Computer

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 Reader in Design in the Faculty of Arts, Computing, Engineering and Sciences at Sheffield Hallam University.