Electric Dreams: Computers in American Culture [Paperback]

Ted Friedman (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0814727409 | ISBN-13: 978-0814727409 | Publication Date: December 1, 2005

Electric Dreams turns to the past to trace the cultural history of computers. Ted Friedman charts the struggles to define the meanings of these powerful machines over more than a century, from the failure of Charles Babbage’s “difference engine” in the nineteenth century to contemporary struggles over file swapping, open source software, and the future of online journalism. To reveal the hopes and fears inspired by computers, Electric Dreams examines a wide range of texts, including films, advertisements, novels, magazines, computer games, blogs, and even operating systems.

Electric Dreams argues that the debates over computers are critically important because they are how Americans talk about the future. In a society that in so many ways has given up on imagining anything better than multinational capitalism, cyberculture offers room to dream of different kinds of tomorrow.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Electric Dreams is a very solid cultural studies offering, smoothly written and largely steering clear of heavy-duty theory, making it an almost ideal candidate for undergraduate courses and as an introduction for newcomers to the field.”
-Science Fiction Reader

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“Electric Dreams is at once a synthetic history of the personal computer, a history of representations of the computer, and a treatise on how to think about computing as a cultural phenomenon. Friedman’s original analyses and clear style make the book a pleasure to read.”
-Jonathan Sterne,author of The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction

“This engaging but ultimately unsatisfying book examines the “utopian sphere” — a public forum in which alternative futures can be imagined and debated - that arose in response to computing innovations, ranging from Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine to web logs”
-Kenneth Lipartito,Florida International University

“This book is for anyone who owns or uses a computer. . . . Computers permeate our culture, but we have little idea of where they came from and why we use them the way we do. Electric Dreams offers a mirror to our own hopes, desires, and fears, and empowers us as a community to use technology for our own benefit.”
-M/C Reviews

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“[T]he general reader will thank Mr. Friedman.”
-Studies in American Culture

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About the Author

Ted Friedman is associate professor of communications at Georgia State University. He has contributed to Spin, Vibe, Details, and other magazines and journals. His blog can be found at http://www.tedfriedman.com.

Product Details

• Paperback: 286 pages
• Publisher: NYU Press (December 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0814727409
• ISBN-13: 978-0814727409
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 6.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #873,436 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Ted Friedman is Associate Professor of Communication at Georgia State University. He blogs at http://tedfriedman.com, tweets at http://twitter.com/tedfriedman, and podcasts at http://tedfriedman.com/tedcast. He is currently writing A Centaur Manifesto: Mythos & Logos on the Commons.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gripping, insightful, August 16, 2006

By 

G. Edwards - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Electric Dreams: Computers in American Culture (Paperback)

It's a rare book that has the academic rigor to explore our electronic culture and the ways in which it rewires our own brains and perceptions. It's an even rarer one that is free of jargon and cant, with gripping prose that makes you turn the pages as if you were under a beach umbrella. This is that book.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How Computers Can or Have Changed Our Lives, February 12, 2006

By 

Doris Greenbaum "book lover" (white plains ny) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Electric Dreams: Computers in American Culture (Paperback)

Electric Dreams by Ted Friedman succeeds in illuminating what computers could have been and what they are in our lives. Friedman manages to inspire us to think about a better world --- more creative, more just, more fun --- aided by computers. It's a fun book to read and inspires the mind to wonder about what might have been and still could be. It should be read by any one who communicates by e-mail, buys stuff on line, searches the web; uses computers on the job. In fact, anyone curious about how this all happened and where it will lead.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Connected to the Computer-Culture and Change, March 5, 2006

By 

Norman B. Lichtenstein "reader" (new york, ny) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Electric Dreams: Computers in American Culture (Paperback)

Computers, today, play a central role in all the facets of our existence. In work, in play, in our communications with others, and in our connection to the world of information we meet and rely on computers. Ted Friedman, a Professor at Georgia State University, has written a first rate analysis of the cultural and scientific forces that led to current status of computers in our lives. Friedman, in Electric Dreams - Computers In American Culture, discusses the social and political forces which led to the development of the personal computer and its uses. Friedman argues that technological invention does not inevitably determine how that technology will be used in the future. Rather, the evolving culture and
the political, scientific and business decisions it spawns can lead to very different applications of technology than what might have been predicted from the perspective of technological determinism at the stage of each new development. The cyberculture we live in can become a "cybertopia" resulting in "...a more just, egalitarian, democratic, creative society if we are willing to "...fight for it. The future is up to us." Electric Dreams is exciting and provocative and well worth the read for anyone who cares about the future uses of technology and the world it can bring.