SOURCE: “Sex, Memories, and Angry Women,” in Flame Wars: The Discourse of Cyberculture, edited by Mark Dery, Duke University Press, 1994, pp. 157-77.

In the following essay, Springer explores images of sexuality and technology in cyberpunk fiction.

One thing is certain: the riddle of mind, long a topic for philosophers, has taken on new urgency. Under pressure from the computer, the question of mind in relation to machine is becoming a central cultural preoccupation. It is becoming for us what sex was to the Victorians—threat and obsession, taboo and fascination.

—Sherry Turkle

The question of mind in relation to machine has indeed become a cultural preoccupation.¹ Debates rage in the popular press as well as in specialized science and philosophy texts over whether computers can accurately simulate the human mind and, conversely, whether human minds are fundamentally computers. So far, computers themselves have not become active participants in...