Sadie Plant (born Sarah Jane Plant; 16 March 1964) is a British philosopher, cultural theorist, and author. She is best known for her work in

feminism Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideology, ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social gender equality, equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern soci ...

, particularly cyberfeminism. Plant's work is primarily concerned with the impacts of technological developments, including the side effects of its progress. Plant's publications include books, commissioned reports, articles, and translations from German into English.

Education

She earned her PhD in Philosophy from the

University of Manchester The University of Manchester is a public university, public research university in Manchester, England. The main campus is south of Manchester city centre, Manchester City Centre on Wilmslow Road, Oxford Road. The University of Manchester is c ...

in 1989 and subsequently taught at the

University of Birmingham The University of Birmingham (informally Birmingham University) is a Public university, public research university in Birmingham, England. It received its royal charter in 1900 as a successor to Queen's College, Birmingham (founded in 1825 as ...

's Department of Cultural Studies (formerly the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies) before going on to found the

Cybernetic Culture Research Unit The Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU, sometimes typeset Ccru) was an experimental cultural theorist collective formed in late 1995 at Warwick University, England and gradually separated from academia until it dissolved in the early 2000s. I ...

with colleague

Nick Land Nick Land (born 14 March 1962) is an English philosopher best known for popularising the ideology of accelerationism. His work has been tied to the development of speculative realism, and departs from the formal conventions of academic writing ...

at the

University of Warwick The University of Warwick ( ; abbreviated as ''Warw.'' in post-nominal letters) is a public research university on the outskirts of Coventry between the West Midlands and Warwickshire, England. The university was founded in 1965 as part of ...

, where she was a faculty member. Her original research was related to the

Situationist International The Situationist International (SI) was an international organization of social revolutionaries made up of avant-garde artists, intellectuals, and political theorists. It was prominent in Europe from its formation in 1957 to its dissolution ...

before turning to the social and political potential of cyber-technology. Her writing in the 1990s would prove influential in the development of cyberfeminism.

Career

Sadie Plant left the

in 1997 to write full-time. She published a cultural history of drug use and control, and a report on the social effects of mobile phones, as well as articles in publications as varied as the ''

Financial Times The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and also published digitally that focuses on business and economic Current affairs (news format), current affairs. Based in London, the paper is owned by a Jap ...

'', ''

Wired Wired may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Music * ''Wired'' (Jeff Beck album), 1976 * ''Wired'' (Hugh Cornwell album), 1993 * ''Wired'' (Mallory Knox album), 2017 * "Wired", a song by Prism from their album '' Beat Street'' * "Wired ...

'', ''

Blueprint A blueprint is a reproduction of a technical drawing or engineering drawing using a contact print process on light-sensitive sheets introduced by Sir John Herschel in 1842. The process allowed rapid and accurate production of an unlimited number ...

'', and '' Dazed and Confused''. She published the book Z''eros + Ones'' in 1997, in which she reveals how women's role in programming has been overlooked. She was interviewed as one of the 'People to Watch' in the Winter 2000–2001 issue of ''Time''. In 2003 Plant wrote a chapter in ''The Information Society Reader,'' titled "The Future Looms: Weaving Women and Cybernetics." Here Plant writes about the entwined history of women and the field of

cybernetics Cybernetics is the transdisciplinary study of circular causal processes such as feedback and recursion, where the effects of a system's actions (its outputs) return as inputs to that system, influencing subsequent action. It is concerned with ...

through the figure of

Ada Lovelace Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (''née'' Byron; 10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852), also known as Ada Lovelace, was an English mathematician and writer chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's proposed mechanical general-pur ...

Publications

*''The Most Radical Gesture: The Situationist International in a Postmodern Age'' (1992, Routledge) *''Zeros + Ones: Digital Women and the New Technoculture'' (1997, Doubleday) *''Writing on Drugs'' (1999, Faber and Faber) *The Future Looms: Weaving women and cybernetics, Chapter in The Information Society Reader (2003, Routledge)

References

General references

The Independent

* http://www.faber.co.uk/author/sadie-plant/ * http://www2.tate.org.uk/intermediaart/entry15419.shtm * http://www.v2.nl/archive/people/sadie-plant * https://web.archive.org/web/20120308043525/http://www.rigb.org/contentControl?action=displayContent&id=00000001211 * http://future-nonstop.org/c/bb37122bc11c3dd0787d5205d9debc41 * http://www.ephemerajournal.org/sites/default/files/3-1plantandland.pdf

External links

A short biography of Sadie Plant
– outdated site with several article links * – essay by Sadie Plant commissioned by

Motorola Motorola, Inc. () was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois. It was founded by brothers Paul and Joseph Galvin in 1928 and had been named Motorola since 1947. Many of Motorola's products had been ...

. * – text-only version of above, formatted for US Letter paper. *Sadie Plant, http://future-nonstop.org/c/cee09dd059c37acc692ef6ba19465afb talking in Vienna on systems, technology and gender], 1996 *Interview with Sadie Plant
Getting With The Program, Chicago Tribune, 3 November 1996
{{DEFAULTSORT:Plant, Sadie 1964 births Living people British women writers British writers People educated at Alcester Grammar School Academics of the University of Warwick Academics of the University of Birmingham Accelerationism Alumni of the University of Manchester Philosophers of technology Women cyberneticists