Here Come the ‘Computer People’: Anthropomorphosis, Command, and Control in Early Personal Computing

Abstract

Drawing on advertising and promotional materials for early microcomputers, I argue that anthropomorphization, or endowing the machine with human qualities, was central to the imagined relationship between computers and computer hobbyists of Silicon Valley in the late 1970s. These visions of the “personal” computer were tied tightly to male fantasies of dominance, command, and control; through the subordination of machines, this discourse elevated hobbyist status as part of a new “computer priesthood” while retaining a narrow, exclusionary definition of “computer person.”