ZEROS + ONES DIGITAL WOMEN 4|» THE NEWTECHNOCULTURE

moments of unknown, disconnected lives, ”invisible voices
conducted through the tips of her fingers."

Poised as an interface between man and the world, she is
also wired to a network of digital machines: typists connected to
QWERTY alphabets, bodies shaped by the motion of the keys,
one hundred words a minute, viral speed, Thousands oi opera
tors, relays, calls, exchanges humming in Virtual conjunction,
learning the same phrases, flipping the same switches,
repeating the same responses, pushing plugs into the
answering iacks, maybe two hundred, three hundred times an
hours She has "a fingertip mastery of the ringing. listening, dial,
and other keys on her key shelf; of the row or rows of cords for
making connections; of the location and meaning of all parts of
the honey combed formation of jacks and trunks for recording,
for switching, for toll circuits, for tandem, for information-" It
becomes second nature it grows on her, "Having done this stufl
a few hundred thousand times, you become quite good at it. In
fact you're plugging, and connecting, and disconnecting ten,
twenty, forty cords at a time." After a while these processes
become "quite satisfying in a way, rather like weaving on an
upright loom,"

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