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What is it about women and machines, the cyberfeminists wondered? Why do women. Rumours of the death of femi-
nism (and cyberfeminism) have been greatly exaggerated. Recently, feminist voices from all over have been calling for a
new activism and vision in global feminisms today. In the U.S.A. bell hooks speaks about communities of concern, and
also about “feminist movement" which implies constant mol --thinking as action, movement, and flux. Avital Ronell
calls for a “justice” feminism that is not simply reactive, but inventive, creative--and that presupposes a feminist embrac-
ing and use of technologies and new social models that can assist communication and promote ways of living and work-
ing that are more just, pleasurable, and autonomous. Donna Haraway calls for feminists to engage in “freedom projects”
which thoroughly analyse the effects of technology on women and children in different countries, and underscores the im-
portance of feminist organising and resistance. Nancy Lublin calls for a “praxis feminism" rooted in a materialist analysis
of women's actual lives and situations.
Contemporary feminists are struggling to work out in lived practice how to live in a house of difference. This means en-
gaging in the lived experience of affirmative work, sociality, and activism, with women from diverse backgrounds, ages,
races, and classes without resorting to quotas, tokenism, political correctness, or “special” considerations. It is crucial for
the development of contemporary global feminisms that women actively seek out and develop these experiences.

We live in a time of crass power consolidation through global pancapitalism. Information technologies are profoundly
changing our public and private lives and the experience of what it is to live in a body in relation to other bodies. For those
who would resist the relentless erasures of history and try to disturb the monumental reign of market ideology, it is neces-
Sary to muster all their knowledge and cunning to find ways of creating active nodes of subversion and resistance on how-
ever modest a scale. A new politicized cyberfeminism can develop strategies for such resistance and for new forms of ac-
tivist networks. Collaborations between long-time feminist activists and younger net-savvy women eager to develop con-
temporary feminist practices are a strategy for creating bridges to past feminist histories, strategies, and tactics that are
important resources for contemporary feminisms.

For example,the Cyberfeminist International, a group of artists, technicians, and theorists inspired by the Old Boys
Network, are planning their second international symposium. "Strategies for A New Cyberfeminism" will focus on feminist
critiques of technology; activism; biotechnology; connections between technology and difference; as well as down-and-
dirty discussions of cyberfeminist theories, strategies and practices. Such international communication and collaboration
is a crucial step toward understanding (and being able to act on) local and global differences that are affected by the ways
that new technologies are reconstructing women's lives, bodies, and subjectivities.

| propose that new cyberfeminist strategies involve examining the connections between historical and contemporary sites
of feminist struggle and resistance and the new technological developments which are having a profound impact on these
sites. For example:

The interconnections of technology and difference: The every-day embodied conditions of womens lives are being
profoundly altered by the new technologies. This is as true for highly educated professional (first world) women in
the sciences, medical, and computer industries, as it is for clerical and factory workers in the just-in-time
telecommunications home-work industry, and for rural village women working in chips factories and assembly
sweat-shops. It is vital for women to consciously analyse their own immediate situations and conditions in order
to understand how they are being reshaped by the new global technologies. At the root of such consciousness-
raising lie questions of agency and power which women need to address.

The conditions of production (labour) and reproduction—-historically always already linked for women--are chang-
ing in ways that are having drastic consequences for the lives of all women. Bodies and body processes--particu-
larly those of women and fetuses-- are being re-engineered. Cyberfeminists need to interrogate the new flesh-, re-
productive-, and gene technologies, and assess their particular political, economic, social and emotional impact