1970s
1980s
2001 a space odyssey
A01=Paul Atkinson
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Author_Paul Atkinson
Category=UBJ
class
design
digital
economics
engineering
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eq_computing
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eq_non-fiction
fashion
gadgets
gender
hal
history
invention
james bond
luxury
nonfiction
pc
popular culture
promotion
public opinion
reception
reliance
representation
science fiction
social change
star trek
style
technology
ubiquity
Product details
- ISBN 9781861896643
- Dimensions: 208 x 156mm
- Publication Date: 01 Jun 2010
- Publisher: Reaktion Books
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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The pixellated rectangle we spend most of our day staring at in silence is not the television, as many long feared, but the computer – the ubiquitous portal of work and personal lives. The computer is now so common we don’t even notice it. It is difficult to envision that not so long ago it was a room-sized structure accessible only by a few, a mysterious machine inspiring fear, awe and respect. Now that it has decreased in size and increased in popular use, the computer has become a prosaic appliance. These dramatic changes, from the daunting to the ordinary, are captured in Computer.
Here you can read about the changes in the physical design of the computer and how these changes are related to shifts in popular attitude: in contrast to ads from the 1970s and ‘80s, today’s PC is very PC – genderless, and largely status-free. Computers also appear in various forms in popular culture, from the Billion Dollar Brain to HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey, James Bond’s gadgetry and Star Wars and Star Trek.
Computer covers many issues overlooked by other histories of computing, which have focused on technology and the economics involved in their production, but rarely on the role of fashion in the physical design and promotion of computers and their general reception. This book will appeal to professionals and students of design and technology, as well as those interested in this history of computers and how they have shaped – and been shaped by – our lives.
Paul Atkinson is Professor Emeritus of Design and Design History at Sheffield Hallam University. He is the writer of the BBC guitar documentary Cigar Box Blues: The Makers of a Revolution (2019).
