Cyberfeminism And Artificial Life

Examining the construction, manipulation and re-definition of life in contemporary technoscientific culture, this book aims to re-focus concern on the ethics rather than on the 'nature' of artificial life.

Examining the construction, manipulation and re-definition of life in contemporary technoscientific culture, this book aims to re-focus concern on the ethics rather than on the 'nature' of artificial life.

This book investigates how digitalization has affected entrepreneurship, labour markets, financial markets, and women's empowerment, underlining the opportunity it presents for a more inclusive and equal society. It explores how technology changes and creates gender, and the transformational potential it has for questioning conventional concepts of gender, drawing on the theories and critiques of cyberfeminism. The contributors discuss how women's agency and power in establishing emancipated cyberspaces are critically impacted by cyberfeminist conceptions of technical growth. Therefore, the volume sheds light on how technology may be a tool for women's empowerment and emancipation as well as how it might sustain current power imbalances and gender inequities by exploring cyberfeminism. The nexus of gender and technology is explored in depth by examining the connections between gendered, classed, and digital activities. In addition, this book looks at how technology may either support current power relations or provide disadvantaged people with a chance to question and disrupt them. Contributors are: Yarkın Çelik, Gözde Ersöz, Oktay Hekimler, Meltem İnce Yenilmez, Ayşe Mine İşler, Eylül Kabakçi Günay, Gökmen Kantar, Miray Özden, Kürşad Özkaynar, Fatma Pelin Erel, Mehtap Polat, Sedat Polat, and Gamze Yıldız Şeren.

An international anthology by feminists working in the field of electronic publishing, electronic activism, electronic data delivery, multimedia production, virtual reality creation, developing programs or products electronically, as well as those developing critiques of electronic culture. This collection explores what the possibilities are for feminists and for feminism. It also grapples with the pitfalls of the medium. The book, however, does not assume that the technology in itself is negative, but rather how it is used is open to critique. This leaves open the possibility of feminists having an impact on the way the technologies develop. The book includes connecting HTML with poetry, developing resources for Women's Studies and libraries, on-line, CD-ROM and VRML developments. The book has markets across trade and educational sectors and could be used at secondary and tertiary levels.

What is life? What is water? What is sound? In Sounding the Limits of Life, anthropologist Stefan Helmreich investigates how contemporary scientists—biologists, oceanographers, and audio engineers—are redefining these crucial concepts. Life, water, and sound are phenomena at once empirical and abstract, material and formal, scientific and social. In the age of synthetic biology, rising sea levels, and new technologies of listening, these phenomena stretch toward their conceptual snapping points, breaching the boundaries between the natural, cultural, and virtual. Through examinations of the computational life sciences, marine biology, astrobiology, acoustics, and more, Helmreich follows scientists to the limits of these categories. Along the way, he offers critical accounts of such other-than-human entities as digital life forms, microbes, coral reefs, whales, seawater, extraterrestrials, tsunamis, seashells, and bionic cochlea. He develops a new notion of "sounding"—as investigating, fathoming, listening—to describe the form of inquiry appropriate for tracking meanings and practices of the biological, aquatic, and sonic in a time of global change and climate crisis. Sounding the Limits of Life shows that life, water, and sound no longer mean what they once did, and that what count as their essential natures are under dynamic revision.

In this era of ubiquitous information flow, heightened mobility and limitless consumer convenience, human interaction with new technologies has become increasingly seamless. In the process, the human body is effectively and steadily reduced to just another interface, or a “second life”, so to speak. What is easily forgotten during this translucent transaction is that being human also necessarily implies being embodied. In other words, to constitute a body in its non-negotiable physicality is still what it entails to be human (amongst other things). To live daily in and through the complicated and dynamic intersection between “mind” and “body”, psychology and physiology―also known as embodiment―is what makes us human.

Technologies of Feminist Speculative Fiction: Gender, Artificial Life, and the Politics of Reproduction explores how much technology has reshaped feminist conversations in the decades since Donna Haraway’s influential “Cyborg Manifesto” was published. With sections exploring reproductive technologies, new ways of imagining femininity and motherhood via artificial means, queer readings of gender as a social technology, and posthuman visions of a world beyond gender, this book demonstrates how feminist speculative fiction offers an urgently needed response to the intersections of women’s bodies and technology. This collection brings together authors from Europe, Japan, the US and the UK to consider speculative films and texts, reproductive technologies and food futures, and opportunities to rethink family, aging, gender and sexuality, and community through feminist speculative fiction, a social technology for building better futures.

What does it mean to study supposedly global media phenomena from a Nordic perspective? In which ways could a Nordic feminist perspective on digital media make a difference in relation to dominant research traditions? What would be particular and unique about Nordic cyberfeminism – compared to the “unmarked” version of cyberfeminism dominating the field today? These are some of the questions that this book sets out to answer. Cyberfeminism in Northern Lights: Digital Media and Gender in a Nordic Context pushes the boundaries of contemporary cyberfeminism significantly. Against the background of an expanding body of research in the field of digital media and gender – which to this date has primarily been carried out from an Anglo-American perspective – the book argues that feminist studies of digital media need to become more inclusive and aware of their own geographical and cultural biases and limits. The book takes as its point of departure the knowledge and experiences from the Nordic countries: Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland and Denmark. Although often grouped together under the assumed homogeneity of Scandinavia, there are important differences between the countries – but also certain qualities and aspects that run across national borders, which make for an intriguing foundation of this book. ‘Highlighting the work of several of Scandinavia's best internet researchers, this collection shows how our understanding of the intersection of gender and computer technology is both universal and cultural. It's fascinating reading for anyone interested in questions of gender, culture, or social aspects of the internet and serves as a useful corrective for those who assume these issues can be understood without considering them from multiple cultural positions.’ Nancy Baym, Associate professor of Communication Studies, University of Kansas. ‘This is a very illuminating, unconventional and agenda-setting collection of essays by a new generation of scholars. Very Nordic in its pragmatic approach, egalitarian spirit and scholarly excellence, it manages to strike a global note. The range, depth and scope of the theoretical concerns, coupled with the originality of the themes discussed casts a new light on a number of crucial issues in feminist cultural studies of science and technology. A delight to read!’ Rosi Braidotti, Distinguished professor in the Humanities, Utrecht University.