Television programs are increasingly featuring information technologies like computers as significant narrative devices, including the use of computer-based technologies as virtual worlds or environments in which characters interact, the use of computers as tools in problem solving and confronting conflict, and characters that are part human, part machine. The television programs include science fiction shows, commercials, and children's shows. Within the state-of-the-art worlds of these television programs are embedded representations, particularly linguistic ones, which inscribe simplified, compartmentalized, and encased conceptions of race, culture, gender, power, personal agency and identity. The program's depictions have consequences on the ways children situate their identities of race and gender, as well as personal and social agency; language limits and shapes, and specialized vocabulary can alienate and create a feeling of deficiency or "otherness" in young viewers. Languages spoken on high-tech television shows are by and large unnegotiated: young people must construct meanings themselves, as they cannot interact with the cartoon characters who use a great deal of computer terminology or directly challenge their use of language portrayals of gender or racial stereotypes. Often the stereotypes portrayed do not dovetail with the child's personal experience. A detailed analysis of portrayals in the popular children's television cartoon "ReBoot" illustrates the discussion. (Contains 16 references.) (SWC)