Encyclopedia of Computer Science and Technology

378 popular culture and computingHogarth, Paul. “Hillary, Obama and the YouTube Election.” Beyond-Chron, March 21, 2007. Available online. URL: http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=4322. Accessed November8, 2007.Jakoda, Karen A. B., ed. Crossing the River: The Coming of Age ofthe Internet in Politics and Advocacy. Philadelphia: Xlibris,2005.Nagourney, Adam. “Internet Injects Sweeping Change into U.S. Politics.”New York Times, April 2, 2006, p. 1 ff. Available online. URL:http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/02/washington/02campaign.html?_r=1&or ef=slogin. Accessed November 8, 2007.Rainie, Lee, and John Horrigan. “Election 2006 Online.” Pew Internet& American Life Project, 2007. Available online. URL:http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Politics_2006.pdf.Accessed November 8, 2007.TechPresident: Personal Democracy Forum. Available online.URL: http://www.techpresident.com/. Accessed November 8,2007.popular culture and computingComputer technology first came to public consciousnesswith the wartime ENIAC and the first commercial machinessuch as Univac in the early 1950s. The war had shown thedestructive side of new technologies (particularly atomicpower), but corporate and government leaders were soonpromoting their beneficial prospects. Just as atomic energyadvocates promised to provide power that was abundant,cheap, and clean, the computer, or “giant brain” was toutedfor its ability to solve problems that had been beyondhuman capabilities.Ominous MachinesHowever, the computer, too, had its shadow in the popularconsciousness. With their mysterious flashing lightsand white-coated programmer/priests, mainframe computerswere often seen as modern embodiments of the “madscientist” trope, as in the movie Colossus: The Forbin Project(1970), where American and Soviet supercomputersjoined forces to take over the world. Artificial intelligencealso usurped humanity in the more mystical 2001: A SpaceOdyssey (1968).On the domestic front, the mainframe computer alsobecame a symbol of misgivings about the bureaucraticstate and corporate conformity. The romantic comedy filmDesk Set, featuring Katharine Hepburn as a beleagueredcorporate librarian, at first seems to confirm these fears,only to reveal that the computer had been misunderstoodand would bring about a happier future for all. (IBM, incidentally,provided much of the technical support for thefilm.)The counterculture of the 1960s seemed much less sanguineabout the digital future. To many of the generation ofactivists starting with the Free Speech Movement in 1964,computers were the tools of the military-industrial complex,and computing facilities were sometimes picketed oreven physically attacked.However, a computer-savvy wing of the counterculturewas also rising (see hackers and hacking). Activistsbegan to see the machines as a tool for community organizationand communication, as in 1973 with CommunityMemory, the first computer bulletin board system, accessedby teletype terminals.Getting PersonalBy the late 1970s the personal computer had arrived.On the one hand, PCs would seem not to fit the mainframestereotype. After all, the desktop machines aresmall and designed to be accessible helpers in everydaylife and work. Still, they could be connected to networksand perhaps used to take over the Pentagon’s doomsdayweapons—as in the movie War Games (1983). As fearof what malicious or criminal hackers could do took amore practical turn in the 1990s, such movies as The Netand Sneakers created a higher-tech incarnation of the spythriller. Finally, the series of movies beginning with TheMatrix extrapolated from the ultrarealistic movie effectsand games of the coming century to raise the question ofwhether consensus reality could actually be a huge computersimulation.Meanwhile, the figure of the computer “geek” or “nerd”has become a staple character in movies and TV shows—clever, socially inept, but indispensable for keeping themodern world running. In some eyes, the entrepreneurialsuccess of Silicon Valley and the dot-coms placed Bill Gatesand his colleagues in the same mold as Thomas Edison andHenry Ford a century earlier.Digitization of CultureBy the turn of the new century the network that had beenportrayed as the domain of hackers and spies had becomethe all-pervasive World Wide Web. Today computers andthe Internet are not only reflected in American popular culture—theyare profoundly reshaping it. Computer games(particularly see online games) have become vast, persistentsocial worlds, as are sites like MySpace and Facebook(see social networking).With the blending of formerly distinct media (see digitalconvergence) and the fluid sharing and re-creationof images (see user-created content and mashups),the digital world now permeates mainstream culture—or,one might say, the culture itself has become digitized.Meanwhile the line between fact and fiction, creator andviewer, expert and amateur has become increasinglyblurred.Further ReadingFishwick, Marshall William. Probing Popular Culture: On and Offthe Internet. Binghamton, N.Y.: Haworth Press, 2004.Friedman, Ted. Electric Dreams: Computers in American Culture.New York: NYU Press, 2005.King, Brad, and John Borland. Dungeons and Dreamers: The Rise ofComputer Game Culture from Geek to Chic. Emeryville, Calif.:McGraw-Hill/Osborne, 2003.“Machines (and more) in Movies, Books and Music.” BerkshirePublishing Group. Available online. URL: http://www.berkshirepublishing.com/HumanComputerInteractionAndPopCulture/list.asp. Accessed August 17, 2007.Nelson, Theodore H. Computer Lib/Dream Machines: You Can andMust Understand Computers Now. Chicago: Nelson, 1974.(Expanded, reprinted by Microsoft Press, 1987).