Teranesia

‘Amita has designed a computer?’ Now Prabir knew he was being taken for a ride. ‘When did she find time to study engineering?’

‘Oh, she’ll hire an engineer when she gets funding.’ Keith waved a hand dismissively. ‘Her contribution is purely intellectual. Mathematical.’

‘Mathematical?’

Keith regarded him dubiously. ‘You might be a bit young to understand this. Do you know how computers work, Prabir?’

‘More or less.’

‘Zeroes and ones. You understand the binary system?’ Keith grabbed a notepad that was lying on the coffee table in front of them, and drew the two digits.

Prabir tried not to sound offended. ‘Yes, I understand.’

‘Have you ever wondered why computers are so hostile to women?’

‘Hostile?’ Prabir had some trouble deciding what Keith was most likely to mean by this claim. Paranoid delusions of artificial intelligence weren’t necessarily out of the question. ‘You mean … why do some men harass women on the net?’

Keith said, ‘Well, yes, but it goes far deeper than that. Amita’s work not only reveals the fundamental reason for the problem, it offers a stunningly simple solution.’ He jabbed at the notepad with his finger. ‘Zero and one. Absence and presence. And just look how they’re drawn! “Zero” is female: the womb, the vagina. “One” is male: unmistakably phallic. The woman is absent, marginalised, excluded. The man is present, dominant, imperious. This blatantly sexist coding underpins all modern digital technology! And then we ask ourselves why women find it an unwelcoming space!

‘So Amita proposed a new paradigm, for both hardware and software. The old, male-dominated hardware is replaced by the transgressive computer, or transputer. The old, male-dominated software is translated into a brand-new language, called Ada – after Ada Lovelace, the unsung mother of computing.’

Prabir ventured, ‘I think someone’s already named a language after her.’

But Keith refused to be distracted. ‘What is this new paradigm? It’s simple! Every one becomes a zero, every zero becomes a one: a universal digital gender reassignment! And the beauty of it is, on the surface everything looks like business as usual. If all hardware and all software undergoes the same inversion, programs continue to produce the same results – there is no change whatsoever to the naked eye. But deep inside every microchip, the old phallocentric coding is being subverted, billions of times per second! The old power structures are turned on their head every time we switch on our computers!’

Prabir had had enough; Keith must think he was some kind of uneducated hick who’d swallow anything. If he’d been feeding him these increasingly tall tales to see how much he could get away with, it was time to call his bluff.

‘Computers don’t have little numerals inside them,’ Prabir said flatly. ‘Zero is usually coded in memories by the absence of electrical charge in a capacitor, and one by the presence of charge, but sometimes even that’s reversed. And even when it’s not reversed … absence is coded as absence, presence is coded as presence. There are no diagrams of vaginas and penises, or anything else to do with people’s sex.’

Keith said uncertainly, ‘Well, maybe not literally. But you can hardly deny that the symbols themselves permeate technological culture. No one lives in the so-called “physical” world of electrons and capacitors, Prabir! The true space we inhabit is cultural!’

Prabir stood and picked up the notepad, exasperated. ‘These are Hindu-Arabic numerals! People have used them for centuries; they have nothing to do with computers. If you really imagine that they’re drawings of private parts, it’s not technology that should offend you – it’s mathematics!’

Keith shouted, ‘Yes, yes! You’re absolutely right! Don’t move; I’ll be back in five seconds!’ He ran from the room.

Madhusree gave Prabir a questioning look. Prabir said, ‘Don’t worry, we’re just playing a game.’ And I’m winning.

Keith returned, carrying a book, flicking through it, looking for something. ‘Aha!’ He held the cover up for Prabir. ‘From the Proceedings of the Fifteenth Annual Conference of Cyberfeminist Discourse. This was the paper Amita gave last year, which made The New York Times describe her as “Canada’s most exciting living intellectual”.’