cal bodies in which they may or may not be grounded' ' (p. 35). Her primary interest in cyberspace stems from curiosity over these computer-mediated collective structures in whatever There are signs and portents everywhere. Enough so that dissecting and forecasting the social impact of today's computer form and how they invite ''emergent behavior, for new social forms that arise in a circumstance in which body, meet, place, networks and virtual reality systems is a respectable growth industry in its own right. Many of the finest publications on the and even space mean something quite different from our accustomed understanding'' (p. 37). subject of technosocial change, in fact, come from this publisher. Stone, Assistant Professor and Director of the Interactive Central to Stone's thesis is the premise that we humans who are actively using computer systems are evolving into new Multimedia Laboratory (ACTlab, University of Texas, Austin), also published and known under the name Sandy Stone, adds beings, that hoary science fiction concept of cyborgs. She postulates that a few of us-her best example is the astrophysicist her observations, philosophical (theoretical) opinions to the cacophonous discourse issuing daily from the hallowed halls (vir-
Stephen Hawking-are already in symbiotic relations with biomechanical systems, our intellectual capabilities enhanced and tual and physical) of academia.
Stone's commentary on virtual reality, computer-mediated continued, in Hawking's case, by these technological prostheses: ''No [Vortrax] box, no discourse; in the absence of the communications systems, and the emotion of desire is organized into an introduction, eight chapters, notes, and a bibliography.
prosthetic, Hawking's intellect becomes a tree falling in the forest with nobody around to hear it'' (p. 5). The danger here, Besides her own writings dating between 1991-1995, the other authors most cited in the bibliography are Brenda Laurel and of course, is that if the mechanical comes to define our existence as humans, what happens to those who are not fortunate enough Donna Haraway. There is no index, and no quantitative data illuminate any of Stone's presentation.
to possess such devices? Will they be second-class citizens, biomechanically poor, in the cyborg future Stone seems to be The introduction, while a valiant attempt to set the stage for Stone's play, appears unfocused and overly long. It is like read-envisioning, trapped in their physical bodies as much as Hawking's mind would be trapped in his today without mechan-ing an unstructured hypertext document with few visible anchors. In her introduction, Stone mixes a playful writing style ical aids. For Stone, the cyborg and other issues surrounding virtual systems ''all suggest a radical rewriting, in the technoso-with fantasy, journalism, documentary fiction, and pompous academic sentences. In trying to have her metaphysical cake cial space (which is largely constituted by textual production, much of which is the computer code by whose prosthetic media-and eat it too, Stone defends her chosen methodology as ''thoroughly experimental and subject to recall for factory modifica-tion a significant portion of the space of technosociality exists), of the bounded individual as the standard social unit and vali-tion at any time. . . . I have tried to organize the work as a set of provocations whose central ideas remain more or less dated [warranted] social actant'' (p. 43). Stone's title promises a package that should examine the unstated-hovering, as I would like to imagine them, in the background. In this effort, my idealized stance as a novelist is confrontation, if one wishes to view change in this fashion, between human emotions and the technological apparatus that the motivating concept'' (p. 21). There is a war in this book, but it is between the author's methodology, execution, and per-allow us, to ''reach out and touch someone.'' Although Stone writes in her introduction that ''My first organized piece of haps her perception of what purpose the book should serve. Instead of following the KISS principle asked in her introduc-research in the field of virtual systems involved studying a group of phone sex workers in the early 1980s'' (p. 17), there are no tion-''How best to convey a complex description of a culture whose chief activity is complex description?'' (p. 31) -Stone published references by Stone herself in the bibliography earlier than 1991. That work, though barely evidenced in this book, seeks to ''hold these various discourses in productive tension without allowing them to collapse into a univocal account'' (p. framed some of her concerns: ''How are bodies represented through technology? How is desire constructed through repre-30), a methodology referred to by another writer as ''cat's cradle.'' For this reviewer, the cradle collapsed into a Gordian sentation? What is the relationship of the body to self-awareness? What is the role of play in an emergent paradigm of knot long before the concluding chapter.
Aside from Chapter 4, a ''pause for theory,'' Stone extrapo-human-computer interaction? And overall: What is happening to sociality and desire at the close of mechanical age?'' lates from real-world events that, at least to her mind, resonate with complex questions regarding ontology and epistemology.
In reconstructing the rape trial at the center of Chapter 2, Stone reveals in her first footnote to the chapter more of her Chapter 1, Collective Structures, would have served as a better, more cohesive introduction to the book. She takes as her pri-non-traditional research methodology and presentation style: ''My account of the trial itself should also be treated with mary text William Gibson's science fiction novels beginning with Neuromancer (1984). Gibson, for those unaware, is cred-suspicion. Although the viewpoint shifts into and out of first person, I was not present at the trial, nor were the courtroom ited with the first use of the word cyberspace. Stone believes one of the most important problems surrounding the simulacrum scenes taken from official court transcripts, which were prohibitively expensive'' (p. 189). While she called her data gathering of physicality through computers and electromechanical pros-''in depth,'' lacking the trial transcripts and citing expense as a factor seems an anomalous and weak excuse. Her account of the trial, journalistic fiction unsupported by the key ingredient