Man and (wo)machine

What caught my attention the most in Sadie Plant's book was the kinship that appears between the woman and the machine. This was something that I didn't quite expect to come out. The description of binary code and its similarity to the gender binary via the 0 + 1 = 1 relation of historical presence and movement appeared as an expected techno-rendering of the feminist critique of patriarchy, however, the addition of the machine not as a third element as much as an outgrowth of the female element kindred to it brought a fresh consideration of what exactly is the machine and our treatment of it. The machine appears analogous to the woman in the text because of the importance and closeness of the task at hand while still being an inane redundant task. The greater project is to be overseen, supervised, and organized by the man while the gruntwork, computation, and fine construction is to be done by the hand of the woman or the power of the machine.

As far as her description and expression of networks and networking goes; the implication is that as technology has advanced, the system has become increasing friendly towards the female. Networking as social quality of the woman is now ubiquitous to us in its digital counterpart. In both cases, the woman and the machine challenge the legitimation of the male whether through sex or thought.

The significance of the female in technology is made especially evident in the many references to Ada Lovelace and in the description of the beginnings of industrialization as a weaver's revolution.

The need for efficiency of the male thus necessitates the creation and inclusion of the female and the machine but only inasmuch as they can be exploited. In this gesture, however, both wield power that cannot be wholly controlled by patriarchal supervision. In this sense, the situation arises where the leeway of necessity yields a new multiplicity. No longer in control, the mutations of the system, the diffusion of the network, the anonymity of interaction decentralize power and what appears is the weakened patriach trying to halt the technological progress leading to the automation of his own function.