Book excerpt: Writing from the perspective of an art historian (and a former public relations person for Playboy), Julie Wosk examines the role of machines in helping women reconfigure and transform their lives. In this text, she takes her readers through a gallery of fiction and high and low art which depicts women in their association with machines. From sitting at the spinning wheel to typing at the typewriter, to driving automobiles, piloting airplanes, pounding rivets, and then working on the computer, Wosk tells the story of women celebrating their new liberties and growing competency but, along the way, gives interesting examples of ambivalence, male-engendered sexual fantasy, and fears of displacement.