Philosophy of Technology from a Cyberfeminist Perspective

Along with the transformations of technology itself, the philosophy of technology is continuously redefined epistemologically and ontologically. The prospects of further development, conceptual vectors, anthropological effects are always difficult to grasp. Among the now dominant mainstream approaches to the field there is a theory of technology of corporate utopianism, and there is a critical theory of technics with a dystopian ending. There is a large body of leftist critical studies on the corporate capture of technological opportunity and missed alternative possibilities. The goal of this paper is to show that the philosophy of technology exhibits not only historical, economic, ideological differences, but also under-explicated gender differences. A gendered approach will be offered for consideration which is based on a corpus of feminist philosophy, epistemology, and critique of science and technology, along with feminist critiques of the cultural canon. Feminist theory consistently problematizes invisible gendered frames of representations of reality. It allows us to notice the gender bias not only in the obvious, perhaps superficial facts of role inequality, but also in the formulation of scientific tasks and the organization of practices. The gender bias reaches deeply into the metaphysical attitudes and epistemological frameworks that determine the rational and irrational, the significant and the excluded. This is revealed by the questions: Whose science is this? Whose knowledge? What/whose experience matters? How are the meaning and purpose of the search defined? What rationality do they implement? The intersection of feminism and technology was a core concept of early cyberfeminism in the 90s and continues to be developed by contemporary researchers, writers, and data analysts. From feminist theory developed a specific critical and heuristic method that has a general significance much deeper than the gender-relations as we know them in everyday life.