Wired Women: Gender and New Realities in Cyberspace [Paperback]

Cherny & Werse (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1878067737 | ISBN-13: 978-1878067739 | Publication Date: March 20, 1996 | Edition: First Printing

A provocative, thoughtful, and impassioned look at what women are doing on the Net, as well as the kinds of community and culture that women, and men, are finding and creating there, this collection of 14 essays addresses such topics as courtship via e-mail, censorship, avoiding flames on Usenet groups, and women's experiences in the gender-bending world of MUDs (multiple user domains).

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Like many past physical frontiers of the world, the online world has been, until recently, a bastion of male prerogative. Thankfully this is changing as more women gain access, and with statistical change comes a shift in online interpersonal relations and the very nature of the Net. Wired Women contains 15 essays written by women that provide a much-needed new perspective on a life--and a literature--that had for years been an odd cross between macho and nerdy.

From Library Journal

Weise, an Associated Press Internet correspondent, and Cherny, a researcher at AT&T Bell Labs, have pulled together 15 essays offering various insights from women heavily involved in the Internet. The topics range from the male chauvinism that permeates the net to cybercensorship at Carnegie Mellon. Many of the women narrate personal experiences, usually occurring on the job or while they were enrolled in an academic program. The world described is heavily chauvinistic yet populated with groups and mechanisms capable of providing diverse support to women from all parts of society. Some of the excitement and the technological breakthroughs that the Internet offers come through here, but the book lacks coherence and interpretation or analysis of what these anecdotal contributions really signify. For larger collections only.?Hilary Burton, Lawrence Livermore National Lab., Livermore, Cal.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 270 pages
• Publisher: Seal Press; First Printing edition (March 20, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1878067737
• ISBN-13: 978-1878067739
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,349,861 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Thought provoking, fascinating, a few flaws, January 1, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Wired Women: Gender and New Realities in Cyberspace (Paperback)

The essays, individually, were very strong, and collectively make for quite an interesting read.

Pro: Funny in places you don't expect; don't miss the "Clitoral Hoods" response to censorship at CMU, or numerous other great touches.

Con: It is a little disorienting to receive (it seemed) 6 explanations of Usenet in a row. It seems like careful editing could have prevented the essays from these tedious redundancies.

More importantly, I found all the essays to be worth my time reading, save one: the sensationalistic piece of tripe about "hacker's attitudes towards women." I can only conclude that the author of this piece was hopelessly naive, or else was going out of her(?) way to create a piece of fiction doing justice to every adolescent male's fantasies of hacker eliteness. So cliche riddled it would have made me laugh if it hadn't been so far removed from the rest of the book in quality.

In sum: excellent essays, well worth a read, skip the unspeakable hacker essay.