[Commlist] New book: The Computer’s Voice

*The Computer’s Voice***

 From Star Trek to Siri

*Liz W. Faber***

*_https://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/9781517909765/the-computers-voice/ 
<https://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/9781517909765/the-computers-voice/> _*

*__*

*Receive a 20% discount online:*

*CSLF2020*

A deconstruction of gender through the voices of Siri, HAL 9000, and 
other computers that talk.

Although computer-based personal assistants like Siri are increasingly 
ubiquitous, few users stop to ask what it means that some assistants are 
gendered female, others male. Why is /Star Trek/’s computer coded as 
female, while HAL 9000 in /2001: A Space Odyssey/ is heard as male? By 
examining how gender is built into these devices, author Liz W. Faber 
explores contentious questions around gender: its fundamental 
constructedness, the rigidity of the gender binary, and culturally 
situated attitudes on male and female embodiment.

Faber begins by considering talking spaceships like those in /Star 
Trek/, the film /Dark Star/, and the TV series /Quark/, revealing the 
ideologies that underlie space-age progress. She then moves on to an 
intrepid decade-by-decade investigation of computer voices, tracing the 
evolution from the masculine voices of the ’70s and ’80s to the feminine 
ones of the ’90s and ’00s. Faber ends her account in the present, with 
incisive looks at the film /Her/ and Siri herself.

Going beyond current scholarship on robots and AI to focus on 
voice-interactive computers, /The Computer’s Voice/ breaks new ground in 
questions surrounding media, technology, and gender. It makes important 
contributions to conversations around the gender gap and the increasing 
acceptance of transgender people.

*Liz W. Faber*is a media scholar who teaches academic writing and 
American studies at Manhattanville College and English at Dutchess 
Community College.

Combined Academic Publishers

*University of Minnesota Press**| December 2020 | 256pp | 9781517909765 
| PB | £20.99**

*Price subject to change.

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