Intimate Life of Computers

Regular price €26.50
A01=Reem Hilu
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Author_Reem Hilu
automatic-update
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=JBSF1
Category=JFSJ1
Category=UBJ
COP=United States
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
digital culture
digital games
digital media
eq_computing
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
film & media
gender & sexuality
Home computers
Language_English
media history
mediated intimacy
PA=Available
personal computing
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
softlaunch

Product details

  • ISBN 9781517916657
  • Weight: 312g
  • Dimensions: 140 x 216mm
  • Publication Date: 19 Nov 2024
  • Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
  • Publication City/Country: US
  • Product Form: Paperback
  • Language: English
Delivery/Collection within 10-20 working days

Our Delivery Time Frames Explained
2-4 Working Days: Available in-stock

10-20 Working Days
: On Backorder

Will Deliver When Available
: On Pre-Order or Reprinting

We ship your order once all items have arrived at our warehouse and are processed. Need those 2-4 day shipping items sooner? Just place a separate order for them!

A feminist perspective on the early history of personal computing, revealing how computers were integrated into the most intimate aspects of family life

 

The Intimate Life of Computers shows how the widespread introduction of home computers in the 1980s was purposefully geared toward helping sustain heteronormative middle-class families by shaping relationships between users. Moving beyond the story of male-dominated computer culture, this book emphasizes the neglected history of the influence of women’s culture and feminist critique on the development of personal computing despite women’s underrepresentation in the industry.

 

Proposing the notion of “companionate computing,” Reem Hilu reimagines the spread of computers into American homes as the history of an interpersonal, romantic, and familial medium. She details the integration of computing into family relationships—from helping couples have better sex and offering thoughtful simulations of masculine seduction to animating cute robot companions and giving voice to dolls that could talk to lonely children—underscoring how these computer applications directly responded to the companionate needs of their users as a way to ease growing pressures on home life.

 

The Intimate Life of Computers is a vital contribution to feminist media history, highlighting how the emergence of personal computing dovetailed with changing gender roles and other social and cultural shifts. Eschewing the emphasis on technologies and institutions typically foregrounded in personal-computer histories, Hilu uncovers the surprising ways that domesticity and family life guided the earlier stages of our all-pervasive digital culture.

Reem Hilu is assistant professor of film and media studies at Washington University in St. Louis.