Electric Dreams [[electronic resource] ] : Computers in American Culture / / Ted Friedman

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910790157603321
• Autore: Friedman Ted
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: New York ; ; London : , : New York University Press, , [2005]; ©2005
• ISBN: 0-8147-2842-1; 0-8147-2866-9
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (286 p.)
• Disciplina: 303.48/33
• Soggetti: Computers - History; Computers - Social aspects; Computers and civilization; Electronic books.
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Note generali: Description based upon print version of record.
• Nota di bibliografia: Includes bibliographical references (p. 235-255) and index.
• Nota di contenuto: Introduction : the dialectic of technological determinism -- Part I. Mainframe culture. Charles Babbage and the politics of computer memory -- Ideologies of information processing: from analog to digital -- Filming the "electronic brain" -- Part II. The personal computer. The many creators of the personal computer -- Apple's 1984 -- The rise of the simulation game -- Part III. The interpersonal computer. Imagining cyberspace -- Dot-com politics -- Beyond Napster -- Linux and utopia -- Conclusion : cybertopia today.
• Sommario/riassunto: 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 arg