Reem Hilu, "Digitizing Domesticity in the 1980s: The Intimate Life of Computers" (U Minnesota Press, 2024)
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Welcome to New Books and Media, a podcast series on the New Books Network. I'm your host, Pete Kunze. My guest today is Reem Halu, Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, and the author of The Intimate Life of Computers, Digitizing Domesticity in the 1980s. The book was published by the University of Minnesota Press in 2024.

Good afternoon Reem, how are you today? I'm doing well, how are you? I'm hanging in there. It's a pleasure to have a chance to chat with you. To begin, can you give folks a sense of your background in media studies and your research interests?

Yeah, so I did my PhD training in the Screen Cultures program at Northwestern. And it's a program that puts a lot of emphasis on historical approaches to media studies. So that's where I started

this project and that's where I sort of got interested in feminist media historiography. So in my interest in computing, and I also do work on game studies as well, I sort of always take this approach of focusing on the relationship between gender and technology, but then also these longer historical arcs to think about computers, games, digital media within longer histories of women's culture and domestic culture.

Yeah, as I was reading your book, I felt like it was a spiritual cousin of Make Room for TV. And then I saw that you, in fact, had worked with Lynn Spiegel and went into Northwestern. So I think there's a great tradition of feminist research that this is situated within. But what brought you to this project? At what point did you realize, like, oh, this is something I want to delve into deeper? Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, it's...

When I came to Northwestern, my undergraduate training up to that point had been in a more film-focused program, more sort of cinema studies. And I had only really taken one class that exposed me to digital media and game studies. And at that time, like back in 2007, so long ago, a lot of the work was very focused on sort of masculinity within games and digital media. And so

I was struck by the absence of interest in women's culture. And so honestly, one of the seeds for this project was discovering these weird talking dolls from the 1980s that have microchips in them and they...

I mean, a lot of people find them creepy. I have come to love them, but yeah, just to think about these as interactive media and digital media, just like the Atari or just like the Nintendo was at that same time, that sort of started me off. So I didn't know what were all of the objects that I was going to talk about at that time, but it was this idea about gender and sort of interactive and digital media that really started the project going.

I think other people find this creepy, but I started to love them is a great kind of a theme for so many historical projects. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So speaking of history and historiography, I'm a method guy. So I'd love to hear more about when you decided to tackle this subject in particular, how did you how did you get to it? What became your your archive or archives? Yeah.

what sources did you find useful in kind of piecing together this history that, as you note, in some ways kind of got pushed to the wayside in this kind of earlier attention to masculinity?

Yeah, so, you know, going into it, it was so many sort of newspaper and magazine searches, you know, just put it like figuring out what are the what are the key terms that are really going to like pull up the results that I that I want to find. And then and then in that it was just again, I didn't know what were the texts or the objects that I was going to look at. So I just went through tons of these articles just to find out what was even out there.

So I worked more on sort of, I guess what maybe we would call them digital archives rather than in like sort of physical archives. Although I did get to go to the Strong Museum of Play to find some materials there for this work. But yeah, it was,

a lot of digging through newspaper and magazine articles until I was able to locate enough of these examples of digital media at that time that was thinking about relationships and the home and the family very seriously, that this wasn't just a space where computers sat. It was part of the environment and the culture that they had to find their place in. So, yeah.

so much so much newspaper research is funny because that part is you know part of the earlier process of it and it's sort of in the distance now but um that's you know i didn't go in knowing what exactly what i was gonna find i i i let it sort of emerge from from all of those searches sure yeah i mean it's always interesting to see where the research will take us right yeah um

So in the part of your introduction is kind of recuperating the, the pre-domestic history of computing. Can you tell us about the computer's life before the home and how it ends up there? I mean, it's interesting recuperating. I guess I'm not exactly sure if I,

see what you mean by that. Maybe recuperating isn't the right way to put it. Maybe you're contextualizing the history of the computer, right? What you're recuperating is the domestication of the computer. So I guess as we kind of move into that part of the discussion, can you just give folks a kind of a sense of like

the computer's origins and early before it makes its way to the home yeah you're right wrong word to use with a historian oh yeah sorry no i didn't mean it as a critique or anything i just wanted to make sure that i could answer the question but yeah i mean um yeah the history before i mean before the 70s and 80s i'm really focusing on um sort of the like the early 1980s but before that moment um

you know, a lot of this technology developed in, and this is what a lot of computer historians have traced, that it developed in these defense computing contexts, but as people like Thomas Streeter and Fred Turner have noted, even though these were defense department funded, like,

spaces there were these ideas there was already these sort of kind of i mean maybe you could call it intimacies or or um streeter refers to it as like a romanticism that developed around computing so um there was already this sense of wanting to be with computers and be in conversation with them um and that they could create different types of experiences but um people really didn't

I mean, you don't see a lot of discussion of what that would mean for like, yeah, domestic and family relationships at that time, because it was just so divorced from that space, right? With the exception of this one thing called the Echo Core that somebody had created in their home, like in 1966, like he was an engineer, he sort of put this together,

using like parts he took home from work. But yeah, that was a very rare instance until like the late 70s and 80s. But then yeah, once they start entering the home, the idea is that even if you don't imagine women are the primary audience for computers, you have to contend with the fact that they are part of this domestic space where computers are entering and then they're gonna influence everybody in those spaces.

Yeah. And that, that segues perfectly into my next question, which is you also trace these kinds of early anxieties about the personal computer and you have a great image of, uh, of a father, husband, uh, very excited about a computer and the wife kind of, you know, very upset with Santa for bringing one. So I was hoping you could tell us a little bit more about these kinds of initial anxieties around, um, the personal computer in the home and, um,

and particularly how this discourse is gendered, which I think is a really useful intervention you offer us here. Yeah, I mean, and then that's one place where you can definitely see sort of continuities with older media. And I'm thinking like even of the way that Keir Kiley talks about the hi-fi in the home and things like that, that there's this idea that this is a masculine technology and that it's coming into this

you know, feminized space and disrupting the relationships that exist in that space and that it is because it was associated so much with hobbyist culture and with like, sort of men's tinkering and technological interests, that it would be for them and it would distract them from their families. And so, so yeah, again, and then because,

because men were often seen as the primary sort of consumers for these technologies and the software that came with it, it was, you know, very gendered. But again, there's this idea that

You still have to justify your purchase to the rest of your family, I guess. Yeah. I appreciate your emphasis there on the hobbyist. And it seemed like some of these images and discourses are coming out of specialty magazines. How difficult was it for you to find those? I mean, have they been well preserved or was it very much a kind of a search and rescue mission for you?

Oh, it's amazing. There are so many computer magazines on the Internet Archive. So there's like a huge computer magazine collection. So that, you know, that I was so lucky that that was on there by the time that I had started this project. It was women's magazines, actually, that were sometimes harder because that required often going to like the, you

you know the main chicago public library branch and um seeing those in person yeah oh very cool very cool yeah but the internet archive makes like this research possible and so much easier

Yeah, yeah. God bless it, right? Yeah. And also because it's also a place where I found emulations of some of the 80s software and games that I discussed. And along the lines of this kind of discourse that emerges around the computer in the home, you're very careful and mindful about

using personal computing or home computing. And in the process, you offer us this concept of companionate computing. What does that mean for you? And how does it become a useful tool for your history?

Yeah, so for me, companion computing was helpful in two primary ways, and it sort of does these two main things for me. On one hand, companion as opposed to personal emphasizes that these are technologies and media

that are about relationships. They intervene in and they shape the relationships that take place in the home, you know, between parents and children and between, you know, married couples and things like that. But also I like companionate because it, for me, helps focus a historiographic intervention, which is that

the computer was shaped by the history of the companion family because it was finding its place in the home. So this is a way, again, to account for and acknowledge that there were feminist critiques of the family that were shaping these relationships and indirectly through that, because the computer was then being

was being accounted for as something that fit into family life, it was also shaped in some ways by these feminist critiques.

And your chapters, of course, focus on different dimensions of this taking place. And I don't want to give away too much here, but I'm hoping you could just maybe take one of those chapters that you found particularly revealing or exciting to learn about and kind of preview for the listener how you see computers not determining relationships, but shaping them as a good cultural studies scholar would say. Right. Yes.

And, you know, what did you learn in the process of your research about the role that computers played in shaping and renegotiating social familial bonds? Well, I think maybe, yeah, one of these, I mean, they, again, they all surprised me in some ways. But the, you know, the first chapter about couples and sort of romance and relationship software, yeah.

I was looking for programs that were about relationships. And so I found this software and then, like some of these programs, like one of them is called Interlude and it's one that does kind of get circulated a bit, I think in sort of computer, like online cultures and within, I mean, it gets vaguely referenced in different sort of computer histories. It got,

it was advertised with like a woman in lingerie, like next to a computer in bed. And so it seems like, okay, this is obviously just about, you know, these masculine hobbyists and they want to be titillated. And that's what these programs are about. But as I did this research, again, I found these really interesting ways that even though, you know, a lot of these programs, I would never call them feminist. They still did. They still were considering, you know,

like yeah the way that relationship ideals ideas about sort of intimacy and sexuality and romance um were were shifting in the 1980s they they often made reference to sort of therapeutic culture to legitimize them to make them seem more serious and even i think just by doing this even if maybe

they weren't totally serious when they made these references. There's ways in which those cultures are shaping the way that the technology got developed. And then, yeah, once this comes into the home, you know,

there's this idea that it can encourage certain types of sort of interactions between two users, but also, you know, they were kind of silly technologies and people might not necessarily have used them the way that they were intended. And so, yeah, this allows for some flexibility. Yeah, again, I agree with you. I wouldn't say that it shapes or determines relationships, but it makes different things possible.

I'm curious too if you could help us, you've gestured toward this already, but to kind of put a finer point on it. You've mentioned Streeter already and your work is also kind of engaging with other histories of computing like Lane Noonies.

Where do you see yourself kind of running parallel to those scholars? I think you're very clear in that you don't see this as a corrective, but it's kind of an expansion or an extension and thinking through other dimensions that haven't been explored yet, right? Yeah. I mean, I think that both Streeter and Noonie's work, I agree with because they're both trying to...

I think work against the over emphasis on hobbyists as shaping computer culture and sort of. Yeah, and they do it in really different ways, but I, this is, this is part of that same, like, larger project that this, this wasn't just these sort of.

like genius boys and these entrepreneurs, it was like what it meant for computing to really develop as a culture. Like my project is focusing on how this came out of how this was shaped so much by domestic culture. And, and yeah, Streeter and Noonie, I think in different ways are also working against that narrative. Are you a professional pillow fighter or a nine to five low cost time travel agent, or maybe real estate sales on Mars is your profession.

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Yeah, it reminds me of some of it seems like your work has analogs with the work in video game studies that are kind of trying to push against this too, right? Yeah. Earlier. Yeah, yeah. Another kind of methodological question too is, you know, you emphasize the 1980s in particular, I was curious as you were doing this kind of project, which I could imagine, like,

you know, at a certain point, you have to decide, here's the book, right? So I'm curious to hear your thoughts on as a historian, kind of drawing a line between I'm going to start around here, and I'm going to end around here and, and let someone else pick up the baton, right? Yeah. How did you? How did you shape the trajectory of your narrative in writing this book?

Well, so, you know, the dissertation version of this told a longer and because it was a dissertation, I would say messier story about some of these similar objects, but I guess

You know, it was easier to draw an end point to the story because like in the 90s, I think the discourse shifted more towards talking about sort of like Internet technologies and like cyberspace and things like that. And that is not quite as much in the sort of in the magazines and the spaces that I look in the 1980s.

And then I keep saying that this is a book about the 1980s, but it's also about the late 1970s. And I guess, yeah. And part of that is just...

I mean, again, there was a 1966 computer that someone built in a home, but there really wasn't a large presence of this type of technology in the home until the late 1970s. So that's sort of how I drew those lines. But yeah, it's not they are not it's not a sharp distinction of what was the 80s and what wasn't.

But yeah, it's just a sort of a shift in the focus of the discourse about computing. And you mentioned that this book was your dissertation project. And this is kind of one of those things that when I can, I always want to ask authors about because I myself have just gotten through the dissertation to book process. And I'm curious. Thank you. I didn't mean that as a fishing for a compliment, but I know it's a big deal.

no I mean it is and it's such a weird process right because you yeah um I mean I naively told myself I'm writing a book and then I learned as I was defending my disc that I had written a disc um so I was curious to hear your your experience and maybe even your advice for for the early career listeners um out there um about uh that process for you and what helped you and um

how you kind of understood this project as distinct from the work you did at Northwestern. Yeah, I'm, you know, I think that,

Like you said, you don't know. I mean, you don't know what it means to write a book until you've done it. And yeah, you might imagine your dissertation is that, but you'll find out later it isn't. But I think it was having people ask me over and over again or stress over and over again that the through line and the thread throughout the whole book really needed to be developed better. So I think part of it is that it goes from

like the motivating interest of this station and the book are the same, but in figuring out what is that through line that draws the whole book together and

And honestly, it's so surprising how you can write a dissertation and it's actually not in there. Like you thought it was in there, but it isn't in there. And then you can even like submit the first draft of your book and it might not be there yet. It really comes together. I mean, I don't know, magically at the end. I mean, magic is not a helpful way to speak to, I guess, people's

people who haven't done it yet but it i mean i think it's important to like acknowledge that it takes time um and that um even yeah again even going through like um peer review um it might not

be in its final form yet. And getting other people's eyes on it and having them ask you over and over again. And then I think sometimes you find out it's actually that obvious thing that I take for granted. That was the through line. I just didn't say it because I've been with this work for so long that I didn't realize that that was the thing that needed to be said. And then that is maybe how you sort of figure out what that thread is. Is that helpful? I don't know.

No, I think that's incredibly helpful, right? Because you get so in the weeds that you forget that this nuance thing that you think is your intervention, you almost have to pull back and be like, people haven't done this work yet. So even the fact that I'm doing this, they don't realize, right? And so, you know, I often find that some of the books I really enjoy the most are the ones where the argument is not incredibly complicated, but the work is, right? So it's like, what I'm doing here

is this, but let me show you how we can kind of realize this. And, um, I'm not to say that your book has a simple argument, but I think that in the core of what it's doing, right. Is, um, you know, let's look at this dimension that had been under attended to, and then to see all the sources and, and, and discourses and, um, and, uh, themes that come out of that, I think was really exciting. Um, and to have that kind of focus, right. I mean, that was the area, you know, I feel like, um,

in some ways our books are kind of like our children, like people can compliment them, but we really know what's wrong with them. Right. I'm not afraid of book reviewers because I'm much harsher critic of my own work than, than any reviewer can ever be. But, um,

It gets us to kind of think about, you know, what is the heart of this and what is this trying to do? And keeping that kind of clear and running through even like the intro and conclusion of the chapters, I think becomes important.

So now that you finished your first book, I'm going to ask you an annoying question, which is, what are you working on now? What are the kind of questions or topics that are motivating your current and future research?

So, in doing this project, and some of the things that I talk about could be part of what we might broadly call like mediated therapy or media therapy. And, you know, as I was doing this research, I encountered some examples of

used as therapeutic technologies and as like metaphors and like structures within like psychotherapy

therapeutic discourse. So my next project is going to be sort of continuing my interest in thinking about media as sort of relational technologies and therapeutic technologies, but to draw sort of like a longer historical arc about games and therapy, not just games used for therapy, but also how gaming logics have informed the way that we think about sort of therapeutic technologies

discourse and sort of how we model our understandings of sort of healthy and unhealthy forms of communication. So one of the things that like, one of the things that I did a little bit of research on, you know, that didn't end up in the book is like, in the 60s, there's this book called The Games People Play that was written by a psychoanalyst,

and was on the New York Times bestseller list for 20 weeks or something like that. And it's all about how relationships are games and that we have to stop playing games in order to have healthy relationships. So I'm really interested in not just games as tools, but as fundamentally shaping how we understand relationships.

Wow, that sounds great. Good luck. Yeah, I'm excited. Thank you. I think there's a lot of really interesting work to be done there. Thank you so much for your time today, Reem. It's been a pleasure speaking with you. Thank you. Yeah, I really enjoyed it.

No, no, thank you. The book is The Intimate Life of Computers, Digitizing Domesticity in the 1980s, available now from the University of Minnesota Press. This is Pete Kunze, and this has been New Books in Media on the New Books Network. Thank you for listening, and we hope you'll join us again next time. ♪