Electric Dreams: Computers in American Culture

Ted Friedman

Published by New York University Press 2005

Electric Dreams

Computers in American Culture

Ted Friedman

https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9780814728666.001.0001

Overview
Contents

About this book

Electric Dreams turns to the past to trace the cultural history of computers. Ted Friedman charts the struggles to define the meanings of these powerful machines over more than a century, from the failure of Charles Babbage’s “difference engine” in the nineteenth century to contemporary struggles over file swapping, open source software, and the future of online journalism. To reveal the hopes and fears inspired by computers, Electric Dreams examines a wide range of texts, including films, advertisements, novels, magazines, computer games, blogs, and even operating systems.
Electric Dreams argues that the debates over computers are critically important because they are how Americans talk about the future. In a society that in so many ways has given up on imagining anything better than multinational capitalism, cyberculture offers room to dream of different kinds of tomorrow.

Author / Editor information

Friedman Ted :

Ted Friedman is associate professor of communications at Georgia State University. He has contributed to Spin, Vibe, Details, and other magazines and journals. His blog can be found at http://www.tedfriedman.com.

Reviews

This book is for anyone who owns or uses a computer. . . . Computers permeate our culture, but we have little idea of where they came from and why we use them the way we do. Electric Dreams offers a mirror to our own hopes, desires, and fears, and empowers us as a community to use technology for our own benefit.

Electric Dreams is a very solid cultural studies offering, smoothly written and largely steering clear of heavy-duty theory, making it an almost ideal candidate for undergraduate courses and as an introduction for newcomers to the field.

[T]he general reader will thank Mr. Friedman.

Kenneth Lipartito,Florida International University:
This engaging but ultimately unsatisfying book examines the utopian sphere — a public forum in which alternative futures can be imagined and debated - that arose in response to computing innovations, ranging from Charles Babbages Difference Engine to web logs

Jonathan Sterne,author of The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction:
Electric Dreams is at once a synthetic history of the personal computer, a history of representations of the computer, and a treatise on how to think about computing as a cultural phenomenon. Friedmans original analyses and clear style make the book a pleasure to read.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction: The Dialectic of Technological Determinism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Part I Mainframe Culture
1 Charles Babbage and the Politics of Computer Memory Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	21
2 Ideologies of Information Processing: From Analog to Digital Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	35
3 Filming the “Electronic Brain” Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	47
Part II The Personal Computer
4 The Many Creators of the Personal Computer Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	79
5 Apple’s 1984 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	102
6 The Rise of the Simulation Game Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	121
Part III. The Interpersonal Computer
7 Imagining Cyberspace Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	159
8 Dot-com Politics Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	171
9 Beyond Napster Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	186
10 Linux and Utopia Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	198
Conclusion: Cybertopia Today Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	209
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	221
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	235
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	257
About the Author Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	275

Language: English
Publisher: New York University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Keywords: computers; cultural; fears; history; hopes; inpsired; reveals; technology; that

eBook

Published: December 1, 2005
ISBN: 9780814728666