Zeroes & Ones by Sadie Plant

My review of Zeroes & Ones by Sadie Plant

Finally got around to reading this brain-bender from 1997, and yowza. I consider myself a fairly smart person, but the verbiage in this book is so dense it seems like it's written for a post-post-post graduate reading level. That's not a bad thing, it's just... be prepared to read and re-read sentences over and over again if your brain is in goblin mode (now your 2022 word of the year, according to Oxford dictionary!)

Plant, a professor and cultural philosopher, takes us on a tour of women's impact on technology throughout history. Beginning with Ada Lovelace's analytical difference engine, we start to see how women in society were not just responsible for the invention of computing, but how they were related to each other. From Lovelace, we quickly move to Anna Freud, daughter of Sigmund Freud, who was a little bit creepy about her thoughtfulness as she wove tapestries with her loom. Which, by the way, were impeccable, beautiful, and awesome. 

From there we take a tour through the early twentieth century, all the way up to the late 90s when this book was written, and we can see that if a male ever considered themselves to be the technologically more advanced sex, they have another think coming. Plant proves that the technological revolution was a sexual and feminist revolution. Now, in 2022, our mission is to keep that momentum going. If only. What the book fails to do, only because it was written in the 90s and not today, is show the dwindling numbers of women joining tech and STEM fields in the 2000s and beyond. 

I guess it's my turn to take up that mantle and carry on the storytelling. I shall do so with pride!

Definitely read this book if you need a reminder that women invented computing [and that men like Charles Babbage and Freud either thought too small, or only thought about penises (seriously, creepy)]. Plant's detailed weaving of technological history is so fine-tuned and intelligent, the book was originally a bit hard to start, but as it became more poignant, thorough, and important, I couldn't put it down.

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