Cultures of Use - 1970s/1980s: An Archaeology of Computing's Integration with Everyday Life

This dissertation examines the archeology of computing’s integration with everyday life by examining transformations across Cultures of Use (CoU) within the period between the 1970s and 1980s, when computing moved out of organizations and into our homes and our everyday lives. It argues for the importance of switching perspective on the (media) history of computing, not departing from an assumption of computer technological media as organizational centers, but starting with the analysis and juxtaposition of CoU as historical actor-networks that in varying ways connected computing machinery with its human, economical, political, and ideological surroundings. The main thesis of the dissertation is organized around three case studies (word processing; problem solving; online searching) that all evidence that the history of a contemporary entwinement of computing with the lives of human individuals is caught up with a complex set of culturally and historically specific processes involving multiple facets of transformation.