When electronic digital computers first appeared after World War II, they appeared as a revolutionary force. Business management, the world of work, administrative life, the nation state, and soon enough everyday life were expected to change dramatically with these machines’ use. Ever since, diverse prophecies of computing have continually emerged, through to the present day.
As computing spread beyond the US and UK, such prophecies emerged from strikingly different economic, political, and cultural conditions. This volume explores how these expectations differed, assesses unexpected commonalities, and suggests ways to understand the divergences and convergences.
This book examines thirteen countries, based on source material in ten different languages—the effort of an international team of scholars. In addition to analyses of debates, political changes, and popular speculations, we also show a wide range of pictorial representations of “the future with computers.”
Table of Contents
Introduction: Prophets and Narratives
Man-Machine Dialogues: Computer Representations and Appropriations in the Soviet Union and the United States
Microcomputers for the Masses: Jack Tramiel and Commodore
Banking the Future of Banking: Savings Banks and the Digital Age in East and West Germany
The United Kingdom: Going it Alone?
French National Paths within a Global Computing Market
Dutch Prophets: Pragmatic Optimism and Suppressed Fears
Computing the New China: The Founding Fathers, the Maoist Way, and Neoliberalism, 1945-1986
Digital India: Swadeshi-Computing in India since 1947
Computers in the Shadow of Communism: The Polish People’s Republic
Dreams of the Vanquished: Narratives in Postwar Japan
Computopia and its Discontents: Dual Narratives in South Korea
Big Brother in New Zealand: Anticipating the Computer
Conclusions: Patterns of Prophecy – Needs, Ambitions, and Doubts
About the Author(s)
Dick van Lente, Erasmus University (retired)
Dick van Lente is a retired lecturer in cultural history at Erasmus University, Rotterdam, the Netherlands. He is interested in the cultural aspects of the history of technology, especially during the Cold War period. He is the editor of
The Nuclear Age in Popular Media (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). He serves as a review editor of the journal Technology and Culture.
