The latest book to be indexed at Southwest Humanities is Reem Hilu’s The Intimate Life of Computers: Digitizing Domesticity in the 1980s, which will be published on November 19th, 2024 by the University of Minnesota Press. The Intimate Life of Computers examines how the influx of home computers and other digital devices such as robots and talking dolls shaped relations between household users in ways that shored up the heteronormative, middle-class family. Through the notion of “companionate computing,” Hilu “reimagines the spread of computers into American homes as the history of an interpersonal, romantic, and familial medium. She details the integration of computing into family relationships—from helping couples have better sex and offering thoughtful simulations of masculine seduction to animating cute robot companions and giving voice to dolls that could talk to lonely children—underscoring how these computer applications directly responded to the companionate needs of their users as a way to ease growing pressures on home life.” Of significant interest to scholars and readers of feminist theory and media studies, The Intimate Life of Computers highlights the ways that the advent of personal computing influenced and was affected by changing gender roles. For more information about this title, please see the publisher’s website here.
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