize
adenosine triphosphate, ATP, a molecule which is vital to mostcellular processes . Mitochondria are the bacterial survivors of
the Cambrian explosion, the extraordinary transition from uni­
cellular to multicellular life. They are the life line which con­nects all living organisms not merely to pasts "of their own, "but also to a bacterial continuum which traverses every species

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conamons were necessary for what wasvered, Inferred or concluded, presently to rise to .
"Gilles Deleuze and Fillx Guattarl, A Thousand Plateaus .

'erceptible to the naked eye now. "blend into a;
Ldscape in which each dot of paiiit is also alive,''what might as well be a world, or a myriad ofs own. "Microbes, and their vectors, recognize
artificial boundaries erected by human beings.">etween kingdoms, species, and individuated or­into the background as a. seething world of inter­crobial vectors emerges from the background into
ms, species, and individuated org:iiisi ms now fade.
ckness become fragile matters of contingent de­.dividuated organism loses its integrity and "be­•f ornately elaborated mosaic of microbes in varisymbiosis," an "architectonic compilation ofencies of chimerical cells." Even life and deathsed. "With bacteria, unlike organisms which re­sexually, birth is not counterbalanced by death.
11 cultures grow, the individual bacteria do not
ppear as individuals: where there was only one,
: are two. The molecules of the 'mother' arellally among her 'daughters,' " so that what
vidual ephemeral in a bacterial population is not�· JJleSSage itsel£"
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�· · eve 2
Unlike patrilineal modes of transmission in which heredity ispassed on a one-way line of descent from father to son, thoselines designated female run in circles, like the chicken and theegg. They also move at the imperceptible speeds of virtually
alien life.
Eggs transmit far more than the chromosomes which codefor human life. The cytoplasm of the egg is also the exclusive
carrier of mitochondrial DNA. Males produce only nucleatedcells. While the sperm carries some mitochondria in its tail,they do not make it into the egg and have no · influence over theembryo that is conceived or the individual that is born. "As aresult, the inheritance of mitochondrial chromosomes is like theinheritance of surnames in western Europe and America, ex­
cept that they are passed down the female line instead of themale."
Unlike nucleated cells, mitochondria change and develop
in their own time, never mixing and matching their DNA withthat of other organisms. Traveling on different female lines,
mitochondrial DNA differs between individuals. But, in princi­
ple at least, the mutations it has undergone can allow all mito.

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chondrial DNA to be traced back to a common ancestor;· ·a :A
particular woman who just happened to carry the particular.::-i
mitochondria which fo �d their way into both the men and 1:
women. of the whole species.
, ,� ,
This makes i t possible t o retrospectively crown one par.,-.i 'ticular woman Mitochondrial Eve, "the woman . who is the., ;most recent direct ancestor, in the female line, of every huinan ·being alive today." All the mitochondria in all the cells of allliving Homo sapiens are said to be descendants of her mitochon­dria.
.
If there is, or was, a Mitochondrial Eve, a "Y chromosome!lAdam" would also have had his day. But wherea5 Mitochon-.
drial Eve is the ancestor of all X chromosome carriers, Y chro-, ;mosome Adaln lies in the past only of those who bear a Y. The ;Y chromosome and the male gamete which can carry it are a !
single-purpose system, concerned with nothing but their repro­
duction, passing only one message down only one line. When •.
they get together, X chromosomes can transmit both humanand mitochondrial DNA.
Not that characterizations of Mitochondrial-Eve as some .
source of a supposed female line are particularly helpful. Even .
the notion of a line misleads: mitochondria survive on networksof their own which confound all organic conceptions of evolu­
tionary time. This female route is not a "downWard" line ofdescent or a forward progress through time, and neither Mito­
chondrial Eve, her contemporaries, nor her predecessors were ·
.

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originators or organizers of the bacterial processes which have .
hitched . a ride with the double X and its eggs. If mitochondria
can indeed be traced back to a single woman, she is already inthe middle of a line which runs back to Precambrian bacterial
life and passes through vast swathes of human, organic, inor­
ganic, and newly synthesized molecular life.

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f�t!he occupant, owner of the villa, rests her arthritic hands
f.�\u'· pon fabric woven by a Jacquard loom.

f.,.

(;Through quiet processes of time and Information, threads
�:'}>.� '"These hands consist of tendons, tissue, jointed bone.

r/wlthln the human cells have woven themselves Into a
�Woman. "·. ;,:
William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, The Difference Engine

potte r i n g

By the mid-nineteenth century it had become " a well-estab­lished dictum that the study of botany would keep women
virtuous and passive. " They thought this was a fitting discipline
for those in need of innocent and moderate intellectual stimula­tion. Women were not to be trusted with experiments on social
animals: plants were most appropriate. Sketching flowers andcollecting specimens in chaperoned country meadows seemed
innocuous enough, and soon the association was so strong that
it was "even considered 'unmanly' in some circles for men to
take an interest in plants. " They were safe, passive, and aestheti­
cally pleasing, and already equated with women by the poets
arid the philosophers. Hegel granted her "ideas, taste, and ele­gance," but insisted tha:t she does not have "the ideal. The
difference between men and women, " he explained, "is likethat between animals and plants; men correspond to animals,
while women correspond to plants because they are more of aplacid unfolding, the principle of which is the undetermined
unity of feeling. "Botany was to remain one of the few scientific enquiries
hospitable to women, many of whom developed a particular

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interest in the ferns, lichens, and algae which were later · tobecome so crucial to research on the emergence of multicellulan
life. Skilled at sketching and pressing their specimens, the female
botanists were also ahead of the game when it came to the use :of shadowgraphs, daguerreotypes, and other early photographic#
techniques. The fttst photograp\lically illustrated bo<;>k was Brit•;

ish A(gae: Cyanotype Impressions, published by the botanist Anna
Atkins in 1 843 .
Later botanists included Beatrix Potter, who between her�

mid teens and the age of thirty, kept a secret diary: 200,000 .
words of coded text, a secret alphabet, a private 1an:guage hich(·

was not deciphered . until the 1 950s. Her interest ..in plants and2
40

fungi is developed in these pages, and photography had an;enormous impact on her work as well. When she first used a :camera, the journal "is suddenly full of boulders and screes and.

speculations about strata-still in cipher, as though the subject;·;
like everything else that interested her, must be kept secret.'� :Like many of her predecessors, Potter developed a taste for "the ·precise and the minute, for the fine details of a· p,4nt, mosses
under the microscope, the fabric of a mouse's ne'St, the eye of a :squirrel," with "no twig too small for her attention." Potter's ; .
theories about the propagation of molds, her interest in .the.;continuities betwe'en geological and biological life, and her no.. ,tion that lichens were dual organisms living in symbiosis with·.
algae were all dismissed by experts at Kew. Although her pains- .
taking research was presented to the Linnean Society (not by .

her, of course: women were not allowed to speak at such emi.. :nent · gatherings) she received litde encouragement for suchwork and diverted her interests into the fictional syntheses ofhuman and animal for which she became so well known.

If Potter's work was ignored and her taste for synergetic.

systems channeled in�o the adventures of Peter Rabbit and Mrs.
.

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f,come crucial to research in microbiology, genetics, and ma­�chine intelligence itsel£ But while a female interest in botany[:1'iggywinkle, symbiotic evolutionary processes have since be-;1,w been tolerated by the modern scientific establishment, bothtfemale botanists and their ill-defined, molecular objects of study!have been suppressed by the "grossly zoocentric" interests ofidisciplines devoted to the study of tighdy organized, highly;structured,multicellularorganic life.

Algae,

bacteria,

and,lichens lie in a fuzzy border zone between organisms and inor­, gahlc matter which has rarely been considered important to the:proper business of biological research. Produced from a combi­
nation of fungi and cyanobacteria, lichens are multilayered or­'ganisms. Their top face turns toward the sun, is "composed of
fuilga1 cells, and . . . forms a protective outer coat" for a sec­

ond "algal layer, where the photosynthetic activity takes place.

Below this is the medulla, a storage area formed by scatteredfungal hyphae. The lowest layer . . . forms structures like root
hairs that attach to the substrate. " Such symbioses were anath­ema to the clear orders of sp.eciated life demarcated by the:modern disciplines . "People take symbiosis seriously in lichens,

butthen they dismiss lichens as unimportant. " But iflichens are, unusually overt examples of symbiotic activity, they are hardly
�unique. All land plants can be seen as "complex overgrownlichens with no clear distinction between phycobiont and.mycobiont. " This is · only the beginning of a symbiotic line
which passes through the most complex forms of animal life.
Between lichens, plants, and animals there may be vast differ­. ences of complexity and scale, but in bacterial terms these arematters of degree.
·,

Bacteria have neither sexes nor sex in any sense familiar to, their hosts, and are "so genetically open, that the very conceptof species falsifies their character as a unique life form. " They

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are described as parthenogenetic, asexual, or even. omnisexuaUJ
replicating and mutating by way of "fluid genetic transfers"
extraordinary speeds. They replicate and mutate without regard{
for any individuation, promiscuously transmitting genetic infor,&marion across multicellular species and generations without�even noticing the barriers they cross. To take them into account!
is to scramble modern conceptions of individuated life. ·��
body can no longer be seen as single, unitary," writes Sagann
le beings. " It is alSo to complicate life and!
"We aredeath. "With bacteria, unlike organisms which reproduce only�
sexually, birth is not counterbalanced by death. When bacterial;
cultures grow, the individual bacteria do not die. They disap..;:pear as individuals: where there was only one, · suddenly there�
are two. The molecules of the 'mother' are distributed equally 'among 'daughters.' " This is sex as simple Software EXchange: '"without identifiable terms, without accounts, without end·
. . . Without additions and accumulations, one plus onet
woman after �man . . . Without sequence or number. ,Without standard or yardstick."
Bacteria indulge in fluid, lateral exchanges which exceed
all reproductive demands and slide between elements as con:.
fused and contiguous as Wittig's Lesbian &dy. And, just as the
emergent activity of these female sexes can no longer be so ·easily dismissed or disciplined by the biological sciences, those
who have defined female sexuality in a passive and impover­ished relation to the proper activities of the male are now having
to come to terms with sexes and sexualities far in excess of these·
reproductive lives. After the first, the seconds, thirds . . . "To
be woman, she does not have to be mother, unless she wants to
set a limit to her growth . . . Motherhood is only one specific
way to fulfill the operation: giving birth. Which is never one,unique, and definitive. Except from the male standpoint. "

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Replicants are neither copies nor originals, natural facts, or artificial constructions. They are duplicates of something
ptat was never at square one, had no starting point, and no first_place. Regardless of the stuff of which they are made, replicants
eize every opportunity to insinuate and replicate themselve�}Within any reproductive system which lets them in. Treading
pme very fine lines between too much and too little of such�ja�tivities, organisms, species, and the slow, steady progress of�itheir evolutionary development have all survived by learning toicontain them and keep the threat at bay. If they appear immuta­};ble and ftxed, this is because they are indeed long-standing,:-entrenched, and sophisticated systems which have grown very
�-good at protecting and perpetuating their own lines. But they_;dp not represent the laws and orders of a "nature" which stands
for everything excepting man, his history, his inventions anddiscoveries. And the fact that they are so well ensconced does
not mean they cannot be changed.
''t"Te"y had Insisted that If they were parthenogenetic they'dbe as a/Ike as so many ants or aphids; he urged their visible

differences as ptOOf that there must be mell---5omewhete.
"But when we asked them, In out later, more Intimate .
convetsatlons, how they accounted fot so much divergence
without cross-fertilization, they attributed It partly to thecareful education, which followed each slight tendency to dlf.
fet, and partly to the law of mutation. This they had found In
thelt wotk with plants, and fully pmven In thelt own case. "Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Hetland

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ify.::'' 'Joan explained how she had been taught t o record and classthe arrangement of leaves on plants by following them upwards • ·•round the stem, counting the number of leaves and the number�' '�ts � ·of the turns made before returning to a leaf direcdy above the e •starting point." Turing had "always enjoyed examining p
when onhis walks and runs, and now he began a more seriousicollection of wild fiowers from the Cheshire countryside, look-":'.
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and·

ing them up in his battered British Flora, pressing them into;
scrapbooks, marking their· locations in large scale maps,

making measurements. The natural world was overflowing with.:
examples of pattern; it was like codebreaking, with millions ofmessages waiting to be decrypted. "Turing had died by the time the integrated circuit was ·developed, and while he lived to see the discovery of the DNA'r

double helix in 1 953, it was the convergence of these apparendy .

distinct developments which would have fascinated him the ·most. They triggered processes which would lead to the emer­
gence of self-replicating "artificial" lives, bacterial processors,

genetic algorithms; a convergence of organic and nonorgank
lives, bodies, machines, and brains which had once seemed so
absolutely separate. Any remaining distinctions between users
and used, man and his tools, nature, culture, and technology
collapsed into the microprocessings of soft machines spiraling
into increasing proximity: molecular lives downloading them­selves into software systems, intermingling with the micropro­

cessors and the bugs in the systems of machine code, fmding

new networks on which to transmit their instructions and

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�::

�.odes, parasites and their hosts learning from each other, pick.i• g up tricks, swapping information.
Guided by the frantic attempt to keep microbial activities
�,.t bay, the Human Genome Project is now busily patenting,t,iequencing, freezing every strand of molecular life it can detect.
�!As is the case with A.l . , this internationally coordinated projecttb.olds archaic rear-view mirrors to the work it undertakes andrsets itself up as another final frontier of the quest to guaranteefr;the security of the definitions and the boundaries surroundingiJilaii . Holding out the possibility of organisms purged of their:<aberrations and mutations, wayward genes or peculiarities, and:�instead governed by the operations of "good" genes from:.which eugenics gets its name, this attempt to sequence a ge­'nome which is defined as specifically human tends to ov�rlook
the fact that the overwhelming majority of genetic code at workin the _human body is merely passing through or hiding out with:l. total lack of regard for the organisms which are hosting it.
Only some 10 percent of the mass of genetic activity in thehuman body is specifically human at all.
If genetic engineering is driven by a drive for security, it isalso replicating the techniques of bacterial replication. Whenthey infect bacteria with "a slender but subversive strand" ofDNA, viruses usurp the bacterium's genetic controls and use it
to replicate their own code. The bacterial hosts are often killedin the process, but they may also use the viruses to pass on
chunks of their own genes, getting viral replication to replicate
them too. E. coli, the lab rat of the bacterial world, engineers
with a precision assumed to be only the tip of an iceberg of themolecular intelligence now detectable. E. coli has developedmeans of disarming the viral code which comes hunting for itby producing a protein, a restriction enzyme, which can homein .on a specific string of viral DNA with extraordinary accu.

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racy. It knows where this particular strand is located and, even.'more to the point, that its disarmament will neutralize the virus;;
Its proteins are capable of reading the code of their viral invad­
ers, identifying their Achilles' heel, and splicing the code in two :by inserting a chunk of themselves. The accuracy of this opera"':tion sterns in part from its two-fold mechanism: as with the\second chance ,offered by some "delete" instructions on a com._.. :puter, "the enzyme cuts one strand of the DNA helix, then·stops for one fortieth of a second to ask itself if it should cut;through the second strand and make the deed irrevocable."This gene-splicing technique has not only become crucial
to genetic engineeJ;'ing, it is genetic engineering, a process
which not only predates the scientific endeaVor of the same .
name, but even multicellular life itsel£ And if E. coli can splice:genes with the precision of one error in ten million operations,what engineering skills might be lurking in the swathes of so->calle d junk DNA which is said to be "leftover from the merging.
of stranger bacteria"?
The last two decades of the twentieth century have beenmarked .by a vast range of emergent microbial activities, bacte­rial and viral many of which defy all the categorizations and.
some of the most sacrosanct principles of modern biological·
science. Lassa, Ebola, HIV . it is poindess· even to begin alist, not least because so many of these new activities cannot
even be named as distinct syndromes or species of bacteria or'viruses, but have instead to be considered as "quasispecies,""swarms," or "consensus sequences. " Many of them shift soslowly that it may be many ·years before their presence can bedetected at all . Microbial populations can be thrown into activi­
ties fatal to their organized hosts by the tiniest of triggers, andany and every "individual alteration can change an entire sys­tem; each systemic shift can propel an interlaced network in a
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!radical new direction. " Using reverse transcriptase to copy its;RNA code into the DNA of its hosts, HIV and its animal

�'biology and developed "the ability to outwit or manipulate thek'one microbial-sensing system Homo sapiens possess: our immune
� systems. "..iequivalents have broken the most fundamental tenets of moclern;:•·"We form a rhizome with our viruses, o r rather our vi­

r:�.. ruses
cause us to form a rhizome with other animals. " And as.
� even the possibility of living with HIV begins to pick up a

{ thread which once led only to fatality, the shifting symbionts::; who compose what was once defined as an absolutely fixed,�•. inimutable, and secure species called humanity begin to notice) ingly-interwoven with the microprocesses once blankedy de­·the extent to which they have always been-and are increas­

i nian. When it comes to living with the · new liveliness of thescribed as nature, the outside world, the rest of reality beyond. networks which compose them, humans cannot afford to wield
the heavy hand of modern disciplinary action, the long arms of

1 biological law andsupposedly natural order. Just as neural nets

: have emerged both in spite and because of attempts to suppress
them, so molecular biotic activity has aroused itself even in the. midst of postwar attempts to secure immunity by means of theoverkill applications of antibiotic drugs. It is not taking its re­
venge, but simply struggling to survive among systems which
are left with no choice but to become rather more cooperative· with the microprocesses which compose them.

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wetwa re"Ufe Is not life, but rock reananglng Itself under the:-;�sun.·�-��;Dorion Sagan �

�1
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Qb]

The microbiotic continuum extends from the earliest forms
oceanic life. Irisar:ay's Marine Lover longs to "think of the sea�.
from afar, t;-eye her from a distan�e, to use her to fashion hisi)
higher reveries, to weave his dreams of her, and spread hiswhile remaining safe in pot't." But the oceans ' 'have far more w;Jthem than the mere capacity to dazzle an observer in out ed
space." They cover two thirds of planet Earth--or sea�disupport at least "half of the mass of living matter in the world.':�·i:
And whereas life "on the land is for the most part two-dimen-l:
sional, held by gravity to the solid surface," submarine living iS::i
an immersive, multidimensional process. W hen they first crept)
onto the land, "terrestrial organisms had tobuild for themselves.;
structures and components that could perform the environmen.,,�
tal services that marine organisms can take for granted." On ·land, "direct physical connections become essential." Water � rno longer ambient, the medium in which life is immersed, but!
instead an irrigation system which connects and passes through,.
all land life. Now the "biota has had to find ways to carry the;.
sea within it and, moreover, to construct watery conduits from�,'node' to 'node.' " Land life is literally pleated and plied, com­
plex. It has effectively "taken the sea beyond the sea and foldfd
it back inside of itself," assembling itself as a network of molec­
ular arteries and veins, a hydraulic system keeping life afloat.

sail$�

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�;!Acting over evolutionary timent

as a rising tide, the land biota

9£the land" forming a "terrestrial sea" of "coundess and inter­.'terally carries the sea and its distinctive solutes over the surface

connected conduits" which "expands with every increase in the_,,_: lume of tissues and sap and lymph of the creatures that consti-' . . The notion that blood is seawater has long faded into

idisuse. But suggestions that land-based life is the epiphenome­·

fpon of fluid transmissions within and between all organisms is a
j:<Jisturbing twist in a modern tale devoted to the dry solidities of�land and its territorial claims. There are hints that "the appear­·!ance of complex life on land was a major event in which a kind

lof mutant sea invaded the land surface. It was as if the nimble
fo£1Spring ofthe old sea had learned how to slosh and slop up
t onto land, with the tissues and vascular systems of land organ­ri�ms acting as a complex, water-retaining sponge. Cuticle and)skin took the functional place of the surface tension of water}where sea meets air. "; ,.: "The land biota represents not simply life from the sea, but
the sea itself," and living, land based fluids "arenot a mere re mnant or analog of the sea; they are actually a new��me envtronment: Hypersea." This continuity
�f .ocean � land is �pported by the ...fuzzy zones l?_etween
�--plants ���-!���-E<?_�pl.�! f9.E�, �fJ!fu� J?�cteria, algae, fun�lichens. "Trees are neither found nor needed in the sea," which·.,:;.-;-.
continues to be "numerically dominated by tiny single-celled
protista, including algae and protozoa." And "from the first ap­:pearance of marine bacteria in the fossil record, which appar­
endy formed conspicuous scums or mats on the substrate," itseems tliat "the earliest terrestrial communities probably also
formed microbial mats and crusts on moist surfaces." Consisting

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of "highly flattened fronds, sheets and circlets," these microbial
mats are "composed of numerous slender segments quilted :tO�.
gether," microscopic threads interwoven to form cooperatf'
carpets of bacterial life.

d r ywa re2
50Modernity's new man was a landlubber. He charted the1oceans but set up camp on "an island, enclosed by nature it'-'l;self within unalterable limits. It is the land of truth-en- ­chanting name!�urrounded by a wide and . stormy oceanp ,the native home of illusion, where many a fog bank andlmany a swiftly melting iceberg give the deceptive appearancei
of further shores, deluding the adventurous seafarer." There ;is plenty beyond its shores: madness, fate, the· ship of foolS;'
But nihil ulterius is inscribed "on those Pillars of Hercules
which nature herself has erected in order that the voyage ofour reason may be extended no further than the continuous
coastline of experience itself reaches. "H e needs the illusions of the ocean, whose groundless ·appearances ground his truths. "If a man wants to delude him­self, the sea will always lend him the sails to fit his fortune." Buteven the most single-minded of modernity's colonial adventures
was destined to backfire. Navigation always "delivers man to theuncertainty of fate," and he . never quite loses his fears of theocean, its Siren sounds. "One thing at least is certain: water andmadness have long been linked in the dreams of Europeanman." He is always haunted by the fear that things might slip
back into "the river with its thousand arms, the sea with its

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': ·ousand roads, to that great uncertainty external to every-'W.ng."

�·"If only the sea did not exist. If they could just create her��in dreams. " All they really want to do is mop the oceans up,�solidify the unfortunate fluidity with which they are confused.
t;wbich is why "they long for ice. To go further north than.-north. And to rest on ice. To float in the calm of mirrors. And· sleep dry."-s i l i c o n;'Yeah, there 's things out there. Ghosts, voices. Why not?
· Oceans had mermaids, all that shit, and we had a sea ofsilicon, see? Sure, It's just a tailored hallucination we all
agreed to have, cyberspace, but anybody who jacks In knows,
fucking knows It's a whole universe. "William Gibson, Neuromancer

The late twentieth century finds itself aflood, awash, at sea,swamped by an irresistible ocean of molecular activity which
can only be surfed, catching a wave like a sample of sound, a few
grabbed bytes from the new seascape. From the middle of theisland, it almost seemed that the oceanic was taking its revenge,
an enormous surge of repressed return, a turning of the tables
and the tides. But it is not a simple question of reversing roles,
Swapping terra .firma for fluidity. It is always on the edge, the in­between strands, in the lines between the ocean and the landthat the mutations begin to occur and new activities start toemerge. Drops of water, grains of sand, oceans and deserts, thevery wet and the very dry, make connections of their own.

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'"Fez smiled. 'H also has to do with fractals. Take a· line, bend

H In half. Then bend each half In half. Then bend all the seg.

ments In half, ad lnflnHum. You get fantasy snowflakes andbaroque seacoasts- ',. '--Mill /l1eaf paisleys, ' murmured Adrian.
,. '--Mill If you look several levels down Into a fractal,
you'll find that a larger pattern's been dupllcat8d. Whichmeans that the fractal several levels down from the area ofthe fractal you're looking Into contains all the Information of
the larger fractal. Worlds within worlds. ''"Rosa laughed a little. 'You're approaching my thresholdfor that klnda talk. I'm a hacker, not a philosopher. ' "Pat Cadigan, Synne112
5.
2

Not that this is any obstacle to her: Philosophers may havethought about it, but hackers have "made capacity where there
technically wasn't any by using the virtual spaces between bits,
and then the spaces between those bits, and the spaces between

those. ""How long is the coast of Britain?" When Mandelbrot
had tried to measure it in the 1 970s, the length turned out to be
dependent on the scale at which he worked. The fmer thedetail, the longer the line. And inside the discrepancies between
the scales there were patterns repeating themselves, recursive
arrangements, spirals and whorls, patterns leading into the line,
as if down through the crack, opening the boundary into worlds
of its own. Mountains, leaves, horizons: any deceptively straightedge will do. There are fractal patterns inside them all. But
Mandelbrot's example of the coast was a peculiarly well-chosenline. Whichever way this border is drawn, . the break betwee!!,.

�very thread, this strand is also a folded fold, a pleated pleat, athe land and the sea is always more than a single edge. Like

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zone of replication and duplicity which both connects and sepa:...
rates the land and the sea. To one side of this borderline there isa beach: not a stable boundary but a fme-grained line of shifting
sand, a hazy border, and a multiplicity. The breakers of the surf
which lie on the other side of the borderline is a seething,heaving, and momentary tract, repeating the patterns andrhythms of tides.
These amphibian zones assemble ':midway between tpe
ftuid and the solid;" forming an interface of parting and con­nectivity whichis continually reengineered, sieved and filteredby an ocean which continually sifts the sand. It is on this edgethat both the ocean and the land fuse into beaches, strands ofsilicon. The digital age which allowed Mandelbrot to simulate
his fractal coastline is an age of bacteria, an age of ftuidity, andalso an "age of sand. " Ninety-five percent of the volume of the
Earth's crust is composed of silicates, which are vital to theprocesses by which soil and plants are nourished. In humans ,silicon functions in the cells of connective tissues and contrib­
utes .to the growth of bones and nails, and it is also present inbacteria, animals, and some plants such as reeds and bamboos.
Five hundred years of modernity fades when the weaving of
bamboo mats converges with the manufacture of computer
games in the streets of Bangkok, Taipei, and Shanghai. The
silicon links were already there.

q u a nta
"In the hard wind of Images, Angle watches the evolution ofmachine Intelligence: stone circles, clocks, steam-driven
looms, a clicking brass forest of pawls and escapements, vac-

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uum caught In blown glass, electronic hearthtllow through;hairline filaments, vast arrays of tubes and switches, d�:lng messages encrypted by other machines.

. . The fragile, :short-lived tubes compact themselves, become translstorsr
circuits Integrate, compact themselves Into silicon .

.

.

''Silicon approaches certain functional limits-''

�m Gibson, Mon� Oysnl'!!!,;

2
5
4

For all their sophistication, current configurations of computing·have enormous limitations which they are approaching fast. If it
is to continue chasing the ever-smaller microprocessings 'andever-faster speeds at the exponential rates to which it has beenaccustomed since the emergence of the silicon chip, computing
needs to undergo a transition of such enormity that all thechanges effected to date will appear to be minor precursors to:
the revolutions still to come.
The digital revolution has unfolded in parallel with cyb..ri;-.
�· chaos theory, _E9mplexity, connectionism, and a wide�!Y Qf.!lo��-� modes of engin�ring arid _f?nceptions · ofreality. These are all developments which have left Newtonian����harucs standing. But it is, quite literally , still standing. And
for all the complexities they facilitate, computers are still run­ning on these old mechanical lines.
One of the many implications of quantum mechanics isthat an atomic particle can effectively be in two places at one
time. This suggests that particles can be separated in space but so
intimately entangled that they can only be considered together.
They are neither one nor two things, but interactive elements.
Like Prigogine and Stengers's molecules, these are instandy
telecommunicating particles working at scales and speeds whichallow them to have instantaneous effects on each other, with
__

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t

tany changes to . one of them changing the other one as · well. ··�.

tEinstein called their abilities "ghosdy action at a distance."

�Contemporary mechanics � in terms of v_oodoo when they,;'describe the potential of quantum phenomena for. the future of
fcomputing. These relitions of entanglement exercise a kind of··. sympathetic magic, in which apparendy distant particles are�

coextensive,
mutually dependent, resonant, and interactive . .
-Neither one nor two; just keeping in touch.
If Turing's universal machine was built in an effort todisprove the universality of logic, quantum computing was first
proposed to challenge Turing's ostensibly universal machine.
· With exacdy the same ambivalence that marks the Turing ma­chine, the fact that quantum computers are now being built
both proves and disproves their mechanics' point. Miniaturiza­tion and speed continue on their exponential ways in the direc­
tion of superconductors and optical transistors; logic gates can'be composed ofion traps, and pulsing electrons make the on-off
switch. But if computing continues, in becoming quantum it. also passes through an unknown and indeterminable phasechange of its own.
Machine code has been enough to allow sound, images,
calculations, and texts to interact on an unprecedented plane of·equivalence and mutual consistency. What were once discreet
media and separable senses have become promiscuous and en­twined. New modes of communication, even litde bits of othersenses, have already emerged from the multimedia, multisensory
interactions digitization has provoked. And if all this has run onmachines still ruled by the laws of an old Euclidean world, thesubatomic scales of quantum computing will allow all levels,•scales, and modes of communication to converge with those ofsubatomic particles and make the electronic pulses and . bits of

2
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information seem extraordinarily unwieldy. If electronic com-":munications facilitate intimate connectivities between once in.i.:ll·l·
dividuated and incompatible entities, thes� will now be the��starting points for their quantum successors.
Jfi
·. .
�

:,�

��1

·· .· r:.
c a st i n g off"A Newton for the Molecular Universe Is a crying want; buti'
the nature of the subject rendets this desideratum of ImP• ;able fullllment. Such a discovery (If possible at all), could only '2
5
6

be made th10' very Indirect methods;-& .would demand a : .
mind that should unite habits of matter of fact teaSonllltl and ··observation, with the highest llfllln
lll atloit, a unloit unlikely In :

Itself. "Ada Lovelace, undated fragment i

Ada was strangely attuned to the molecular complexities, · .
speeds, and connectivities inherent in the man-size tissues of her ·.
world. Her "little bit of another sense" even led her to consider
some ':further extension" of reality similar "to the Geometry ofThree Dimensions & that again perhaps to a further extension insome unknown region & so ad-infmitum possibly." She knew
her work might have some influence inconceivable to her own
time: "Perhaps none of us can estimate how great," she wrote.
"Who can calculate to what it might lead; if we look beyond
the present condition espedally?" And when she reflected on her
own footnotes, she was "thunderstruck by the power of thewriting. It is especially unlike a woman 's style surely," she wrote, ·"but neither can I compare it with any man's exacdy. " It wasinstead a code for the numbers to come.

:Ada's letters to Babbage are in the British Library, London, and the letters:

between her and her mother are in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Ada's transla­. tion and notes to Menabrea's paper, "Notes to Sketch of the Analytical Enginej: nvented by Charles Babbage Esq. By L. F. Menabrea, of Turin, Officer of the Military'Engineers, " are published in Philip and Emily Morrison, eds. , Charles Babbage and.�is Calculating Engines: Selected Writings by Charles Babbage and others. Quotations

fi:om Ada's letters and papers used in Zeros and Ones also appear in one or more of
the following books: Betty A. Toole, Ada, The Enchantress of Numbers; Dorothy

Stein, Ada, A Life and a Legacy; and Doris Langley Moore, Ada, Countess of. Lovelace.

p. 5"as a friend . . . " Lady Byron, quoted in Betty A. Toole, Ada, The
Enchantress of Numbers, p. 56.

p. 5"We both went to see . . . " Lady Byron, quoted in Doris Langley
Moore, Ada, Countes� of Lovelace, pp. 43-44.

p. 5"young as she was . . . " Sophia Freud, quoted in ibid . , p. 44.

p. 5"making machinery to compute . . . " Charles Babbage, Passages fromthe Life of a Philosopher, p . 3 1 .

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p. 5

"in the year 1 833 . . . " Sir H. Nicolas, quoted in ibid., p. 64.

p. 6"Having, in the meanwhile . . . " Sir H. Nicolas, quoted in ibid., p. 65;

p. 6"were essentially different . . . " ibid. , p. 69.

p. 7

p. 7

"You are a brave man," Ada Lovelace, September 1 843, quoted in Betty
A. Toole, Ada, The Enchantress of Numbers, p. 264.
. " ' Ada Lovelace, July"knows what almost auful energy & power .

1 843, quoted in ibid. , p. 203.
p. 7

"Countess of Lovelace informed me. " Charles Babbage, Passages

from the Lifo of a Philosopher, p. 1 02.
p. 8"I never can or will support you . . . " Ada LOvelace, August 1843, ·quoted in Betty A. Toole, Ada, The Enchantress of Numbers, p. 2 1 8.

p. 8

2

p. 8

"can you , " ibid. , p. 227.
"very much tifraid as yet of exciting the powers . . . " Ada Lovelace,5

September 1 843, quoted in Dorothy Stein, Ada, A Lifo and a Legacy, p . .

8

126.
p. 8

"It is not my wish to proclaim who has written it", Ada Lovelace, un­dated, quoted in ibid., p. 1 23.

matrices
p. 10"The frontiers o f a book . . . " Michel Foucault,

The Archaeology ofKnowledge, p. 23.
p. 10
p. 1 1"treatment of an irregular . . . " George Landow, Hypertext, p. 1 23.
"It must b e evident how multifarious . . . " Ada Lovelace, Notes to

Sketch of the Analytical Engine invented by Charles Babbage Esq. By L. F.
Menabrea, of Turin, Officer of the Military Engineers, Note D .

tensions
p. 1 2"does not begin with writing . . , " Philip and Emily Morrison, eds.

Charles Babbage and his Calculating Engines: Selected Writings by Charles
Babbage and others, p. xxxiii.
p. 1 3

Willi am Gibson's "bright lattices of logic . .

.

" Neuromancer, p . 5 .

�·

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t

i. on the cards/' p. ·14

"twoor three weeks . . . " Philip and Emily Morrison, eds. C�arles
Babbage and his Calculating Engines: Selected Writings by Charles Babbage
and others, p. xxxiv.

p. 14''Jacquard devised. the plans . . . " ibid., p. 233 .

. p. 15"effectively withdrew control . . . " Manuel de Landa, H-&r in the Age ofIntelligent Machines, p. 1 68.

p. '15"By the adoption of one species . . . " Humphrey Jennings, Pandemo­
nium The Coming of the Machine as Seen by Contemporary Observers, p. 132.

p. 16

"The Analytical Engine consists of two parts . . . " Charles Babbage,
Passages from the Life of a Philosopher, p. 89.

p. 16"It is a known fact . . . " ibid., p. 88.

p. 16"sheet of woven silkp. 1 6"generally supposed that the Difference Engine . . . " and following
quotations, Ada Lovelace, Notes to Sketch of the Analytical Engine invmted
by Charles Babbage Esq. By L. F. Menabrea, of Turin, Officer of the MilitaryEngineers, Note A.

p. 17"a machine of the most general nature . . . " Charles Babbage, Passages
from the Life of a Philosopher, p. 89.

p. 18"science of operations. " Ada Lovelace, Notes to Sketch of the AnalyticalEngine invented by Charles Babbage Esq. By L. F. Menabrea, of Turin,
Officer of the Military Engineers, Note A.

.

.

. " ibid., p. 1 27.

second sightp. 18"be desirable to all who are engaged . . . " S . H. Hollingdale and G. C.
Tootill, Electronic Computers, p. 39.

p. 1 8"by means o f which you alone . . . " ibid., p. 35.

p. 1 8"the introduction o f the principle which Jacquard devised . . . " andfollowing quotations, Ada Lovelace, Notes to Sketch of the AnalyticalEngine invented by Charles Babbage Esq. By L. F. Menabrea, of Turin,
Officer of the Military Engineers, Note A.

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p. 20

"eating its own tail . . . " Philip a nd Emily M orris on , eds. Charles Bab­bage and his Calculating Engines: Selected Writings by Charles Babbage an4.1
others, p. xx.

p . 20"intellect was beginning to become deranged .
Passages from the Life of a Philosopher, p. 87.

p. 20"I do not think you possess half m y forethought" Ada Lovelace, July ;•" Charles Babbage,

1843, quoted in Betty A. Toole, Ada, The Enchantress of Numbers, p. 214 .
p. 20

'I
·

..

"will not ultimately result in this generation's . . . " Ada Lovelace,

Notes to Sketch of the Analytical Engine invented by Charles Babbage Esq. By'
L. F. Menabrea, of Turin, Officer of the Military Engineers, Note A.
__

p. 22

2
6

"for the reciprocal ben efit of that art" ibid., N o te C.

anna 1

p. 23"to those ofyou who are women . . . " Sigmund Freud, "Femininity," :in Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, pp. 14569.

p. 25"an overconscious idiot
Thousand Plateaus, p. 32.

p. 25"Because the pa th it traces is invisible . . . " Gilles Deleuze, Difference
and Repetition, pp. 1 1 9-20.

p. 25"sp ecialize d in reversals
382.

p. 26

"victories in advance, as if acquired on cre di ts . . . " Guy Debord, Com­0. . " Gille s Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A. " Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Anna Freud, p.

ments on the Society of the Spectacle, p. 86.
p. 26"the technique of beginning at the end . . . " Marshall McLuhan, The

Gutenberg Galaxy, p. 276.
p. 26

"did everything topsy-tu rv}' ' ' Ada Lovelace, September 1 843 quoted in
Betty A. Toole, Ada, The Enchantress of Numbers, pp. 264-65.

p. 26"I intend to incorporate with one department of my labours . . . " Ada
Lovelace, ]\tly 1843, quoted in Dorothy S tein , Ada, A Life and a Legacy,p. 1 29.

n

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.�gambling on the futurer.

'' p. 27.,:·:p. 27·.
;: �

i p . 27,;, · .
p 27

�·

�:
�: p. 28
p. 28

"That you are a peculiar-very pecu/iar--;pecimen . . " quoted in
Doris Langley Moore, Ada, Countess of Lovelace, p. 202.
"
"The woman brushed aside . . . " William Gibson and Bruce Sterling,
The Difference Engine, p. 89.
"There is at least some amusemmt .

.

."Ada Lovelace, July 1 845,

quoted in Doris Langley Moore, Ada, Countess of Lovelace, p. 1 85 .
"She is the Queen of Engines . . . " William Gibson and Bruce Ster­ling, The Difference Engine, p. 93.
"adieu to your old companion Ada Byron . . . " Lady Byron, June
1 835, quoted in Doris Langley Moore, Ada, Countess of Lovelace, p. 69.
"irksome duties & nothing more" Ada Lovelace, December 1 840,
quoted in Dorothy Stein, Ada, A Lifo and a Legacy, p. 66.

p. 28

p. 28
p. 28

"to tell the honest truth . . . " Ada Lovelace, December 1 840, quoted
in Betty A. Toole, Ada, The Enchantress of Numbers, p. 1 28 .
"my chosen pet" Ada Lovelace, November 1 844, quoted in Doris Lang­ley Moore, Ada, Countess of Lovelace, p. 219.
"a mortal husband" Ada Lovelace, February 1 845, quoted in Dorothy
Stein, Ada, A Lifo and a Legacy, p. 1 82 .

p. 28

"No man would suit me . . . " Ada Lovelace, January 1 845, quoted in
Doris Langley Moore, Ada, Countess of Lovelace, p. 229.

p. 28

p. 29

"I now read Mathematics every day . . . " Ada Lovelace, November
1 835, quoted in Betty A. Toole, Ada, The Enchantress of Numbers, p; 83.
"Heaven knows what intense suffering & agony I have gone thro' . . . "Ada Lovelace, undated, quoted in Dorothy Stein, Ada, A Life and a
Legacy, p. 1 68.

p. 29

p, 29
p. 30

"No more laudanum has been taken as yet" Ada Lovelace, undated,
quoted in Doris Langley Moore, Ada, Countess of Lovelace, p p . 21 1-12.
"not for ever . . . " ibid. , P: 212.
"a remarkable effect on my eyes, seeming to free them, & to make them

open & cool. " ibid., p. 2 1 4.

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p. 30

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"a very deep and extensive ulceration of the womb .

· .

.

" Dr. Locock,quoted in Doris Langley Moore, Ada, Countess of Lovelace, pp. 292-93.
p. 30"the womb, though it be so stricdy attached . . · ." quoted in Michel
Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of
Reason, p. 44.

p. 30"There is in my nervous system" Ada Lovelace, December 1 842, quoted
in Betty A. Toole, Ada, The Enchantress of Numbers, p. 1 9 1 .

p. 3 1"vast mass o f useless & irritating POWER O F EXPRESSION
Ada Lovelace, undated, quoted in Dorothy Stein, Ada, A Life and a
Legacy, p. 167.

p. 3 1"there i s n o pleasure i n way o f exercise
quoted in ibid., p. 5 1 .

p. 3 1"I play 4 & 5 hours generally, & never less than 3" Ada Lovelace, June

1 837, quoted in ibid. , p. 1 64.

2
6. " Ada Lovelace, April 1'835,

p. 31"Clearly the only one which directs my Hysteria . . . " Ada Lovelace,undated, quoted in Dorothy Stein, Ada, A Life and a Legacy, p. 1 66.

2

p. 31

"I never would look t o the excellence o f mere representation .
Ada Lovelace, undated, quoted in ibid. , p. 167.

p. 31

"peculiar & artificial excitements. " Dr. Locock, quoted in ibid., p.

1 67.
p. 31

"a hungry look about them." Elaine Showalter, The Female Malady,p. 1 34.

p. 3 1"what they desire i s precisely nothing . . . " Luce Irigaray, Th is Sex
Which Is Not One, p. 30.

p. 32"Many causes have contributed to produce the past derangements
Ada Lovelace, December 1 841 , quoted in Dorothy Stein, Ada, A Lifeand a Legacy, p. 8 1 .

p . 32"I am proceeding on a track . . . " Ada Lovelace, November 1 844,
quoted in Betty A. Toole, Ada, The Enchantress of Numbers, p. 295.

p. 32
p . 32"I mean to do what I mean to do " Ada Lovelace, quoted in ibid., p. 221 .
"nothing but very close & intense application . . . " Ada Lovelace,
March 1 834, quoted in ibid., p. 53.

n. p. 32

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"dropping the thread of science, Mathematics &c." Ada Lovelace, De­

cember 1 842, quoted in �bid. , p. 1 9 1 .

· binaries
p. 35"nothing you can see," Luce Irigaray, Speculum ofthe Other !%man, p. 47.

p. 35"functions as a hole " ibid. , p. 7 1 .

p. 35"a nothing-that is a nothing the same . . . " ibid . , p . 50.

p. 35"There is woman only as excluded by the nature of things" Juliet Mitch­ell, and Jacqueline Rose, eds . , Feminine Sexuality, Jacques Lacan and theEcole Freudienne, p. 1 44.
p. 35"other than the place of the Other . . . " ibid . , p. 147.

2
6

supporting evidence

p. 36"all the main avenues of life marked 'male'
Gilman,p. 36

3" Charlotte Perkins!%men and Economics, p. 53.

"an 'infrastructure' unrecognized as such . . . " Luce Irigaray, This Sex

Which Is Not One, p. 84.
p. 36" I t does strike me . . . " William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, The Differ­ence Engine, p. 1 03.

genderquake
p. 40"a revolution without marches or manifestos . . ." Sally Solo, quoted
in John Naisbitt, Megatrends Asia, p . 1 90.

p . 42"politics is all talk and no action . . . " Helen Wilkinson, No Turning
Back,p. 4 1 .

p . 42. p. 44"better prepared, culturally and psychologically" ibid. , p. 13 .
" the sex organs of the machine world" Marshall McLuhan, Understand­ing Media, p. 56.

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nets

p. 48

"a trail.

. . of interest through the maze of materials available" Van­

nevar Bush, quoted in George Landow, Hypertext, p. 17.
" Gilles Deleuze and Felix

p. 49"an irresistible revolutionary calling .
Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 387.

p. 50

"the faculty which distinguishes part$ . . . " Gilles Deleuze, Difference·

and Repetition, p. 36.
p . 50"demonic rather than divine.

. . " ibid., p. 37.

digitsp. 5 1"essential to all who wish to be calculators . . . ", Brahmagupta, quoted
in S. H;. Hollingdale and G. C. Tootill , Electronic Computers, p. 23.

p 52"It is India that gave us the ingenious method . . . " Leibniz, quoted in

2
6

.

4

ibid., p. 26.
p 53
.

·
"Numeration is the representation of numbers by figures" ibid. , p. 25.

'

holes

p. 55

"Zero is something " Augustus De Morgan, quoted in Dorothy Stein
Ada, A Life and a Legacy, p. 72.

p. 56"occult principle of change" Menabrea Sketch of the Analytical Engine
invented by Charles &bbage Esq. By L. F. Menabrea, of Turin, Officer of theMilitary Engineers, in Philip and Emily Morrison, eds. Charles &bbage 'and his Calculating Engines, p. 240.

p. 57

"to say that intense and moving particles . . . " Gilles Deleuze and Felix
Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 32.

,

cyborg manifestos

p. 58"with a view t o winning back their own organism . . . " Gilles Deleuzeand Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 276.

p. 58

"men and women . . . " Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, p. 687.

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"By the late twentieth century . . . " Donna Haraway, "A Cyborg
Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late
Twentieth Century," p. 1 50.

p. 59
p. 59

"The clitoris is a direct line to the matrix" VNS Matrix, billboard.
"different veils according to the historic period . . . " Luce Irigaray,

Marine Lover of Friedrich Nietzsche, p. 1 1 8.
p. 59

"original attributes and epithets were so numerous .

.

. " ]. G.

Frazer,

The Golden Bough, p. 503.
p. 59

"the future is unmanned . . . " VNS Matrix, billboard.

p. 59"let those who call for a new language . . . " Monique Wittig,

Les

Guerilleres, p. 85.
p. 59"if machines . . . why not women?" Luce Irigaray,

Speculum of the

Other Woman, p. 232.

2
6

programming language
p. 60

5

"in honour of an obscure . . . " Carol L. james and Duncan E. Morrill ,
"The

Real

Ada;

Countessof Lovelace."

Accessibleathttp: / I

www . cdrom. com/pub/ada/ alpo/ docs/ftyers/naming.htm.

shuttle systems
p. 60"our material-for some incomprehensible reason" Sigmund Freud, On

Sexuality, p. 320.
p. 61

"taking the world to human will and ingenuity" Elizabeth Wayland
Barber, �-%men 's Work, p. 45 .

p. 63

"Neolithic women were investing large amounts . . . " ibid., p. 90.

p. 63"machines for spinning, weaving, twisting hemp . . . " W. English, The

Textile Industry, p . 6.
p. 63

"in the sense that his 'machines' . . . " Serge Brarnly, Leonardo, the Artist

and the Man, p. 272.
p. 63

"Like the most humble cultural assets . . . " Fernand Braude!, Capital­

ism and Material Life, p. 237.

n

p. 64

0

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"inventions in both spinning and weaving .

Invention, pp. 21-22.
p. 64

p. 64

•

I
::'1;\11.
u. " Asa Briggs, The Age4�.(�"I was surprised at the place but more so at the people" Francis D. ·�
Klingender, Art and the Industrial RevOlution, p. 12.
1)"most complex human engine of them all " Fernand Braudel, Capitalism

and Material Life, p. 247.

·j)
:,

p. 65

"a woman working on a pillow
p. 130.

.

." W. English, The Textile Industry,-lp. 65"a fabric which was an exact imitation" ibid., p. 1 32.

p. 65"the women of prehistoric Europe" Elizabeth Wayland Barber, u-&men's :u-&rk, p. 86.

2

6

:

p. 65

"used to mark or. announce information" ibiq. , p . 149.

p. 66

"The weaver chose warp threads . . . " ibid., pp. 1 59-60.

p . 67"These lozenges, usually with litde curly hooks" ibid. , p. 62.

,

6

casting on
p. 69"a perilous craft" Mircea Eliade, Rites and Symbols of Initiation: The
Mysteries of Birth and Rebirth, pp . 45-46.

p. 70"The voices of the accused" Carlo Ginzberg, Ecstasies, p. 10.

p. 70"have implicidy or explicidy derived . . . " ibid. , p. 13.

p. 70"with very few exceptions" ibid., p. 2.

p. 70"clearly . . . the supposed sexual fantasies" Mary Daly, Gyn /Ecology,
p. 1 80.

p . 70"projection screens for these hallucinations" ibid., p . 1 8 1 .

p. 70"declining to restrict himself" Carlo Ginzberg, Ecstasies, p. 13.

p . 71"Hence-for anyone unresigned t o writing history" ibid., p. 10.

p. 7 1"the existence o f a n actual sect of female and male witches . . . " ibid.,
p. 1 .

p. 71" a greater number of witches" Henrich Kramer and James Sprenger,

Malleus Malejicarum, p. 1 12.

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"addiction to witchcraft" ibid., p. 1 16.
"weak memories . . . " ibid., p. 119 .
. 71"It cannot be admitted as true . . . " ibid., p. 234.
"innumerable multitude of women . . . " ibid., p. 224.

,P; 72"imagination and illusion . . . " ibid., p. 241 .

_,.

t"·· .

� p. 73i· .. .

"Think what a delight" Ada Lovelace, November 1 844, quoted in Betty
A. Toole, Ada, The Enchantress of Numbers, pp. 302-3.
"writing a book of Flyology" Ada Lovelace, February 1 828, quoted in
ibid., p. 32.
"a thing in the shape of a horse . . . " Ada Lovelace, April 1 828, quoted
in ibid., p. 34.

7

rvirtual aliens(� ;p .

2
6

74

"overwhelming maJonty of electronics assembly jobs . . " Peter
Dicken, Global Shift, p. 346.

' p . 74

"assembly, the bonding of hair-thin wires . . . " L. Siegal, quoted in
ibid., p. 347 .

�· p . 74"On the west coast" A. Fuentes and B. Ehrenreich, quoted in ibid., p.
347.

. p : 76

"we have combated from its incipiency
Baker, Technology and Women 's l%rk, p. 34.

. " in Elizabeth Faulkner

cocoonsp . 77"only in relation to the interminglings they make" Gilles Deleuze andFelix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 90.

p. 78"patient and monotonous efforts . . . " Fernand Braude!, Capitalism andMaterial Life, p. 244.

'" p . 78"a collection of recipes . . . " ibid., p. 321 .

np ·. 78

0

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8

"the essence of femininity" Miintz, quoted in Sigmund Freud,"Leo,.�

nardo da Vinci," Art and literature, p. 201 .
p. 79"alien interest-in experimentation" ibid . , p. 1 54.

p. 79"work of the 'perspectors'

_;
'i:

1

. " Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern '-�Condition, p. 44.
p. 79"eccentric science. " Gilles Deleuze and F elix Guattari, A Thousand i

Plateaus, p. 361.
p. 80

"determined in such a way as to follow a flow" ibid., p . 409.

diagrams"It can imitate anything .

p. 84"something almost equally miraculous .

" Andrew Hodges, Alan .

Turing: The Enigma, p. 1 09.

2
6. " Karl Sigmund, Games of Life, p. 20.

p. 83. p. 85"the mystery that woman represents. " Luce Irigaray, Speculum ofthe .

Other Woman, p. 26.

8

eve 1
p. 85

"uncovered female figures of silver" Charles Babbage, Passages from theLife of a Philosopher, p. 274.
p. 86

"Why not build a woman who should be." Villiers de l'Isle Adam,

L'evefuture, p. 77.
p. 87"electro-human creature" ibid., p. 103.

masterpieces
p. 88"We like to believe" Alm Turing, quoted in Andrew Hodges, Alan

Turing: The Enigma, p. 444.
p. 88

"the intention in constructing these machines" ibid., p. 356.

p. 88

"masters who are liable to get replaced" ibid., p. 357.

p. 89

"is to be regarded as nothing" ibid., pp. 377-78.

p. 89"to copy the conscious mental processes" Hans Moravec, Mind Children,
p. 16.

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91

p. 92

"the part ofB" was "taken by a man" Alan Turing, "On Computational
Numbers," p. 422.
"Answering questions with questions" Fah-Chun Cheong, Internet
Agents, p. 278.
"the apparent appropriateness and insight" Raymond Kurzweil, The Ageof Intelligent Machines, p. 1 6 .
"UsER:. 'Men are all alike, 'this and many other dialogues can befound--and conducted--on the Net.
""is considered an improvement" Fah-Chun Cheong, Internet Agents, p.
253.
2

p. 92

"an agent more interesting than Eliza" ibid. , p. 274.

p . 92"adept at detecting and deflecting sexual advances" Sherry Turkle, Lifeon the Screen, p. 90.

p.

"it's not entirely clear to me" Leonard Foner, reference downloaded
from the Net.

93

errors
p.

94

p. 95

p.

95

"If only you could see" Blade Runner, directed by Ridley Scott, 1 982.
"computing machines can only carry" Alan Thring, quoted in Andrew
Hodges, Alan Turing, The Enigma, p. 358.
"the more it schizophrenizes" Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Anti­
Oedipus, p. 1 5 1 .

�ve 8

pp.

95-97

1

· All quotations from Eve o( Destruction, directed by pull&!n Gibbo�
99 1

.

.

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9

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case study
p. 98"The examination" Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish, p. 1 9 1 .

p. 98"Discipline is a political anatomy of detail . . . " ibid., p . 139.

p. 98

"organized as a multiple, automatic ·and anonymous power .

. " ibid.,

p. 177.

p. 99"an explosion of numerous . . . " Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality,
Volume 1, p. 1 40.

p. 99"lays down for each individual .

_ ,.,." Michel Foucault, Discipline andPunish, p. 1 97.

p. 99"meticulous observation o f detail" Michel Foucault, Discipline an J Pun·ish, p. 1 4 1 .

2

p . 997
0. " Michel Foucault, History of"gradu!lllY learning what it meant
Stxuality, Volume 1, p. 142.

what eve 8 next
p.

100

"the minute, I mean the nanosecond" William Gibson, Neuromancer, p.

1 32.
p. 1 00"a reaction of this kind", Alan Turing, quoted in Andrew Hodges, Alan
Turing: The Enigma, p. 357.

p. 101"I a m both bound" ibid., p. 473.

p. 101"Went down t o Sherborne" ibid., p . 484.

p . 1 02

"By the side of the bed" ibid., p. 488.

monster 1
p. 102"Many and long were the conversations . . . " Mary Shelley, Preface toFrankenstein.

robotics
p. 103"The signs on the office walls

107.

. " The Economist, Sept. 30, 1 995, p.

.

J

�:

104

"Tho probl= h 0of

1 996, p . 105.

v ·.· · ·

�learning curves
�:p. 104"":'• �' : =:i< "".. Tire ""'�••· M.y 18,"was every individual Man to divulge . . . " Mary Montagu, quoted int};� 105 Mary Astell, quoted in ibid . , p . 63 .
. p. 105

Dale Spender, Wilmen of Ideas and liVhat Men Have Done to Them, p. 76.

"First as a mother" Comte, quoted in Michele le Doentt, Philosophy andPsychoanalysis, p . 1 90.
p. 105"The transient trade w e think evil" Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Wilmen
and Economics, p. 64.

p. 1 05"Women�the deal. For-the game" Luce Irigaray, Marine Lover, p. 82.

p . . 106"And if you ask them insistendy . . . " Luce Irigaray, This Sex liVhich Is

2

Not One, p. 29.

7

p. 106
p. 106''Her mind is a matrix . . . " Misha, "Wire Movement #9, " p.

1 1 3.

"A good woman does not have to be told . . . " Veronica Beechey andElizabeth Whitelegg, eds. Women in Britain Today, p. 27.

p. 107"Commodities, as we all know . . . " Luce Irigaray, This Sex liVhich Is

p. 107"if women are such good mimics" ibid . , p. 76.

p. 107

Not One, p . 84.

"what if these 'commodities' refused to go to 'market ' ? " Luce Irigaray, ThisSex liVhich Is Not One, p. 1 96.

p. 1 07
p. 1 07"They are all involved . . . " Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories, p. 1 02.
"Products are becoming digital" Donald Tapscott, The Digital Economy,p. 1 1 .

p. 108"It would be out of the question" Luce Irigaray, This Sex liVhich Is Not
One, p . 1 1 0.

p. 1 08"I learned fast" quoted i n Cecilie H0ig:i.rd and Liv Finstad, Backstreets:
Prostitution, Money and Love, p. 83.

·p. 1 09

" 'fluid' character" Luce Irigaray, This Sex liVhich Is Not One, p. 109.

1

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· · - t.:anna op. 1 09"'hysterical' had become almost interchangeable" Elaine Showalter, nt

Female Malady, p. 1 29.
p . 1 09

"the devil.

. . " JosefBreuer and Sigmund Freud, Studies on Hysteria,�p_·332.
p. 1 1 0"gaps in the memory" Sigmund Freud, Case Histories 1, 'Dora' and iu · . ·Hans, ' pp. 46-47.
p. 1 10"would complain of having 'lost' some time" Josef Breuer and Sigm.und,Freud, Studies on Hysteria, p. 76.

p . 1 10"each of her momentary 'absences' " ibid., p. 318.

p. 110"While everyone thought she was attending" ibid., p. 74.

p. 1 1 0"Social circum5tances often necessitate" ibid,., p . 313.

7

p. 1 1 1"Throughout the entire illness " ibid., p . 1 00.

2

p. 1 1 1.
"the clearest intellect" ibid., p . 64.

p. 1 1 1"an unusual degree of education and intelligence" ibid., p . 104.

p. 1 1 1"bubbling over with intellectual vitality" ibid., p . 74.

p. 1 1 1"an excess of efficiency" ibid., p. 3 1 3 .

p. 1 1 1"The overflowing productivity of their minds" ibid., p . 321 .

p. 1 1 1"double conscience" ibid., p. 64.

p. 1 1 1" a whole number of activities" ibid., p . 313.

2

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_,

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'L�

, :,
..

multiples\p. 1 1 3"His responses had long since ceased to b e a masquerade" Allucque�;·The u.&r of Desire and Technology at the Close of the ·Mechanical Age, p. 76.

Rosanne Stone,

switches
p. 1 14"letters and telegrams are delivered with improbable despatch" Clive
Leatherall, Dracula, p. 222.

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"Swan prepared some particularly fine thread . . . " W. A. Atherton,
From Compass to Computer: A History � Electrical and Electronics Engineer­ing, p. 1 32.
"The news that the great experiment" Leonard de Vries, Victorian Inven­tions, pp. 87-88.

queens"which adds, subtracts, multiplies . ." in Elizabeth Faulkner Baker,
Technology and u.&man's u.&rk, p. 213.
"She adds the yards of the comptometer . . . " Heidi I. Hartmann et al.,Computer Chips and Paper Clips, p. 73.
"was approaching 2,000,000" Elizabeth Faulkner Baker, Technology andu.&man 's u.&rk, p. 2 1 5.
"I don't know about the world . . . " quoted in ibid., p. 7 1 .
" An English lady who demonstrated this machine" Leonard d e Vries,

7

Victorian Inventions, p. 1 66.

3"I have one in my office . . . " quoted in Heidi I . Hartmann et a!.,Computer Chips and Paper Clips, p. 26.
'P· 1 1 9

"provided opportunity for a large number" ibid. , p. 27.

) . 119"earliest telephone companies" Bruce Sterling, The Hacker Crackdown, p.
12.

p. 120"Basically, you, Miss Luthor" ibid., p. 29 .

. p. 120"leads a very clear-cut" Gille s Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A 'Thousand
Plateaus, p. 195.

p. 120"the object of information" Michel Foucault, Disdpline and Punish, p.
200.

p. · 1 20"The girl at the head of the line . . " Elizabeth Faulkner Baker, Tech­
nology and u.&man's u.&rk, p. 2 1 5 .

secrets
p: 122

2"girl-less, cuss-less" Almon B. Strowger, quotes in W. A. Atherton,
From Compass to Computer, p. 106.

np. 1 22

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"contain moving parts that wear out. " Tom · Duncan,

ElectronicsJo{_

Today and Tomo"ow, p. 195.
p. 1 23"The specialized nature of their work

Technology and J..J&man 's J..J& rk, p. 227
p. 1 23"a permanent inventivenessThousand Plateaus, p. 2 1 4.
p. 1 23. " Elizabeth Faulkner.

Bakert.:. '' Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A ,'',�;�
. '' Elizabeth Faulkner Baker:��.f·.

"In several exchanges reading clubs

Technology and Woman 's Work, p. 70.

:'���
l

•.

grass
p. 1 24"A rhizome has no beginning" Gilles Deleuze. and Felix Guattari, A . :.

1

Thousand Plateaus, · p. 25.
27

p. 1 24"Even when they have roots" ibid., p. 1 1 .

p . 1 24

"Trees may correspond to a rhizome" ibid., p. 17.

p. 1 25"no points or positions" ibid. , p. 8.

p . 1 25

"Any point of a rhizome" ibid., p. 7.

p . 125"may be broken" ibid., p . 9.

p. 125"neither subject nor object" ibid., p . 8.

.•

4automata
p. 1 26"A rich couple comes . . . " Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thou­sand Plateaus, p. 1 95 .
p. 1 26"extension of ear and voice. " Avital Ronell, The Telephone Book, p.

283.
p. 1 26"invisible voices conducted . . . " ibid., pp. 301-2.

p . 126"a fingertip mastery .

" Elizabeth Faulkner Baker,

Technology and

Woman 's J..J& rk, p. 242.
p. 126"Having done this stuff a few hundred thousand times . . . " Bruce
Sterling, The Hacker Crackdown, p. 30.

Jt.; ·. .
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!p.r127 "If computers are the power looms . . . " Economist, Oct. 29, 1 994, p.
146.
,

i. .

:P· 1 27

"There are a lot of cords down there . . . " Bruce Sterling, The Hacker
Crackdown, p. 29.

p. 128"working on behalf of their masters" Economist, The World in 1 995, p.
1 43.

p. 128"Computers can bring mathematical abstractions . . . " Hans Moravec,
Mind Children, p. 1 33.

p. 128"Agents are objects that don't wait to be told
World in 1 995, p. 143.

p. 128"with unknown consequences
Agents, p. 1 23 .

.

" Economist, The" Fah-Chun Cheong, Internet2

p. 128"of course all of this is quite abstract . . . " ibid., p. 1 22.

p. 1 29"crawled through the network . . . " Richard B. Levin, The Computer
Virus Handbook, p. 270.

p. 130"spontaneously evolved, quite abstract . . . " Hans Moravec, Mind Chil­dren, p. 135.

disordersp. 131"My different personalities . . . " Anna Freud, quoted in Elisabeth
Young-Bruehl, Anna Freud, p. 86.

p. 131"battles and bargains . . . " ibid. , p . 46 1 .

p . 131"Perhaps in the night I am a murderer" ibid., p . 58.

p. 132"it irrupts in me, somehow . . . " ibid., p. 57.

p. 132"lived as I did in the time . . . " ibid., p. 135.

p. 1 32"no knowledge of each other or of the third . . " Morton Prince,quoted in Roy Porter, ed. Th e Faber Book of Madness, p. 390.

ll· 1 33

" 'The woman' who is Truddi Chase" Steven Shaviro, Doom Patrols.
Available at http:/ I dhalgren.english. washington.edu/ -steve/ doom.html.

75

p. 1 34

"promoted by suggestion" Paul R. McHugh, "Multiple Personality Disorders. " Available at http://www .psycom.het/mchughp. 134. •i"You are 'She, ' I said . . . " Morton Prince, quoted in Roy Porter, ed.';The Faber Book of Madness, p. 390.
p. 1 34"if there is such a high degree of suggestive specificitY .

.

. " Frank w;

Putnam, debate with Paul R. McHugh. Available at http://www:asarian.org/nastrae/mpc_html/debate.html
p. 135"a closed box, a unique entity, shut off fi:om the others" Steven Shaviro,

Doom Patrols.

Availableat:
http://dhalgren.english.washington.edu/ :-steve/ doom.html
p. 1 35"One of the things we hear fi:om people .
. " Faith Christophe, "Can
Selves Die?" Availabi e at http://www.asarian.org/-astraea/household/2
7
6

amazonep. 1 37"marriage-law lays it down" Herodotus, The History of Herodotus, Book
IV, tranSlated by George Rawlinson, Internet Classics Archive. Available
at http:// classics.mit.edu/Herodotus/history .html

p. 138"The military art has no mystery" Mary Montagu, quoted in Dale
Spender,p. 1 38

J.i.'&men of Ideas, p. 8 1 .

"The objective is not to gain ground" Monique Wittig, Les Guerilleres,p. 95.

p . 138"a Stateless woman-people" Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thou­sand Plateaus, p. 355.
p. 1 38
p. 139"fleshy passivity" Camill e Paglia, Sexual Personae, pp. 75-77 passim.
"come like fate, without reason, consideration, or pretext . . . " Gilles
Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 353.

p. 1 39"could not tell what to make of the attack upon them" Herodotus, The
History of Herodotus, Book IV. Available at http:/ /classics.mit.edu/
Herodotus/history.html

� beginning again

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f'-

1' p. 140

"Woman's desire . . . " Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One, p. 25.

'"of what materials my regiments are to consist . . . " Ada Lovelace, October 1 8 5 1 , Betty A. Toole, Ada, The Enchantress of Numbers, p. 401 .

p. 140·· p . 1 4 1 "Hysteria is silent and a t the same time i t mimes" Luce Irigaray, This Sex
Which Is Not One, p. 1 37.
p . 141" 'she' says something . . . " ibid., p. 1 03.

p. 141"deep-going functional disorganization .
" Josef Breuer and
Sigmund Freud, Studies on Hysteria, pp. 78-79.

p. 1 42"When they could thus understand one another" Herodotus, The
History of Herodotus, Book IV. Available at http:/ /classics.mit.edu/
Herodotus/history .html

p . 1 43

"but 'within herself,' she never signs up" Luce Irigaray, Marine Lover, p.
90.

enigmasp. 1 45"A modern batdeship" Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, p. 276.

p. 1 46"close-up of the printer" reference downloaded from the Web.

p. 1 47"the brains of Bletchley Park" F. H. Hinsley and Alan Stripp , eds.
Codebreakers: The Inside Story of Bletchley Park, p . 65.

p . 1 47"one ofseveral 'men of the Professor type' " quoted in Andrew Hodges,
Alan Turing: The Enigma, p. 206.

p. 1 47"as far as making a pair ofgloves" ibid., p. 207.

p. 1 47"At this time" F. H. Hinsley and Alan Strip p, eds. Codebreakers: The
Inside Story of Bletchley Park, p. 1 64.

p. 1 48"gready speeded up the routine solutions" ibid., p. 1 17.

p. 1 48"Inevitably . . . " ibid., p. 1 1 5 .

p . 1 48

"arrived at Bletchley Park . . . " ibid., p. 68.

p. 1 48"life at sea, with the romantic idea . . .. " ibid., p. 132.

2

7
7

p. 1 49

"twenty-two of us were drafted . . . " ibid. , p. 133.

p . 149"intricate complications of running the machines" ibid . , p . 134.

p . 1 49"a complicated drawing of numbers and letters" ibid . , p. 1 36.

p . 1 50

" to put on to cards, with correct page references" ibid. , p. 304.

p . 1 50

" I had buried this pa�t of my life so completely" ibid . , p. 137.

monster 2
p. 152"I wanted t o keep my software and use it over again" Grace Murray.

Hopper, quoted in Raymond Kurzweil, The Age of Intelligent Mtl{hines,

p. 179.

2
7

spelling
p. 1 53"originate anything" Ada Lovelace, notes to Sketch of the Analytical Engine
invented by Charles Babbage, Esq. By L. F. Menabrea, of Turin, Officer ofthe
Military Engineers, Note G.

p. 153"curious, mysterious, marvellous, electrical, etc . " Ada Lovelace, letter to8Lady Byron, 1841, quoted in Dorothy Stein, Ada, A Life and a Legacy, p.

132.
p . 153" unsensed forces" that "surround a n d influence u s " Ada Lovelace, re­view of an "Abstract of 'Researches on Magnetism and on certain alli ed
subjects,' including a supposed new Imponderable by Baron von Reich­enbach," quoted in Dorothy Stein, Ada, A Life and a Legacy, p. 152.

p. 1 53"microscopical structure" Ada Lovelace, August 1 843, quoted in Betty A.
Toole, Ada, The Enchantress of Numbers, p. 227.

p . 153

p. 1 54"to test certain points experimentally" Ada Lovelace, quoted i n Dorothy

Stein, Ada, A Life and a Legacy, p . 1 43.

" I must be a most skillful practical manipulator . . . " Ada Lovelace, No­
vember 1 844, quoted in Betty A. Toole, Ada, The Enchantress of Num­bers, p. 295 .
p. 154"Could you ask the secretary." Ada Lovelace, December 1844,

quoted in Dorothy Stein, Ada, A Life and a Legacy, p. 149.

p; 154·"I am a Fairy you know" Ada Lovelace, January 1 845, quoted in Betty
A. Toole, Ada, The Enchantress of Numbers, p. 313.

hysteresis
p. 1 54"Whether we examine distances travelled" Alvin Toffi.er, Future Shock,p. 33.

p; 154"the advent of the telegraph" Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media,
p. 99.

p. 1 55"Speed is the computer's secret weapon" T. R. Reid, Microchip, the storyof a revolution and the men who made it, p. 21 .

p. 1 55"not at the target" Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics, p. 5.

p. 156"Feedbacks of this general type" ibid., p. 1 13.

cybernetics
p. 156"older machines, and in particular" Norbert Wiener, The Human Use of
Human Beings, pp. 22-23.

p. 1 57"effectively coupled to the external world" Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics
p. 42.

p. 157"keeps the engine from running wild . . . " Norbert Wiener, The Hu­man Use of Human Beings, p. 1 52.

p . 1 57

"the first homeostatic machine in human history" Otto Mayr, The Ori­
gins of Feedback, p. 49.

p. 1 57"the first nonliving object" Kevin Kelly, Out of Control, p. 1 13.

p. 158"are precisely parallel" Norbert Wiener, The Human Use of Human Beings, p. 95.

p. 1 58"the theory of the message" ibid., p. 27.

p: 1 58"local and temporary islands" ibid., p. 36.

p. 1 58"Life is an island here and now" ibid., p. 95.

p. 1 59"It seems almost as if progress itself" ibid., pp. 46-47.

p. 159"not yet spectators at the· last stages of the world's death" ibid., p. 3 1 .

.

2
7
9

p. 1 59 "£onsider this principle of consqru;y" Luce lrigiray, This Sex Which bq. Not One, p. 1 15 .
p. 1 60 "involves sensory members" Norbert Wiener, Th e Human Use ofHuman :Beings, p. 25.
,,;
p. 1 60 "No system is closed. The outside always seeps in . . ." Luce Irigarayi..;JJ!.�.sex_ �� �p. 1 16.

• .
.

p. 1 60 "several possible sorts of behaviour" Gregory Bateson, Mind and Nature,---:p. 1 07.
.•

p. 160 "positive gain, variously called escalating or llicious circles" ibid., p. 105 . .
· .· j.
p. 1 6 1 "Every intensity conttols" Gilles Deleuze and Fe� Guattari, Anti-Oedi- :pus, p. 330.
p. 1 6 12
80"the hint of death is present in every biological circuit" Gregory Bate­son, Mind and Nature, p. 1 26.

p. 1 62 "If the open system is determined by anything" Antony Wilden, System
and Structure, pp. 367�9.
p. 1 63"feedback tends to oppose what the system is already doing" ibid., pp. _ ·368-69.

p. 1 63"once this exponential process" ibid., p. 367.

p. 1 63 "When the ecosystem is subjected" ibid., p. 75.
p. 163
p. 1 64"Any system-enviro�ent relationship" ibid., p. 369.
"I always feel in a manner as if I had died" Ada Lovelace, March 1841,
quoted in Doris Langley Moore, Ada, Countess of Lovelace, p. 98.

sea change

p. 165"For a long time turbulence was identified with disorder or noise" Ilya
Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers, Order Out of Chaos, p. 1 4 1 .

p. 1 65"How does a flow cross the boundary . . . " James Gleik, Chaos, p. 1 27.

p. 1 65
p. 165"The particles of cigarette smoke rise as one, for a while" ibid., p. 124. .

"fluctuations upon fluctuations, whorls upon "';horls" ibid., p. 162.

p. 1 66 "A rope has been stretching" ibid., p. 1 27.
p. 1 66 "entities and variables" ibid., p. 1 08.

�·Scattered brains•

�: p. 166�·"It does not appear to me that cerebral matter . . . " Ada Lovelace,

November 1 844, quoted in Betty A. Toole, Ada,

The Enchantress of

Numbers, p. 296.

p . 1 67

"Thought is not arborescent" Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A: p .168"one concept will 'activate' another" Richard J. Eiser, Attitudes, Chaos

p. 168" 'aha-experience' and the sudden 'insight' " Klaus Mainzer, Thinking in>.

Thousand Plateaus, p. 1 5 .
and the Connectionist Mind, p. 30.
Complexity, p. 1 52 .

. p. 168"Unlike a contact b etween tWo transistors" Christopher Wills, The Run­

p . 1 68

"When an axon o f cell A" Donald Hebb, quoted in Klaus Mainzer,

2

Thinking in Complexity, p. 126.

8

p. "169

away Brain, p. 261 .

"may be compared to an unnavigable river" Sigmund Freud, Case Histo­

ries 1, pp. 45-46.
p. 170p. 170"in hysteria there is" Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One, p. 1 38.
"determinateness, direct logical analysis" Daniel McNeil and Paul Frei­berger, Fuzzy Logic, p. 135.

p. 171"overwork portions o f their brains" Economist, Feb. 24, 1 996, p. 1 24.

neurotics
p. 171" a t the end o f the century" Alan Turing, quoted i n Andrew Ho�,Alan Turing, The Enigma, p. 422.
p. 171"the expert system market" Maureen Caudill and Charles Butler, Natu­

rally Intelligent Systems, p. 26.

p . 1 72

"Victory seemed assured for the artificial sister" Raymond Kurzweil,p . 173"not only challenges" Economist, July 1 , 1 995, Internet survey.

p . 174"achieved only limited success" Kevin Kelly, Out of Control, p. 296.

The Age of Intelligent Machines, p. 1 49.

1

p. 174"Parallel software is a tangled web" ibid., p. 308;

p. 174"We are faced with a system" Richani J. Eiser, Attitudes, CluJos and � <,,Connectionist Mind, p. 1 92 .
.r

p. 1 75"arborescent and centtalized" Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A
Thousand Plateaus, p. 16.

· p. 175"transition machines" Andy Clark, Associative Engines, pp. 1 45-46.

intuition

p. 176"I

believe myself to possess almost singular combination of quali- ·,ties . . . " Ada Lovelace, quoted in Betty A. Toole, Ada, The EncluJnttas .,of Numbers, p. 1 44.

p. 176"On the human Scale" T. R. Reid, Microchip, p. 21.

282

cave manp. 177"When men talk about virtual reality" Brenda Laurel, quoted in Susie
Bright's Sexual Reality: A Virtual Sex World Reader, p. 67.

p. 178"if we are ever to have pure knowledge" Plato, The Last Days of Socrates,
pp. t t G-12.

p. 178"a metaphor of the inner space" Luce lrigaray, Speculum of the Otheru-&man, p. 243.

p. 179"Illusion no longer has the freedom of the city" Luce lrigaray, Marine

Lover, p. 99.
p. 179"thus cuts himself ofF from the bedrock" Luce lrigaray, Speculum of the
Other u-&man, p. 133.

p. 179"protection-projection screen" Luce lrigaray, Marine Lover, p. 87.

p. 1 79"horror of nature is magicked away" ibid., p. 99.

p. 179"you won't go wrong" Plato, The Republic, p. 517b.

p. 1 80"a freedom that is limited only" Catherine Richards, "Virtual Bodies,"
p. 35.

p. 1 8 1"you can lay Cleopatra" William Burroughs, Th e Adding Machine, p . 86. :"the future will be a larger or gready improved venion of the immediate

past, " Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy, p. 272.

J"'"
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182

j.

�

i;lliam"Western man is externalizing himself in the form of gadgets" W
Burroughs, Naked Lunch, p. 43.

it hooked;·

�..: p. 182
p. 183"All the forms of auxiliary apparatus" Sigmund Freud, "A Note upon
the Mystic Writing Pad," On Metapsychology, p. 430.
"living organism in its most simplified possible form" Sigmund Freud,"Beyond the Pleasure Principle, " On Metapsychology, pp. 295-99.

p. 184"And as they advance deeper out into the waves" Luce Irigaray, Marine

Lover, p. 48.
2tact
p. 1 858"begins to be evident that 'touch' " Marshall McLuhan and Quentin
Fiore, War and Peace in the Global Village, p. 7 1 .

p. 1 85"the extreme and pervasive tactility of the new electric environment"
ibid., p. 77.

p. 185"extraordinary technological clothing" Marshall McLuhan, Understand­ing Media, p. 1 59 .
p. 185"some kind of actual space" Larry McCafFrey, "Interview with William
Gibson," quoted in Larry McCafFrey, ed. Storming the Reality Studio, p.
85.

p. 186"the unclean promiscuity of everything" Jean Baudrillard, The Ecstasy of;Communication, p. 27.
p. 1 86

p. 1 86

�wn" Elias C�tti , Crowds and Powe..!j_.P�· 1 5 .

· ��-h -�f..!l!CL�"from a rhythmically pulsating environment" Lawrence K. Frank, "Tac­tile Communication," p. 202.

p. 1 86"the weapon which lay nearest to hand" Elias Canetti, Crowds and Po wer,p. 248.

p. 1 86"He wants to see what is reaching" ibid., p. 1 5 .

3

p. 1 87

"One can picture the touch receptor" Ashley Montagu, Touching:

Human Significana of the Skin, p. 84.

'17tt1

..)��

:�
·:}

p. 1 87"Grooming the skin" Lawrence K. Frank, "Tactile Communication," p2�
p. 1 88"possibility of distinguishing what is touching" Luce Irigaray, This Sex ;· rjWhich Is Not One, p. 26.
p. 1 8 8'"As in the case of taboo, the principal prohibition" Sigmund Freu� '17tt'i 'Origins of Religion, p. 80.
p. 1 88"When women talk about V.R." Brenda Laurel, quoted in Susie Bright's1

Sexual Reality: A Virtual Sex World Reader, p. 67.
p. 1 88"the obstacle that separates thought from itself ' Gilles Deleuze, Cinema; ·iVolume 2, p. 1 89 .
2

p. 1 88

4"It is an entity so plugged in" Catherine Richards, "Virtual Bodies," p.

p. 1 89

!

.

�

8

gar.iy, 1"elsewhere: another case of the persistence of 'matter' " Luce IriThis Sex Which Is Not One, p. 1 25.
"

p. 1 89"in what she saysp. 1 89"tends to put the torch to fetish word" ibid., p. 79.

p. 189"the human female" Ashley Montagu, Touching: The Human Signifitanceibid., p. 29.

of the Skin, p. 1 8 1 .
p. 1 90"have always turned . . . " Manon Regimbald, "The Borders of Tex­tiles," p. 1 49.

p. 1 90"Women have always spun" ibid., p. 147.

p. 1 90"the computer as an electronic loom" Esther Parada, quoted in Trisha

Zifl; "Taking new ideas back to the old world: talking to Esther Parada,
Hector Mendez Caratini and Pedro Meyer," p. 132.
p. 1 90"Until recendy the computer" Cynthia Schira, "Powerful Creative
Tools," p. 1 24.

p. 1 9 1" are not only visual but also tactile" Louise Lerni�ux-Berube, "Textiles

and New Technologies: a Common Language," p. 1 1 2.

iCyberftesh:P' 1 92

"So I started to make a virtual body with a virtual wound" Linda

Dement, "Screen Bodies," p. 9.

p . . .1 93"to conduct their dance" Michel Foucault, lAnguage, Counter-Memol)',

Practice, p. 170.

mona lisa overdrivep. 1 94"the most perfect representation" Sigmund Freud, Art and Literature, p.
200.

p. 1 96"hints that human activities once took place" Mary Rose Storey, Mona

Lisas, p. 13.
p. 1 96"From the start, he witnessed the harnessing of artistry to skilled engi­
neering" Serge Bramly, Leonardo, the Artist and the Man, p. 7 1 .

p . 196"the application of many glazes" Mary Rose Storey, Mona Lisas, p . 14.

p. 197"Her instincts of conquest" Sigmund Freud, "Leonardo da Vinci," Artand Literature, p. 201 .
p . 1 97

"a sentence we may think his own" Serge Bramly, Leonardo, the Artist

and the Man, p. 272.
p. 197'"often copying out word for word long passages' ibid., p. 270.

p. 197"was much copied,

p. 198"copying an existing machine" ibid., p. 271 .

in toto and in detail" ibid . , p. 458n.

runawayp. 1 99"Her lover had asked her if she had come . . . " Linda Grant, Sexing theMillennium, p. 1 2 1 ,p. 199"Freud was right . . . " Baudrillard, Seduction, p . 6 .

p. 199"orgasms o n one's own terms" ibid. , p . 1 8 .

p. �00"Male orgasm had signified self-containment . . . " Donna Haraway,

Primate Vuiom, p. 359.

2
85

p. 200"universalistic claims made for human liberty . . . " Thomas Laquer,

Making Sex, p. 1 50 .
p. 200"You will be organi ze d" Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand ·Plateaus, p. 159.

p. 200"most medical writers

p. 201"ten years old, of delicate complexion . . . " Demetrius Zambaco,.

. . " Donna Haraway, Primate Visions, p . 356.

"Case History ," p. 25.
p. 201"cold showers . . . " ibid., p. 29.

p. 201"Pubic belt, strait jacket . . . " ibid., p. 36.

p. 202"To the analyst, any breakdown . . . " Roy Porter, The Faber Book ofMadness, p. 488.
p. 2038"apologia for orgasm made by the Reichians . · . . " Michel Foucault,

quoted in David Macey, The Lives of Michel Foucault, p. 373.

2
p. 203

6"I dismembered your body . . . " Alfonso Lingis , "Carnival in Rio," p.
61 .

p. 203" make of one's body . . . " Michel Foucault, quoted in James Miller,

The Passion of Michel Foucault, p. 269.
p. 203"the organic body, organized with survival as its goal" Jean-Fran�ois
Lyotard, Libidinal Economy, p. 2.

p. 203"Flows of intensity .

. " Gill es Deleuze and FCli?c Guattari, A Thou­sand Plateaus, p. 1 62.
p. 204"acentered systems .

" Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari,

Anti-

Oedipus, p. 1 7 .
p . 204"we too are fiows of matter and energy . . . " Manuel de Landa, "Non­organic Life," p. 1 53.

p. 204

p. 204" Perforati ons occur in your bo dy . . . " Monique Wittig, The LesbianBody, p. 108.

_::gp_�ed body . . . " Jean-Fran�ois Lyotard, Libidinal Econ­-p . 204

�: 2 .

"imply a multiplicity . . ." Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thou­sand Plateaus, p. 2 1 3 .

p. 204"inside every solitary living creature . . ." Kevin Kelly, Out of Control,

p. 45.
p. 205"As long as they do not threaten him" Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power,p. 420.

p. 205"Do you know it is to me quite delightful . . . " Ada Lovelace, Novem­
ber 1 844, quoted in Doris Langley Moore, Ada, Countess of Lovelace, p.
218.

p. 205"nonhuman sex" Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, p.
294.

p. 206"does not take as its object" ibid. , p. 292.

p. 206"Not the clitoris or the vagina" Luce lrigaray, This Sex Which Is Not

One, pp. 6�4.
p. 206"a touching of at least two (lips)" ibid., p. 26.

p. 206"the glans of the clitoris" Monique Wittig, Les Guerillbts, p. 23.

p. 207"making bits of bodies" Elizabeth Grosz, Volatile Bodies, p. 1 82.

p. 207 · "question of 'passivity' is not the question of slavery" Jean-Fran�ois
Lyotard, Libidinal Economy, p. 260.
p. 207

p. 207"USE ME . . . what does she want" ibid., p. 66.
"What interests the practitioners" Michel Foucault, "Sexual Choice,Sexual Act: Foucault and H<;>mosexuality," p. 299.

p. 207
p. 208"has sex organs.

. . " Luce lrigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One, p. 28.

"exultation of a kind of autonomy . . ." Michel Foucault, quoted inJames Miller, The Passion of Michel Foucault, p. 274.

p. 208"Use me" Jean-:Frantyois Lyotard, Libidinal Economy, p. 65.

p. 208"sado-masochistic bond . . . " ibid., p. 63.

p. 208"something 'unnameable,' 'useless' . . . " Michel Foucault, quoted inJames Miller, The Passion of Michel Foucault, p. 274.

p. 208

p. 208"as though the watchman over our mental life. . . . " Sigmund Freud,"The Economic Problem of Masochism," On Metapsychology, p. 4 1 3 .

"I stripped the will and the person . . . " Alfonso Lingis, "Carnival in
Rio,'' p. 6 1 .

2
87chemicals
p. 214"tendency of biological research .

. " Sigmund Freud, "Leonardo daVinci," in Art and Literature, p . 23 1 .
p. 2 1 4"characterized by its cyclic hormonal regulation . . . " Nelly Oud- .
shoom, Beyond the Natural Body: an archeology of sex hormones, p. 1 46.

p. 2 1 5"The causes are not yet defmed .

. . " Birmingham Post, Mar. 8, 1 996, p.

1 0.
p. 2 1 6"didn't kill the roosters . . . " Theo Colborn, Dianne Dumanoski, andJohn Peterson Myers, Our Stolen Future, p. 1 99.

p. 216

p. 2 1 6"plastics are not inert . . . " ibid., pp . 233-34.
"These ubiquitous metal cans attached t o electrical poles . . . " ibid., p .
92.

2

p. 2 1 6".a striking inverse correlation . . . " ibid., p. 1 7 5 .

8p. 2 1 7"consorts so readily with foreigners . . . " ibid., p. 70.

9p. 2 1 7"The body responds t o the impostors . . . " ibid., p. 205.

p. 2 1 7"impersonate them . . . " ibid., p. 204.

p. 2 1 7"chemicals interfering with hormonal messages . . . " ibid., p . 1 95.

p. 2 1 7"Without these testosterone signals . . . " ibid., p. 83.

p. 2 1 8"not only o n what the mother takes

p. 218"By disrupting hormones and development . . . " ibid., p . 1 97 .

p. 2 1 8"undermine the ways i n which humans interact . . . " ibid. , p. 207 .

p. 2 1 8.

.

•" ibid., p. 212.

"alter the characteristics that make u s uniquely human . . . " ibid., p .
234.

p. 2 1 8"the legacy o f our species . . . " ibid., p. 238.

xyz
p. 2 1 8"Sex is not a necessary condition for life . . . " Fran�oisJacob, The Logicof Life, p. 356.

p. 2 1 9

"frozen accident" Steven Levy, Artificial Life: The Quest for a New Crr­

ation, p. 198.
p. 220"it would be a small matter for dandelions to sprout butterfly wings"
Dorion Sagan, "Metametazoa," p. 378.

the peahen's talep. 223"preservation offavourable variations and the rejection of�urious vari­ations" Charles Darwin, quoted in Fran�ois Jacob, The Logic of Life, p.
170.

p. 223 · "It may be said that natural selection" Charles Darwin, quoted in ibid.,
p. 171.
p. 223"is a game with its own rules" ibid., p. 296.

p. 224''When the males and females ofany animal have the same general habits .
of life" ibid., p. 1 72.

p. 225''virility tests designed to get most males" Economist, Dec. 23, 1995-jan.
5, 1 996, p. 121.

p. 226"is not profited personally· by his mane" Charlotte Perkins Gilman,
J%men and Economics, p. 33.

p. 226"resembles artificial breeding" Karl Sigmund, Games of Life, p. 126.

p. 227"the further development of the plumage character" R. A. Fisher, The
Genetical Theory of Natural Selection, p. ·1 52.

p. 227"rides, like a surfer, on a wave of ever-increasing tail lengths sweeping
through the population" Karl Sigmund, Games of Life, p. 1 3 1 .

p. 227"The two characteristics affected by such a process" R . A . Fisher, The
Genetical Theory of Natural Selection, p. 1 52.

p. 228"Where one function is carried to unnatural excess" Charlotte Perkins
Gilman, Women and Economics, p. 72.

p. 228"All morbid conditions tend · to extinction" ibid.

2
90

p. 228
p. 228"So it was . �male choice which caused the· males' long tails" Karl
Sigmund, Games of Life, p. 126.
"in many species, females had a large say" Matt Ridley, The Red Queen,
p. 1 33.

loopsp. 230"the egg uses the messages passed on" Stephen S. Hall, Mapping the Next

Millennium, p. 212.
p. 230"Eggs are computers to the simple ftoppy discs of sperm" EcDnomist,
Sept. 3, 1 994, p. 9 1 .

p . 230" are not organizers, but mere inductors" Gilles Deleuze and F elix Guat- ·tari, Anti-Oedipus, p. 9 1 .
p . 230
p. 231"Doubdess one can believe that, i n th e beginning (?)" ibid., p . 92.
"these machines have to be built first. For this, a blueprint is required"
Karl Sigmund, Games of life, p. 73.

p. 232"numerous and daring experiments in parthenogenesis" Simone deBeauvoir, The Second Sex, p. 34.

p. 232"The geneticists first realized that F.D. was unusual" New Scientist, Oct.
7, 1 995, p. 17.

symbionts
p. 234"the greatest pollution crisis the earth has ever known" Dorion Sagan,"Metametazoa: Biology and Multiplicity," p. 367.

p. 234"each eukaryotic 'animal' cell . . . " Dorion Sagan, "Metametazoa,"
p. 363.

p. 235"biochemically and metabolically far more diverse . . . " Dorion Sagan,"Metametazoa," p. 377.

p. 235"as people have passed through since they were apes," Matt Ridley,

The

Red Queen, p. 64.
p. 235"four flfi:hs of the history of life on Earth has been solely a bacterial
phenomenon" Dorion Sagan, "Metametazoa," p. 377.

p. 235"most salient feature . . . " Stephen Jay Gould, "The Evolution of Lifeon the Earth," p. 65.

p. 236

�''Qlen� J:nto a pointillist landscape" Dorion Sagan "Metametazoa.'.: p.

�63,.- ·2

91

p. 236"With bacteria, unlike organisms . . . " Fran�ois Jacob,

The Logic· ofLife, p. 297.

eve 2
p. 237"As a result, the inheritance of mitochondrial chromosomes" Christo­
pher Wills , Runaway Brain, p. 23.

p. 238"the woman who is the most recent direct ancestor" Daniel Dennett,

Darwin's Dangerous Idea, p. 97.

potteringp. 239"a well-established dictum . . . " Margaret Alic, Hypatia's Heritage, p.

111.
.

2
9
2

p. 239.

"ideas, taste, and elegance" Hegel, quoted in Michele Le Doeuff, "Philosophy and Psychoanalysis," pp. 1 89-90.

p. 240"is suddenly full of boulders and screes and speculations about strata"
Margaret Lane, The Tale of Beatrix Potter, p. 4 1 .

p. 240"the precise and the minute" ibid., p. 40.

p. 241"composed of fungal cells" Mark McMenamin and Dianna McMe­
namin, Hypersea, p. 68.

p. 241"People take symbiosis seriously in lichens" Lynn Margulis, quoted in
ibid., p. 67.

p. 241"complex overgrown lichens" ibid., p . 1 7 1 .

p. 241"so genetically open" Dorion Sagan, "Metametazoa, " p. 378.

p. 242"ftuid genetic transfers" ibid., p. 363.

p. 242"without identifiable terms, without accounts" Luce Irigaray, This Sex

Which b Not One, p. 1 97.
p . 242"The body can no longer . · . . " Dorion Sagan, "Metametazoa," p.

368.
p. 242
p. 242"With bacteria . . . " Fran�ois Jacob, The Logic of Life, p. 297.
"To be woman, she does not have to be mother;" Luce Irigaray, Marine

Lover, p. 86.

·

mutants
p. 244':Joan explained how she had been taught" Andrew Hodges, Alan Tur­ing, The Enigma, p. 208.

p. 244"always enjoyed examining plants" ibid., p. 434.

p. 245"a slender but subversive strand" Stephen S. Hall, Mapping the Next
Millennium, p. 2 1 6.

p. 246"the enzyme cuts one strand of the DNA helix" ibid., p. 232.

p. 246"leftover from the merging of stranger bacteria" Dorion Sagan,"Metametazoa," p. 378.

p. 246"quasispecies," "swarms," or "consensus sequences" Laurie Garrett,
The Coming Plague, p. 579.

p. 246"individual alteration can change an entire systemp. 247"the ability to outwit or manipulate" ibid., p. 6 1 8.

g

p. 247"We form a rhizome with our viruses" Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 1 0 .

3. . " ibid., p. 6 1 9.

wetwarep. 248"think of the sea from afar" _!-uce lrigaray, Marine Lover,_p . 5 1 .

p . 248"have far more to them . . . " James Lovelock, Gaia, p. 78.

p. 248"on the land is for the most part two-dimensional . . . " ibid., p. 87.

p. 248"terrestrial organisms had to build for themselves . . . " Mark McMe­
namin and Dianna McMenamin, Hypersea, p. 4.

�.......----. ....... - - ....... __ ....._ . ·----�-... , ....__,____. .�
_

p. 248"biota has had to find ways to carry the sea within it" ibid., p. 5 .

p. 249"Acting over evolutionary time as a rising tidep. 249"terrestrial sea . . . " ibid. , p. 93 .

p. 249"the appearance of complex life on land was a major event" ibid., p. 25.

p. 249"Trees are neither found nor needed in the sea . . . " James Lovelock,Gaia, p. 87.

p. 249"numerically dominated by tiny single-celled protista . . . " ibid., p. 88.

.

. .

"

p. 25.

2

p. 249"from the first appeaiance of marine bacteria . . . " Mark McMenaminand Dianna McMenamin, Hypersea, p. 73.

p. 250."highly flattened fronds, sheets and circlets" Stephen Jay Gould, Scientific
American, October 1 994, p. 67.

dryware2
9p. 250"an island, enclosed by nature itself within unalterable limits" InunanuelKant, Critique of Pure Reason, p. 257.

p. 250"If a man wants to delude himself' Luce Irigaray, Marine Lover, p. 46.

p. 250"delivers man to the. uncertainty of fate" Michel Foucault, Madness andCivilization, pp. 10-12.

p. 250"One thing at least is certain" ibid., p. 18.

p. 250"the river with its thousand arms" pp. 1 0-1 2.

p. 251"If only the sea did not exist" Luce Irigaray, Marine Lover, p. 5 1 .

quantap. 252

p . 253"made capacity where there technically wasn't any" Pat Cadigan, Syn·ners, p. 1 74.
"midway between the ftuid and the solid" Elias Canetti, Crowds andPower, p. 101.
p. 253"age of sand" Donald Tapscott, Digital Economy, Promise and Peril in. tht .
Age of Networked Intelligence, p. 48.

casting off
p. 256. .

"litde bit of another sense . . . " Ada Lovelace, March 1 841 , quoted�·, :':
Doris Langley Moore, Ada, Countess of Lovelace, p. 98.
·'.

p . 256"further extension" Ada Lovelace, September 1841, quoted in· Dorothy
Stein, Ada, A Life and a Legacy, p. 79.

p. 256"Perhaps none of us can estimate . . ." Ada Lovelace, February 1 840,
quoted in Doris Langley Moore, Ada, Countess of Lovelace, p. 96.
·

p. 256"thunderstruck by the power of the writing . . . " Ada Lovelace, July
1 843, quoted in Dorothy Stein, Ada, A Life and a Legacy, p. 1 10.

295