Technology is not neutral. From structure to interface design, digital spaces are shaped by the same structures of power that are dominant in the physical world – patriarchy, capitalism, and colonialism. Historically, dominated by masculine frameworks, technological development has prioritised efficiency, power, and control over access and inclusivity. This has led to digital infrastructures that often alienate and exclude those who do not conform to dominant norms, particularly women and people of colour. In response, cyberfeminism emerged as a critical framework in the 1990s, offering both a critique of these systems and a vision for alternative digital futures.

While early cyberfeminist movements were limited by their predominantly Western and academic lens, they opened essential questions about gender, power, and digital space. Today, as we live in the post-digital world, these questions feel more urgent than ever. As the Internet becomes increasingly corporatised many artists, designers, and creatives are turning to communal, "softer" practices, such as hand-coded websites, experimental design, and digital gardening to imagine different ways of being "online". These approaches challenge the dominant narratives of scale, optimisation, and perfection instead of embracing slowness, play, care, and co-creation.

My critical report analyses the question: How can cyberfeminism, combined with communal softer practices, contribute to a more inclusive technological future? To explore this, I begin by examining how feminist theory critiques gendered foundations of technology, then consider how early internet cultures embodied communal values now largely lost in the age of algorithmic platforms. Finally, I draw from my own creative research to propose that digital spaces need to prioritise intent rather than impact and be shaped by feminist ethics combined with soft practices. These frameworks can model new modes of digital belonging, ones that prioritise representation, mutual support, and collective authorship over extraction and control.

All technology reflects the current state of the world including power structures and prejustice. Historically rooted in patriarchy and capitalism, many technological systems are built upon hierarchical, top-down models that prioritise control, efficiency, and profit. This makes them structurally rigid and resistant to change, slow to adapt to diverse needs, and often unable to accommodate non-normative identities or experiences. These infrastructures are designed to serve dominant groups, reproducing existing inequalities. systems. The book “Glitch feminism” by Legacy Russell (2020)

discusses how all bodies that differ from colonial gaze and do not align with the canon of white cisgender normativity poses a threat to current infrastructure and seen as a Glitch in digital systems. Glitched bodies are not considered in the process of designing new technologies. For example, Artificial intelligence (AI), trained on biased data, reinforces harmful stereotypes. In healthcare, AI bias manifests in diagnostic and treatment discrepancies. AI diagnostic tools often show lower accuracy rates for women, particularly women of colour. These systems frequently misdiagnose conditions or recommend inappropriate treatments because they were primarily trained on data from male patients. (Forbes, 2025)

In the book “Feminism confronts technology” Judy Wajcman (1991)

explores how technology is deeply embedded in a masculine framework, arguing that it’s not just a tool or a neutral force but a social and symbolic domain heavily shaped by gender, specifically values associated with masculinity. Wajcman argues that the very idea of technology is culturally coded as masculine. From the language used to describe tech (mastery, domination, control) to the industries that dominate its development (engineering, military), technology has been historically associated with male power and authority. Women aren’t just excluded from technology due to a lack of skills or opportunities, they’re also culturally alienated from it. The masculine identity of technical fields creates a symbolic barrier that makes it difficult for women to feel a sense of belonging or legitimacy. Judy Wajcman concludes that simply adding women into existing technological structures isn’t enough. What’s needed is a transformation of the masculine culture of technology itself, including rethinking design values, education, and what counts as a technical competence.

To build digital environments for women, we must look at who is constructing these systems. Research shows that women now constitute approximately 26% of the UK's tech workforce (Women in Tech Survey, 2023),

of which 76% experienced discrimination at the workplace while holding only about 5% of leadership positions within the UK tech sector (PwC, 2024).

It's no surprise many women choose to leave the industry, but their participation is crucial. We've seen the damage caused when marginalised groups are excluded from innovation.

In order to find ways of challenging the culture around tech to encourage women to engage with technology, I decided to speak with women working in creative tech about what they feel is currently lacking. Rifke Sadleir, a creative technologist, pointed out that representation is crucial, not just through imagery or text, but through the visibility of women actively creating, experimenting, and generating ideas.

This conversation made me reflect on the communal aspect of the tech. Mainstream tech often values efficiency, perfection, and profit over experimentation and creativity. This environment can be alienating, especially for newcomers. It's difficult to engage with computing if you don't already have experience, and the patriarchal culture surrounding tech often leaves women with little room to make mistakes.

The main intent of the project is to create a space that shows that computing and coding don't always have to be rigid and serious. It can be playful, it can be unfinished, it can be silly. I want to show that coding projects are mostly exploratory and evolving. By highlighting women and gender-diverse individuals engaging with technology in creative and artistic ways, the project challenges narrow stereotypes of who a "tech person" can be. I also aim to demystify the notion that coding is a closed or exclusive skillset. By making computation more approachable, my project encourages experimentation.

In 1994, a cultural theorist Sadie Plant coined the term "Cyberfeminism", it looks at online spaces as a world-building tool and challenges patriarchal hegemony. It's linked to the idea of using the Internet to resist traditional power structures, particularly those that dominate offline, everyday life.

However, the early development of cyberfeminism had limitations. Much like earlier feminist movements in the physical world, early cyberfeminism often reflected white, Western, and academic perspectives. It borrowed language and attitudes from first and second-wave feminism, which were criticised for excluding people of colour, queer people, and trans people. Critics, including scholars like Lisa Nakamura and Judy Wajcman, have pointed out that Zeros + Ones by Sadie Plant (1997)

does not sufficiently address how race, colonial history, and class shape women's relationships with technology. Her cyberfeminism is seen as being rooted in a Eurocentric and techno-utopian vision that neglects these important dimensions. Plant's writing often treats technology as an autonomous force that will inevitably liberate women. Intersectional feminism, by contrast, argues that technology is shaped by social, cultural, and political power structures, which can reproduce inequality if not critically examined. As a result, cyberfeminism initially failed to fully include global and intersectional voices, and digital spaces began to mirror real-world exclusions reproducing a "white cyberspace" shaped by white feminist theory. (L. Russell, 2020)

Even though some groups like the Old Boys' Network, Subrosa, and VNS Matrix worked to expand these ideas and include perspectives on race and colonialism, the most visible faces of cyberfeminism remained predominantly white. This highlighted how digital utopias could still carry the same exclusionary politics as the offline world. Despite these problems, cyberfeminism introduced the idea that feminism could engage with technology not just as a tool but as something to be critiqued and shaped. It encouraged feminists to think about how power, gender, capitalism, and control operate within digital systems, and how these systems are built by people with their own biases.

Cyberfeminism provides a way to challenge patriarchal narratives in technology by questioning and reshaping the culture around it. Instead of relying on corporate-owned platforms like traditional forums and social media, cyberfeminism encourages creating alternative digital spaces, archives, and networks. Cyberfeminism also advocates for changing the way we learn and share knowledge online. It moves away from traditional, hierarchical models of teaching, promoting decentralised, peer-to-peer networks that are more accessible, inclusive, and welcoming. Additionally, cyberfeminism emphasises the importance of documenting creative processes and experimental practices. By openly sharing the creative process, cyberfeminist approaches demystify technology and encourage more people to engage with it. In doing so, cyberfeminism doesn't just critique existing tech infrastructures, it actively offers alternative ways to interact with and reimagine digital spaces through a feminist lens.

My project’s interface and computation logic hand-coded and personalised is an active manifestation of cyberfeminist principles that reject cultural notions around technology and how it's supposed to look like. The DIY principle emphasises creative labour and contrasts sharply with corporately dominated spaces. The visitor is navigated not with efficiency, but with genuine curiosity. The visuals and interactions reflect a refusal to flatten digital space into binary logic, instead opening space for ambiguity and multiple experiences of being online. This reinforces the idea that cyberfeminism isn't just about who uses technology, but how we collectively imagine and shape the culture.

While exploring how I can challenge culture around technology, I found myself turning towards the early Internet. Not only as a nostalgic memory but a forgotten model of communal Internet. Before the Internet became a platform for commerce, influence, and algorithmic control, it was a space defined by raw experimentation, personal expression, and DIY spirit. Platforms like GeoCities, launched in the mid-1990s,

allowed users to create their webpages, organised into themed "neighbourhoods" like Hollywood, SiliconValley, or Tokyo. These weren't just categories, they created a virtual cityscape that made the Web feel less like a sea of isolated pages and more like a community of neighbours with shared interests.

In analysing early web communities like GeoCities, I've observed radically different values – openness, experimentation, imperfection, and mutual care. Unlike today's user experience (UX) patterns that prioritise uniformity and speed, GeoCities fostered visual diversity and emotional authorship. Users didn't need to code perfectly, instead, they learned by sharing messy HTML pages filled with GIFs, gradients, and bright banners. GeoCities was a place for digital self-expression, its lack of templates encouraged individuality. The design wasn't dictated by market-tested frameworks but by curiosity and play. In this way, it supported a kind of soft digital literacy, where users weren't just consuming content, but shaping the structure of the Web itself.

The artists, Olia Lialina and Dragan Espenschied, created a system to save the visuals of the websites on their Tumblr page One Terabyte of Kilobyte Age Photo Op,

which helped to introduce GeoCities to a younger audience. Their archive is not just nostalgic documentation, but an act of resistance. Their practice can be described as a race to reclaim internet history before the corporate Internet completely erased it. Some see old GeoCities sites as a form of folk art, not polished or commercial, but deeply personal and expressive.

The founder of GeoCities David Bohnett said: "GeoCities was not about self-promotion; it was about sharing your interest and your knowledge." The early Web had a tight feeling of community, and all the visual "clichés" helped to form it. For example – GIFS, a lot of them were made transparent, because they were meant to be shared. (Quartz, 2020)

After some of those web pages disappeared forever, we lost the idea that an individual is the maker of the Internet (O. Lialina, 2020).

The values of the early Web – playful exploration, open knowledge sharing, and collaboration mirror many cyberfeminist aspirations. Communal ethics of the early Web paired with a feminist lens that critiques power structures can offer a different vision for digital spaces that are inclusive not only in content but also in their structure.

This is why my project draws not only from cyberfeminist theory but also from the spirit of the early Web. I am not just inspired by its aesthetic but by the core values of accessibility, co-creation, and collective ownership. In combining these frameworks, I aim to prototype a digital environment that reflects communal, feminist values.

Communal attitudes toward GeoCities sharply contrast with the Internet we have today. The Internet is often seen as a decentralised utopian space where information flows freely, and every user interaction happens on an equal footing. The work "The Internet is Dead" by Hito Steyerl (2013)

challenges this narrative by discussing that the Internet is shaped by the political and economic state of the world. She discusses that rather than dying, the idea of the Internet has changed: "It is obviously completely surveilled, monopolized, and sanitized by common sense, copyright, control, and conformism… But there are no windows in this kind of structure. And there are no walls. The Internet is not dead. It is undead, and it's everywhere." The Internet is shaped by big corporations that commodify our understanding of life, which provides vastly different experiences for every user depending on their location, identity, and political circumstances. Steyerl suggests that digital technologies don't just affect what we see on screens - they infiltrate the material world. Computation is no longer confined to computers; it exists in infrastructure and objects. For instance, smart devices, algorithm policing, and facial recognition technology. "Moreover, it is not only form that migrates across screens, but also function. Computation and connectivity permeate matter and render it as raw material for algorithmic prediction, or potentially also as building blocks for alternate networks." Essentially, living in the post-internet world, we can see how boundaries between digital and physical are dissolving, and everything is turned into data. Something that was once seen as a free exchange space is now filled with harmful algorithms that reinforce the interests of data-driven capitalism.

This historical lineage is central to my project. Rather than borrowing the early Web's visuals as an aesthetic trend, I draw from its structural and social values, particularly the idea of digital neighbourhoods. These were not just metaphors but frameworks that actively encouraged connection, self-expression, and mutual care. My project reinterprets these models to create a non-hierarchical, communal digital space that prioritise visibility, collaboration, and emotional safety. Inspired by the way GeoCities organised users into virtual neighbourhoods, where people with shared interests coexisted, created, and learnt from each other. I use this structure to foster a feminist, community-led environment. Similarly, the metaphor of the digital garden informs the soft, evolving nature of the space. It grows slowly, values process over perfection, and invites users to co-create. In doing so, I aim to restore the communal spirit of the early Internet, not through nostalgic design but through the intentional architecture of belonging.

In a technological culture defined by speed, efficiency, and "visible" results, softness can be a radical act. The concept of "Softer Internet" values slowness over productivity, imperfection over polish, and process over performance, which also positions softness as a counter to current rigid digital infrastructures. The politics of softness is about learning how to move slowly together through the environment. "Moving more slowly so we can see the things that are less visible or deliberately made invisible by people interested in profit.” (M. Elyse, n.d.)

In "Slow Technology: Designing for Reflection", Hallnäs & Redström (2002)

propose slow technology as a design philosophy that shifts focus from efficiency to reflection. They argue that with the digitalisation of our everyday life, technology should not only optimise tasks but also create space for contemplation. Technology can be slow in various ways:

i) takes time to learn how it works,
ii) takes time to understand why it works the way it works,
iii) takes time to apply it,
iv) takes time to see what it is,
v) takes time to find out the consequences of using it.

This slowness may come from the complexity of the design, but it also can be intentional slowness in learning and understanding (i and ii) and in the presence (iii, iv, and v) of a work of art, a piece of music or any other object designed for reflection. “When we use something purely as an efficient tool, time disappears – we get things done. But when we engage with the design that invites reflection, time becomes noticeable as we are present in the moment” (Hallnäs & Redström, 2002).

I believe that adopting softer and slower approaches in digital is crucial to gradually move towards inclusive, community-oriented technical spaces. By intentionally slowing down, we give time to absorb and understand new knowledge, which also makes learning more accessible and less overwhelming. In doing so, we not only demystify technology but also create an environment where creativity and new ideas can flourish. A slower approach values the aesthetic and reflective dimensions of technology, which transforms it from a tool into an object of experience and connection.

My project aims to foster softer approaches. Rather than guiding a user toward certain outcomes or gamified achievements, the garden fosters space for stillness and reflection. The softness is visualised through colours and animations, which welcomes visitors to engage with the space. However, softness is not only an aesthetic but the structures of interactions that encourage the visitor to engage with space at their own pace. Simple animations, special sounds and calming colour palette invite visitors in the experience of attentiveness.

Inspired by Laurel Schwulst's metaphor of a website as a "shifting house" (2018),

I began to see digital spaces not as a static product, but as living environments that evolve with their community. For example, a room - a comforting, finite space that can be rearranged to suit the purpose of communal Internet.

Mainstream tech operates on a logic of scalability. A platform is "successful" if it can rapidly expand its user base. Growth is equated with legitimacy and value. A common critique of the communal internets is the lack of ability to expand because it challenges the narrative of scalability and efficiency. But this critique often misunderstands their purpose.

Caroline Sinders and Trammell Hudson, creators of Potato Internet, challenge this by asking "What if the future of the internet is all about scaling down?", their project shows that a functioning network can be built using small-scale, anti-extractive, and sustainable methods. Communal spaces don't fail to scale, they choose to grow differently, centring "care" over mass market success. Their values lie not in how big they get, but in how meaningfully they support those within them.

In the age of infinite content that somehow feels the same because of trends and rigid algorithms, I believe that slowing down can be about recovering physical space in a digital framework. A space that is finite, where a visitor will be able to explore and critically engage with ideas, with a space to reflect. As Virginia Woolf writes in her work "Room of One's Own" (1929)

"a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction," and "that the absence of female fiction is a result of a lack of opportunity rather than a distinct absence of talent." Woolf's metaphor can be used to argue that the absence of women's creative computational output is not due to the lack of talent, but a lack of opportunity and space. My project takes this metaphor "online", proposing what a "room" might look like for women creative technologists today.

This idea is further shaped by the metaphor of the "Digital Garden". Mike Caulfield's (1998) keynote "The Garden and The Stream"

laid the foundation for the current understanding of the term. He argues that digital gardening is not about specific tools, but a completely different way to think about our digital behavior. He reframed it as an alternative to the "stream" – a fleeting feed of social media and envisioned gardens as spaces for slow thinking, learning, and curating knowledge - Internet-based communal spaces that foster ideas and experiences. (Serpentine, 2021)

Though not framed as explicitly feminist by its originators, digital gardening has been embraced by feminist designers and thinkers like Laura Schwulst and Annika Hansteen-Izora

as a counter to the masculinised culture of technological mastery and production. Rather than displaying authority, gardens often include uncertainty, cross reference, and personal context. This creates a more relational way of thinking online, which invites visitors into conversation rather than consumption.

Gardens encourage co-authorship and public learning, often including sections like "notes", "progress" or "resources I love". Some of them are hosted on platforms like GitHub or use open-source tools that allow others to learn and build from them. This is a model of interaction, where users don't compete for attention, but build together over time.

One of the examples of digital gardening is the website "Your World of Text" by Ander Badr.

This project is a space filled with text editable by any visitor and changes are shown in real time. As visitors move, they uncover conversations, personal notes, ASCII art, confessions, or quiet poetry. This site is always changing, there is no archive or profiles, it's just open space for expression.

Each visitor has the same level of control with no hierarchy. This openness creates room for spontaneous connections. Visitors leave notes for others, no one, or even for their future selves. Even though the site is built on simple code and text, its interface invites a slow, reflective type of interaction. It feels gentle. Visitors stumble upon messages like someone walking through the forest of thoughts.

Badr's project shows how digital tools can create a connection not through hyper-efficiency or monetisation, but through shared space, co-authorship, and vulnerability. Messages are left for unknown others, or even just for the pleasure of being witnessed. This turns the act of writing into an offering rather than a broadcast. It shows that even the simplest web structure, when designed without hierarchies or commercial intent, can create room for meaningful expression and unexpected care.

Digital gardening has directly informed both the metaphor and structure of my project. Like a garden, my site grows organically through user submissions and changes over time. It avoids centralised feeds, replacing them with exploratory navigation. The interface invites communal authorship through participatory tools that decentralises control over content. Cyber garden visualises the metaphor of a community garden.

This practice is deeply rooted in British culture, which has been historically places that form communities and connections. The planting of flowers symbolises adding contribution to the community in the shape of ideas, resources, and inspiration. Flowers differ in shape and colour, which symbolises the diversity of the space. The visuals are also a metaphor for confronting digital urbanisation (corporate dominance), and prioritising connection and visualised contributions of several gardeners. The experience of being in the garden is one of cohabitation rather than consumption, it resists isolated browsing in favour of collective witnessing.

The term "Handmade Web" refers to web pages coded by hand rather than by software; web pages made and maintained by individuals rather than by businesses or corporations; web pages that are provisional, temporary, or one-of-a-kind; web pages that challenge conventions of reading, writing, design, ownership, privacy, security, or identity. (J. R. Carpenter, 2015)

My project was fully coded and produced by hand. I chose this approach because I believe in evoking and advocating for an active practice of making a web shaped by individuals rather than companies. Similar to early GeoCities websites, through my project, I share my intention as a designer and encourage others to share their ideas and interests. This DIY approach highlights the manual labour that goes into programming and repositions it as a creative act. I believe that in today's Internet dominated by corporations and algorithms, hand coding and self-publishing experimental web projects can be seen as inherently radical acts.

The project was imagined through conversations with women in creative technologies, where a recurring theme was the rigid tech culture and the need for space to feel safe, explore, experiment, and fail. These conversations revealed how current tech culture privileges perfection, speed, and competition leaving little room for community learning. Through conversations, I began to prioritise values that previously felt secondary.

• Tech neutrality – understanding technology as a tool rather than a utopian solution. It should serve to build spaces rooted in empathy, where the intent behind a tool matters more than its immediate impact. This means tuning into our inner selves to consider how we can use technology more consciously and responsibly.
• Softer approaches in digital spaces – embracing slowness, sustainability, and care. Making space for reflection, curiosity, and continuous learning, rather than constantly producing or optimising.
• Community-oriented design – fostering environments built on mutual support and knowledge exchange. This means moving away from linear, algorithm-driven interactions toward open, non-hierarchical systems. It also means valuing archiving as a feminist practice, preserving creative work not just as content, but as cultural memory.

Inspired by theoretical ideas such as "A Room of One's Own" by Virginia Woolf

combined with cyberfeminist softer approaches, I imagined a digital space that grows like a garden, where each contributor leaves traces of their work and their identity. The goal was never to "finish" the space or the project but to continually build and reflect, making the space alive.

Intersectionality is an active and ongoing goal for my project. My intention for the garden is to actively illustrate how diverse identities grow and interact, creating a structurally rich environment that embodies diversity. Inspired by the essay "Erasing Race" by Beth E. Kolko (2020)

, I acknowledge the limitation of the early cyberfeminist conception of cyberspaces as "raceless", which limited the expression of racial identity in digital. This critical idea led me to include not only predefined identity tags but also the option for visitors to create and select their own tags, providing the space for self-identifying if they choose to. Additionally, I am trying to seek out contributions specifically from marginalised communities and offering the possibility to add projects in various languages beyond English. Recognising that intersectionality doesn't exist in a static achieved form, the garden incorporates a feedback loop, enabling visitors to actively contribute and suggest improvements.

In addressing my research question, the final output offers a tangible digital prototype rooted in feminist and intersectional critique. My motivation stems from the recognition of the harm caused by exclusionary tech cultures, which marginalise diversity and prioritise profit over empathy. The space denies linear social media narratives and treats each submission equally. By designing spaces that invite softness, communal participation, and continuous reflection, I aim to reshape digital interaction into a more inclusive and creative technological future.

Additionally, the project is uploaded and hosted on GitHub, which allows visitors to download the code and use it in their own projects. It also enables them to contribute feedback or suggest improvements. Through GitHub's pull request feature, contributions can be reviewed and merged, allowing the digital garden to evolve collaboratively.

I see the garden as a contribution towards an inclusive technological future. The project not only prioritises representation but also focuses on infrastructure. The interaction loop actively encourages visitors to self-identify, using language flexibility, non-prescriptive input fields, and open keyword markings that resist rigid categorising. These elements reflect a commitment to designing with rather than for marginalised communities, offering not a finished product, but an adaptable framework. As a designer, through the metaphor of growing a garden, I want to illustrate that inclusivity is not a feature set, but an evolving rational ethic. This signals a future where digital spaces are shaped by the pluralities of those who inhabit them.

Throughout this report, I have analysed cyberfeminist and softer approaches that can contribute to a more inclusive technological future. Gathering theories by Legacy Russell, Judy Wajcman, Virginia Woolf, Mike Caulfield, and other writers and designers, I have visualised softer communal space dedicated for sharing. By prioritising empathy and care, these practices challenge dominant narratives and offer digital space combined with alternative version of digital exploration.

Moving forward, my aim is to continue designing specifically for women. In a technological world primarily structured around male experience, my work seeks to shift narratives, ensuring that women not only feel welcomed, but are actively represented and empowered within digital frameworks.