Although computer-based personal assistants like Siri are increasingly ubiquitous, few users stop to ask what it means that some assistants are gendered female, others male. Why isStar Trek’s computer coded as female, while HAL 9000 in2001: A Space Odysseyis heard as male? By examining how gender is built into these devices, author Liz W. Faber explores contentious questions around gender: its fundamental constructedness, the rigidity of the gender binary, and culturally situated attitudes on male and female embodiment."