What is a transgressive reading of technological determinism?
Notions of ‘otherness’ introduced by new technologies like the telegraph enabled people to experience new alternate psychical spaces. People in Europe and America could experience the sense of otherness through travel, and express and describe their experiences by using the telegraph. Those who remained at home in turn translated those experiences through a projection of the imagination. Stories of a romantic and sexual nature resulted, for example a popular novel written by Ella Cheever Thayer, entitled Wired Love: a romance of dots and dashes in 1880. This novel used the oldest form of human communication, that of love and sexuality, expressed through the vehicle of the most contemporary form of technological communications of the time. The motto at the front of the book reads: ‘ “The old, old story,” – in a new, new way”.’ Ms Cheever Thayer was not in doubt of the intense power and transgressive sexual potential of new technologies. She had recognised an exciting alternative use of
