Domesticating the personal computer: The mainstreaming of a new technology and the cultural management of a widespread technophobia, 1964–

In this essay, discourses on "computer‐phobia"; and "computer addiction"; are used as starting points from which to describe the cultural work involved and marketing strategies used between the 1960s and 1990s in regards to the management of computer fear. These discourses on computer use are approached as examples of what Michel Foucault calls "normalizing"; discourses‐in this case, discourses which function toward the production, negotiation, and management of people's developing relationships with this new technology. This essay draws on popular discourses, advertisements, and advice literature from this time period to explore how the personal computer was successfully connected to middle‐class family ideals and was transformed from a frightening and distant (Cold) war machine into a socially (and family) "friendly"; machine. It is argued here that this management of computer fear made possible the mainstreaming of the personal computer (into the home) and initiated new definitions of "appropriate"; and. "inappropriate"; computer use. This in turn enabled the formation of the particular discourse on "computer addiction"; in the 1990s.