10 The Shaping of the Personal Computer
TODAY’S PERSONAL COMPUTING landscape of laptops, tablets, and smartphones was set in train by the development of the so-called “desktop” personal computer in the period from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s. Personal computing was perhaps the most life-changing consumer phenomenon of the second half of the twentieth century, and it continues to surprise in its ever-evolving applications and forms. Why did personal computing happen where it did and when it did? Why did people want to bring an expensive and inconvenient information technology into their homes? We know much of what happened, but less of why it happened.
If we consider an earlier invention, domestic radio, it ...
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