It is a call for awareness, consciousness and ethics. Richard Sclove's Democracy and Technology offers some alternative practices. He cites European examples of public participation in research and design, demonstrating how local communities can help shape product development toward positive ends and goals. Similarly, Nardi and O'Day's Information Ecologies offer instances of how local participants influence applications of information technologies. The appendix offers the theoretical background from which this book is based.
Feminist theorists argue that the body and the personal are political sites.
Much of western political philosophy is based on the notion that the mind or the soul is more important than the body. From the departure point that women are reproducers and should be relegated to the private realm, philosophers created a dualistic system which excluded women. Women, the body, and the private sector were grouped in the same category, while males were grouped with the mind, intelligence and the public sphere. More recently, volumes have been written about bodies. Postmodern theorists have argued that bodies are disappearing, bodies are flexible, bodies are cyborgs.