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September 14, 2004
The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age
| Title | The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age |  |
| Author | Allucquère Rosanne Stone | |
| Publisher | MIT Press Cambridge, MA | |
| Date | 1995 | |
| ISBN | 0 262 19362 0 | |
| Reviewed by | John Thackara | |
| Stone examines the myriad ways modern technology is challenging traditional notions of gender identity. Face-to-face meetings, and even telephone conversations, involuntarily reveal crucial aspects of identity such as gender, age, and race. However, these bits of identity are completely masked by computer-mediated communications; all that is revealed is what we choose to reveal - and then only if we choose to tell the truth. The rise of computer mediated communications is giving people the means to try on alternative personae - in a sense, to reinvent themselves - which, as Stone argues, has both positive and potentially destructive implications. Not a traditional text but rather a series of intellectual provocations: from busy cyberlabs to the electronic solitude of the Internet, from phone sex to 'virtual crossdressers,' from the vampire to the trial of a man accused of having raped a woman by seducing one of her multiple personalities. | ||
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Posted by Books Editor at September 14, 2004 09:33 PM