The Subjective Computer: A Study in the Psychology of Personal Computation

When people talk about the growing ubiquity of the computer presence they tend to fall back on two images: the computer as tool and the computer as toy; objective instrumentality and engrossing play. This paper examines another dimension to the impact of the computer on individuals: a subjective dimension. What people do with computers weaves itself into the way they see the world. People use a discourse about computers for thinking and talking about other things, about politics, religion, education, and about themselves and other people.

The subjective dimension of the computer presence is not merely a matter of discourse, of using the computer intellectually as a metaphor or model. There is another, and more emotionally charged aspect which does not engage ideas about computers as much as the immediate quality of an individual's experience when working with them. Working with computers can be a way of 'working through' powerful feelings. This essay develops this idea by using as a case study a group of computer users for whom issues related to control are particularly salient. For a first generation of computer hobbyists, controlling the computer which they experience as a safe and completely knowable microworld is a way to deal with frustrations and aspirations, both personal and political, that have nothing to do with the computer per se.

The work reported in this paper was supported in part by the National Science Foundation (under grant number MCS 77-27860) and the Laboratory of Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts. The views and conclusions contained in this paper are those of the author and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the National Science Foundation or the United States Government.

Some of the material in this paper was contained in a communication to the 1980 meetings of the International Federation of Information Processors in Tokyo, Japan. I wish to thank the participants in that meeting for very valuable, critical discussions.