[SIGCIS-Members] First instructional videos for Macintosh?

Ian S. King isking at uw.edu
Thu Sep 11 22:10:50 PDT 2014


Michael, your thoughts here bring to mind some pondering I've done on not
the origins of the so-called "personal" computer, but rather the *consumer*
computer.  As you state, the consumer computer (appliance) was often
purchased without a well-defined need to be met, but "because it was
there."  I won't argue that it did not ultimately serve an important role,
that of bringing the computer in from the cold (institutional control,
abstract science, etc.) but as a side effect, not a planned strategy.

With admittedly only casual consideration of the premise, I do suspect that
identifying the 'first' consumer computer(s) is a far more tractable
historical analysis than the search for a similar origin of the 'personal'
computer.  - Ian
On Sep 9, 2014 12:47 PM, "Michael Newman" <mznewman37 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Luisa, in my research on home computers from the 1970s I haven't found
> that the idea of personal computing was always represented as something new
> and incredible. Computers were familiar to people (many of whom had a
> negative impression of them as instruments of institutional control) and it
> wasn't clear what needs a home computer would satisfy. One persistent
> question in articles about home computers in magazines like *Esquire*
> was: what are you actually going to do with it? A frequent answer was that
> you would use a computer to learn how to use a computer. Probably the most
> common use for many people who bought a computer for the home was playing
> games, which wasn't so different from using something like an Atari VCS. In
> advertisements for home computers on TV, you will find some of that "new
> and incredible" tone -- they're selling a product, after all, though what
> they're selling is as much a platform for games as it is a computer for
> programming or other more "productive" uses. The "Atari brings the computer
> age home" campaign would offer some nice examples of this, and some (in
> poor quality) are on YouTube.
>
> michael z. newman zigzigger <http://zigzigger.blogspot.com/> | @mznewman
> <http://twitter.com/mznewman>
> assoc prof, journalism, advertising, & media studies, uw-milwaukee
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Sep 8, 2014 at 10:28 PM, Luisa Emmi Beck <emmi.beck at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi SIGCIS members,
>>
>> I'm working on a radio story about the history of personal computing.
>>
>> I would like to find instructional videos for the first Macintosh or
>> other personal computers. The goal is to give listeners a sense for how new
>> and incredible the idea of personal computing was in the 1970s. ​Does
>> anyone on this list know of where I could find such videos? I haven't been
>> able to find anything on YouTube but I'm hoping to be able to track down a
>> few instructional videos (or at least the audio portion of the videos).
>>
>> Thanks!
>> Luisa
>>
>> (510) 856.7475
>> http://luisabeck.com/
>>
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>
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