ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xxiii Making cyborgs,making humans:of terminators and blade runners',originally published in ]Collins,H.Radner and A.Preacher Collins (eds)(1993)Film Theory Goes to the Movies,London:Routledge. 'New age mutant ninja hackers:reading mondo 2000',originally published in M.Dery (ed.)(1994)Flame Wars:The Discourse of Cyberculture,Durham:Duke University Press. "Terminal penetration',originally published in S.Bukatman(1994)Terminal ldentity:The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction,Durham:Duke University Press. The technophilic body:on technicity in William Gibson's cyborg culture,originally published in New Formations 8(1989). Prosthetic memory:total recall and blade runner',originally published in Body and Society 1(34)(1995). 'Net game cameo',originally published in A.Kroker and M.Kroker (eds)(1997)Digital Delirium,Montreal:New World Perspectives. 'Estrogen brigades and "big tits"threads:media fandom on-line and off,originally published in L.Cherny and E.Reba Weise (eds)(1996)Wired Women:Gender and New Realities in Cyberspace,Seattle:Seal Press. 'Stalking the UFO meme',originally published in A.Kroker and M.Kroker,(eds) Digital Delirium,Montreal:New World Perspectives. Approaching the radical other:the discursive culture of cyberhate',originally published in S.Jones (ed.)(1997)Virtual Culture:Identity and Communication in Cyberspace, London:Sage. 'Hacking away at the counter-culture',originally published in A.Ross(1991)Strange Weather:Culture,Science and Technology in the Age of Limits,London:Verso. 'Post-human unbounded:artificial evolution and high-tech subcultures',originally published in G.Robertson,M.Marsh,L.Tickner,J.Bird,B.Curtis and T.Putnam (eds),(1996)Future Natural:Nature,Science,Culture,London:Routledge. 'A cyborg manifesto:science,technology and socialist-feminism in the late twentieth century',originally published in D.Haraway (1991)Simians,Cyborgs,and Women: The Reinvention of Nature,London:Free Association Books. 'On the matrix:cyberfeminist simulations',originally published in R.Shields(ed.)(1996) Cultures of Internet:Virtual Spaces,Real Histories,Living Bodies,London:Sage. Digital rage',originally published in C.Springer (1996)Electronic Eros:Bodies and Desire in the Postindustrial Age,London:Athlone. 'Networking women and grrrls with information/communication technology:surfing tales of the world wide web',originally published in J.Terry and M.Calvert (eds) (1997)Processed Lives:Gender and Technology in Everyday Life,London:Routledge. Fabulous feminist futures and the lure of cyberculture',originally published in J.Dovey (ed.)(1996)Fractal Dreams:New Media in Social Context,London:Lawrence and Wishart
xxiv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 'New sciences:cyborg feminism and the methodology of the oppressed',originally published in C.Grey (ed.)(1995)The Cyborg Handbook,London:Routledge 'Compu-sex:erotica for cybernauts',originally published in M.Dery (ed.)Flame Wars: The Discourse of Cyberculture,Durham:Duke University Press. 'Cyberqueer',originally published in A.Medhurst and S.Munt(eds)(1997)Lesbian and Gay Studies:A Critical Introduction,London:Cassell. 'Queer spaces,modem boys and pagan statues:gay/lesbian identity and the construc- tion of cyberspace',originally published in Works and Days 13 (1-2)(1995). 'Notes on queer 'n'asian virtual sex',originally published in Amerasia Journal 20(1) (1994). "Trapped by the body?"telepresence technologies and transgendered performance in feminist and lesbian rewritings of cyberpunk fiction',originally published in Modern Fiction Studies 43(3)(1997). 'Coming across the future',originally published in J.Broadhurst Dixon and E.Cassidy (eds)(1998)Virtual Futures:Cyberotics,Technology and Post-human Pragmatism,London: Routledge. "The embodied computer/user',originally published in Body and Sociery 1(3-4)(1995). The virtual body in cyberspace',originally published in A.Balsamo (1996)Technologies of the Gendered Body:Reading Cyborg Women,Durham:Duke University Press. Will the real body please stand up?Boundary stories about virtual cultures',originally published in M.Benedikt(ed.)(1992)Cyberspace:First Steps,Cambridge:MIT. "The cyberpunk:the individual as reality pilot',originally published in L.McCaffery (ed.)(1991)Storming the Reality Studio:A Casebook of Cyberpunk and Postmodern Fiction, Durham:Duke University Press. Envisioning cyborg bodies:notes from current research',originally published in C.Gray (ed.)(1995)The Cyborg Handbook,London:Routledge. From psycho-body to cyber-systems:images as post-human entities',originally published in J.Broadhurst Dixon and E.Cassidy (eds)(1998)Virtual Futures:Cyberotics, Technology and Post-human Pragmatism.London:Routledge (revised by the author 1999). Ritual mechanics:cybernetic body art',originally published in M.Dery (1996)Escape Velocity:Cyberculture at the End of the Century,London:Hodder and Stoughton. Transsexuality:the postmodern body and/as technology',originally published in Exposure 30(1-2)(1995). 'Pain and subjectivity in virtual reality',originally published in L.Hershman Leeson (ed.)(1996)Clicking In:Hot Links to a Digital Culture,Seattle:Bay Press. 'Post-bodies,aging and virtual reality',originally published in M.Featherstone and A. Wernick (eds)(1995)Images of Aging:Cultural Representations of Later Life,London: Routledge
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS XXW 'The visible man:the male criminal subject as biomedical norm',originally published in J.Terry and M.Calvert (eds)(1997)Processed Lives:Gender and Technology in Everyday Life,London:Routledge. From hestia to home page:feminism and the concept of home in cyberspace',origi- nally published in N.Lykke and R.Braidotti (eds)(1996)Between Monsters,Goddesses and Cyborgs:Feminist Confrontations with Science,Medicine and Cyberspace,London:Zed Books. 'Community in the abstract:a political and ethical dilemma?,originally published in D.Holmes (ed.)(1997)Virtual Politics:Identity and Community in Cyberspace,London: Sage. 'Virtual urban futures',originally published in D.Holmes (ed.)(1997)Virtual Politics: Identity and Communication in Cybersociety,London:Sage. Virtual commonality:looking for india on the internet',originally published in S.Jones (ed.)Virtual Culture:Identity and Communication in Cybersociety,London:Sage. Border crossings:the internet and the dislocation of citizenship',originally published in S.Murray (ed.)Not on Any Map:Essays on Postcoloniality and Cultural Nationalism, Exeter:Exeter University Press. Race in/for cyberspace:identity tourism and racial passing on the internet',originally published in Works and Days 13 (1-2)(1995). Cyberspace and the globalization of culture',originally published in D.Porter (ed.) (1997)Internet Culture,London:Routledge. alt.civilizations.faq:cyberspace as the darker side of the west',originally published in Z.Sardar and J.Ravetz (eds)(1996)Cyberfutures:Culture and Politics on the Information Superhighway,London:Pluto
DAVID BELL INTRODUCTION I Cybercultures reader: a user's guide TE6snoIHlREApERn5amynepana ined.In this book,we take a purposefully broad definition of what cyberspace means: we want to think about the (overlapping but distinct)domains of digital communica- tions and information technologies -the Internet,the world wide web,email;plus all the subframes within these (bulletin boards or BBS,chat rooms,multi-user domains (MUDs)/dungeons,etc.)-alongside a host of related technological systems,including virtual reality,digital imaging systems,new biomedical technologies,artificial life and interactive digital entertainment systems.More important,however,we are concerned here with exploring these as technocu/tura/constructions;so,as well as thinking about the hardware (machines),software (programs)and wetware (humans),we need to consider the place of imagination and representation,cultural use and value,and focus our attention most squarely on human interactions with (and within)these emerging cybercultural formations. Compiling a Reader is,at one level,an exercise in ordering and architecture;this seems ironic,given the decentralized,non-linear,rhizomatic textures of cyberspace. That's why,in this User's Guide,we plan to suggest some different threads,or path- ways,or wormholes,that might link some of the essays together in productive ways. Each reader will be able to construct his or her own network of readings,of course; we are not in the business of defining particular ways through the Reader at the expense of any others.Our own attempt at ordering-which is partial,negotiated,and some- what clumsy-is born of the necessity of framing each essay within a particular context. However,most of the essays range across such contexts,and endless reshuffles could produce infinite variations,spiralling out like fractal geometries.But that's the reader's job,not the Reader's:not to begin on page one and read through to the last word of the volume,but to flick and fit,to find and chase your own hot links,to trace each
2 DAVID BELL rhizome,each thread,and to make connections that work for you-to construct your own hypertextua/web.All we aim to do here is to give you some tools that might aid such a project-some keywords,some alternative ways of approaching the act of reading the Reader,of using the Reader.Then,in the essay which follows,Barbara Kennedy takes us on a different reading into cyberculture:a subjective,embodied account of the human-machine interface,which-when read through the scene of a car crash-projects us through and in-between the flickering moments of machinic experience,of techno- cultural embodiment,of the pains and the pleasures of metal and meat.But for now, let's start with that most impossible of tasks:definition. Click here for more If we begin with an obvious,but no less vexing question,we might find a way to intro- duce some of the terms and concepts which litter the Reader's body.A starting point, then,might be to ask:where is cyberspace?We can answer this in a number of ways. We might say that cyberspace exists in the network of computers,modems,communi- cations links,nodes and pathways that connect users into something (or some things) like the World Wide Web,the Internet,the information superhighway,and so on.We could make cyberspace,in short,as the sum of the hardware that facilitates its prac- tice.Thinking about it cartographically or schematically,we can describe this hardware as a web,a network,a decentralized system-we can use the term rhizomatic to describe its infinite,uncentred,root-like structure.We can then plug in the facts of its evolu- tion from military needs to decentralize command systems as a way to minimize the damage of strategic strikes (since no node is more prominent than any other,any severed connection or crashed component will not send the entire system into collapse).Such a reading might next bring in the filtering outwards of this technology from its origins in the war machine through to non-military applications -first science,then academia more broadly,then education more broadly still,industry,commerce,entertainment,and finally into domestic space (see Edwards 1995).And this is certainly an important story to bear in mind,since we might see traces of military-industrial ideologies still at work in the technologies we now befriend and entrust.(A similar reading could be offered for virtual reality,artifical intelligence,etc.see Gray 1997.)If we read something like a political economy of cyberspace,then,we can map onto this the workings of what we might call cybercapitalism,seeing in the systems a coding which mutates the logic of industrial (global)capitalism domination,expansion,incorporation,consumerism into digital,viral form (see Luke 1999).The notions of information rich'and 'infor- mation poor',the formation and submission of a transnational 'digital underclass',the globalization of information control and surveillance...these are the motifs of such a reading (see in this volume Escobar,Robins,Kroker and Kroker,Stratton,Sardar;see also Sassen 1999). But such a mapping of hardware,while absolutely crucial,misses so much of what is going on in cyberspace.We should also begin by remembering that the term itself comes from science fiction;from the cyberpunk writings of William Gibson,who famously described cyberspace as a 'consensual hallucination'.This alternative approach intro-