Cyberpunk's Other Hackers: The Girls Who Were Plugged In

Abstract

This article locates an alternate paradigm of hacking in feminist cyberfiction, notably, James Tiptree, Jr.’s proto-cyberpunk novella, “The Girl Who Was Plugged In” (1973). I argue this story critically reorients our understanding of how information technologies and their material artifacts construct and reinforce norms of able-bodiedness and ability. Drawing on archival materials from Bell System, early information theory, and crip theory, my reading reveals that Tiptree’s portrayal of disability is tied to a cybernetic conception of error and noise. These frictions between users and their machine interfaces materialize unexamined performances of critical labor and noncompliance that I link to the emerging field of crip technoscience. Tracking these disruptions in cybernetic feedback across “The Girl Who Was Plugged In” and in historical accounts of the telephone switchboard operator, I show that error and noise underpin an early example of a feminist hacking ethos, and also crip accounts of electronic disembodiment often imputed to information society and cyberpunk fiction.