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.

Learn how to use a mouse, start a program, access menus, create and save a document. Included in the front of this book is an introduction to computing. File management and changing Windows settings is also included.

Supporting the Business Services Training Package Common Unit 107A, this text covers the competencies required to start up a personal computer or business computer terminal, correctly navigate the desktop environment and use a range of basic functions.

Developers can use the same technology to build both automated voice services as well as visual Web sites, and Ken Abbott shows how in this comprehensive introduction to the syntax, concepts and strategies relevant to VoiceXML.

Presents step-by-step instructions for building a PC along with buying advice for videocards, soundcards, speakers, DVD drives, and other components.