We have become absorbed by the machine, and it has taken all the resources of the planet to remake nature in our technologically-mediated image. We have become like gods, and we might as well, according to Stuart Brand, get good at it. Generations of women who have identified with the values of the patriarchy have learned to despise their bodies as well. Given her intellectual awareness of this principle, it is curious that Nelson seems to have demonized the masculine principle in The Perfect Machine . Her deconstruction of the patriarchy is no doubt an attempt to reinstate feminist principles into the debate about technological determinism, to encourage a balanced approach to human evolution.
Technology is a nurturing matrix available on demand to satisfy our needs.
Technology is the mechanical mother invented by men to replace the fleshly mother of their birth and the earthy mother of nature, both of whom are notoriously difficult to control. Again, technological determinism as the mastery of chance. Now we can jack into the matrix of the Internet, that consensual hallucination, to discover our new selves in the hive-mind of digital humanity.