"A deconstruction of gender through the voices of Siri, HAL 9000, and other computers that talk"--
The author explores the historical, theoretical, and aesthetic aspects of the computer voice from Star Trek to Siri, particularly the relationship between gender and artificial intelligence. She considers representations of spaceship computers in Star Trek: The Original Series and the film 2001 and subsequent parodies and reworkings of their themes in the films Dark Star and Moon and the television series Quark and Star Trek: The Next Generation, then computers in the dystopic films of the 1970s, in which computers tend to have male voices and act as the son to their programmer/creator fathers or as all-knowing fathers, particularly Colossus: The Forbin Project, THX 1138, Rollerball, and Demon Seed and how they portray cultural and business struggles in the decade in terms of militarization and corporatization; the 1980s films TRON and Electric Dreams and their representations of a rapidly changing cultural conception of computers in the context of narratives of homosocial struggle; computers in films of the 1990s and 2000s that serve in domestic roles, particularly in domestic spaces run by female-voiced computers, including Fortress and Smart House, which illustrate computers as replacements for women who were absent from the home, as well as male servants in Demon Seed and Iron Man; and the gender of Siri and representations of her in Apple commercials, The Big Bang Theory, and Her. Annotation ©2021 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)
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.
