1985 Handsworth riots 1500 police officers drafted into the area, about 45 shops looted and burnt, and a trail of damage running into hundreds of thousands of pounds. As well as racial tension, unemployment was seen as a major factor in the riots; by the time of the riots, fewer than 5% of the black population to have left school that summer had found employment. The riots were the first of a series of similar riots across the country during the autumn of 1985, notably the Broadwater Farm riot in London which also resulted in a fatality (the murder of policeman Keith Blakelock).
The Girl Who Was Plugged In in order to move up in society. Social status within this society is so dependent on what body one has in that people with “bad” bodies want to move into “better” bodies. Hicks says that this is precisely what gender disembodiment really means within the context of this short story. In relationship to human embodiment and this story, Scientists at MIT have created a device called sensory fiction that allows a reader to physically feel with his or her body what is happening in the story These scientists decided to use The Girl Who Was Plugged In as a prototype