Portables,luggables,and transportables: Historicizing the imagined affordances of mobile computing

Abstract

This article contributes to the history of “mobile media beyond mobile phones” by accounting for genres of portable computing (or “portables”) that emerged in the late 1980s. Though largely overlooked by historians of technology, these mobile, less-than-mobile, and relatively immobile devices helped shape the social and cultural uses of contemporary mobile communication. I argue that the technological capabilities of portables altered users’ expectations for how and where computers could be incorporated into daily life, be it near bodies, on hand, or at one’s fingertips. While the market for bulky portables dwindled by the late 1990s, as laptops and cell phones became more ubiquitous, these consumer electronics are nonetheless useful today for understanding the perpetual role of materiality and embodiment in how we conceive of the imagined affordances of mobile communication technologies.

Keywords

affordances embodied history laptop materiality mobility portable smartphone

The unfolding story of mobile communication and its impact on society can be told from many angles. It may be narrated in part through the material histories of various communication technologies (Goggin, 2006; Ling, 2012), including advancements in pen and stylus tools, virtual keyboards, and handwriting recognition software. Developments in mobile media can also be located among cultural histories of electronics miniaturization (Cohen, 2016; Mills, 2011a; Spigel, 2001; Wythoff, 2013). In this article, I further complicate singular narratives about the evolution of mobile communication technologies by accounting for the portable computer (or “portables”) market that emerged in the U.S. in the early 1980s, a time when personal computers first could be untethered from the desktop and become “computers to go” (Gajeway, 1986, p. 65; Marini, 1984, p. 47).

Though portables are largely overlooked by historians of personal computing (with the exception of Atkinson, 2005, 2008), I argue that these mobile, less-than-mobile, and relatively immobile devices are important for the field because they altered users’ anticipations for how and where mobile communication could possibly be incorporated into daily life. Nagy and Neff (2015, p. 5) describe such a relationship “between users’ perceptions, attitudes, and expectations; between the materiality and functionality of technologies; and between the intentions and perceptions of designers” as imagined affordances, building upon a more rigid and fixed notion of affordances rooted in psychology (Gibson, 1979; Norman, 1988) that describes the qualities of media and communication technologies as perceived by users (Evans, Pearce, Vitak, & Treem, 2017). Portables helped make possible broader social and cultural shifts in the imagined affordances of mobile communication across public and private life (Schrock, 2015) in that they indelibly shaped the computational power newly available near bodies, on hand, and at fingertips.

To trace the trajectory of portable computing and its implications for mobile communication today, I draw upon a combination of popular and historical sources primarily from the early 1980s to mid-1990s and limited in scope to the U.S., following other cultural histories of technology and personal computing (e.g., Friedman, 2005). This includes trade publications, computing magazines for adults (e.g., Byte) and adolescents (e.g., K-Power), newspapers, and informational television programming. My intention is not a complete or straightforward history. As Atkinson (2008, p. 12) writes, “Researching the exact chronology of product releases in the field of portable computing from the late 1970s to early 1990s is fraught with difficulties.” Many announced products failed to materialize (known as “vaporware”); announcements of new products were made sometimes a year prior to launch, and smaller companies struggled to gain visibility over major players (Atkinson, 2005). Manufacturers were also at times permitted by editors to write their own product reviews in computing magazines, complicating the ethical objectivity of the reporting itself (Pool & Comendul, 1985, cited in Britt, 2018).

Rather than attempt a full account then, I begin by reviewing the overlapping and often confusing categories of portable computers to appear and disappear in the early to mid-1980s, including “luggables,” “transportables,” and “handheld portables.” Next, I illustrate how current mobile communication devices (i.e., tablets, smartphones) evolved from the portables market in the late 1980s through 2000s. I then shift my focus to richer contexts of imagined situated use by employing Ito’s (2005) “personal, portable, pedestrian” shorthand. Ito first employed the phrase to describe the culture that developed around and through mobile phones in Japan during a period of rapid uptake in the late 1990s. Though the keitai culture on which Ito reports is socially and culturally specific, the notion of mobile communication, as she writes, as “a snug and intimate technosocial tethering, a personal device supporting communications that are a constant, lightweight, and mundane presence in everyday life” (Ito, 2005, p. 1) was in part made possible by advances in portable computing. Lastly, I conclude by discussing how portables are foundational to the imagined affordances of contemporary mobile media, specifically in relation to materiality, embodiment, and the domestication of technology.

Making computers portable

Various terms have at one point described personal computers that a person could take on-the-go, as opposed to going to a stationary computer (see Figure 1). Before “mobiles” stabilized as an expression largely reserved for phones, there were many others in circulation (Atkinson, 2005). For example, the New York Times in 1981 reported that “[the] new portable machines range from the hand-held computer, which looks like an overgrown calculator, to the briefcase-sized computer, which looks like a miniature version of a desktop machine” (Pollack, 1981, p. 2). In the mid-1980s through mid-1990s, “portables” existed both as a stand-alone category and as one that subsumed other types including “lap computers,” “minimicros,” “luggables,” “transportables,” “totables,” “flip-tops,” “uprights,” “briefcase computers,” “subnotebooks,” and “palmtops” (Safire, 1993; Sanger, 1984).

Figure 1.

“Computers to Go” (Marini, 1984).

Far from stand-alone devices, portables often required an assemblage of technologies in order to fully meet the computational needs of users. The December 1986 issue of Family Computing provided readers with a “Buyer’s Guide to Portable Computers” for business travelers choosing “the perfect link between home and office, office and hotel, hotel and home” (Gajeway, 1986, p. 63). These links spanned “four distinct classes of portable machines: notebooks, laptops, totables, and luggables” (Gajeway, 1986, p. 63). Prices listed ranged from US$499 (US$1,138 in 2018) for the Tandy 102 notebook with 24 KB/32 KB memory to US$4,499 (US$10,260 in 2018) for the Toshiba 3100 laptop with 640 KB memory.¹ Smaller companies also designed, developed, engineered, and marketed new peripherals at an additional cost including portable printers, fax machines, and pocket modems. One computer consultant in 1981 predicted that “businessmen will soon be carrying entire electronic offices with them, consisting of microcassette recorders, tiny printers, tiny televisions and small keyboards all attachable to a small computer” (Pollack, 1981, p. D2).

As classifications for portable computers shifted in the early to mid-1980s, and as a growing range of accessories transformed a portable’s capabilities while adding additional weight to the carrying load, it is difficult to say precisely what distinguished a totable from a transportable, a transportable from a luggable, or a portable from any of those three. For instance, in 1984, Family Computing classified a “portable” as having an 8–256 K memory and weighing 3–11 lbs, and “transportables” as 64–640 K and 15–30 lbs (“Buyer’s Guide,” 1984). By 1987, the magazine reviewed notebooks, laptops, and uprights, all under the heading of “Leading Portable Computers” (Ditlea, 1987, p. 42).² It may be more useful to identify the features that trade publications used to compare different portables. These included price, size, weight, screen size, graphics, text display, power source, speed, storage, networked connection, printing capability, and available software (i.e., word processing, spreadsheets, games).

Pinpointing the “first” portable computer is a matter of perspective. Some computer terminals in the 1970s were portable but had no real memory or screen display. Heavy luggables and transportables in the 1980s could be moved, but not far from an electrical outlet since they still needed to be plugged into a wall to be used. The first portable computer is arguably the Osborne 1, released in April 1981 with a suggested retail price of US$1,795 (US$5,077 in 2018). Orders for the portable reportedly totaled 8,000 units in 1981 and 110,000 in 1982 (Berg, 1983). Developed by Adam Osborne, the Osborne 1 is in part remembered as “the first” due to a chapter in Robert Slater’s (1987) book Portraits in Silicon referring to Osborne as “the father of the portable computer” (p. 329). GRiD Systems’ Compass, announced in 1982, was the first portable computer though with the clamshell-style casing that is now typical of laptops.

Osborne was soon in competition with other U.S. and Japanese companies, including Compaq, IBM, Radio Shack, Sharp, and Epson. In 1984, The New York Times estimated that 75% of personal computers sold in the U.S. were desktops, with “luggables” (16%) and battery-powered “lap computers” (9%) accounting for the rest (Sanger, 1984, p. D1). By 1988, the Chicago Tribune reported that shipments of “true portable computers” (“a machine that’s the size of a true portable but has AC power requirements”) neared one million (Winter, 1988b, p. 3). The market was also incredibly volatile. Osborne, for instance, filed for bankruptcy in 1983 (Berg, 1983). By the mid- to late 1980s, portables had enabled personal computing far beyond the desktop to the person in transit, and would soon further extend computer use even closer to one’s lap, palm, and hip.

Moving computers from desks to laps, palms, and hips

The portables market continued to expand and evolve over the late 1980s and 1990s as new product categories emerged. While we may currently consider communication technologies like tablets and smartphones to be “mobiles,” these same devices fell under the umbrella of “portables” during their early years as consumer electronics. Handheld portables, for example, are progenitors of commercial tablet computers (Atkinson, 2008). Some companies initially pitched them to consumers as a full departure from earlier, bulkier portables though. Upon the introduction of the GRiDPad in 1989, a handheld computer from GRiD Systems that recognized handwriting, a marketing manager for the company proclaimed, “This is not a laptop; it’s a new tool entirely” (Daly, 1989, p. 47). That break with past tools, technologies, and techniques was more for promotional purposes than a reflection of reality. After all, the GRiDPad would be “held like a clipboard” (Daly, 1989, p. 47), employing metaphors of older portable communication technologies. Rather than eschewing the past, others borrowed explicitly from the legacy of portables in narrating a linear history of handheld computing:

In the beginning—a whole 12 years ago—there were personal computers. . . . But just like its older electronic sibling, the portable calculator, the personal computer started shrinking. First there were the so-called luggables (luggable if you worked out regularly). Then came laptops. Now hand-held personal computers are the talk of the industry. (Lazzareschi, 1989, p. 1)

Electronics companies in Silicon Valley developing laptops also drew on such histories of early portable computers in order to make future projections about computers that could be untethered from desks. Dynabook Technologies joined the laptop computer market in 1989 in an attempt to emulate the 1970s vision of computer scientist Alan Kay (Atkinson, 2008; Bates, 1989). The aptly named Sparky Sparks, VP of Dynabook Technologies, noted that the company “borrowed the name from Alan Kay. Even though it is a desktop computer that’s portable, we have the same vision of what it can become and will become in the future” (Nichols, 1989). This Dynabook employed a desktop cradle to charge the removable battery in the laptop computer, converting the mobile device into an immobile one, similar to how today’s iPad cases with built-in keyboards convert the tablets into temporary desktops (Alper, 2017).

By the early 1990s, decreasing sales of larger portable computers provoked the question among industry insiders, “Are luggables going extinct?” (Fitzgerald, 1993, p. 30). Units sold sharply dropped from 145,000 in 1990 to 41,000 in 1993, while most other categories of personal computing saw major growth (Fitzgerald, 1993, 1994). Even as early as 1984, journalists claimed that “the glory days of the luggables are over” (Sanger, 1984, p. D2). Though luggables were intended “to provide desktop power and functionality in something moveable” (Fitzgerald, 1994, p. 39), they became less desirable when smaller battery-powered portables like laptops and notebook computers started to provide more processing power, increased functionality, and lighter weight. Luggables did not completely disappear though; rather, they took on different qualities. A new category of luggables, the “multimedia luggable”—“a roughly suitcase-sized unit that combines the stereo sound, CD-ROM, and expansion slots of an MPC desktop with the portability of a notebook”—was created to address the fact that notebooks at that time were not capable of high-quality graphics, video, and audio (Marshall, 1994, p. 83).

The “schlep factor” of multimedia luggables still posed a challenge, though. “When you use a multimedia portable in the field,” noted InfoWorld reader Connie L. Gordon, an educational consultant from New Jersey, “you have to weigh your needs for add-ons based on the size of the audience and the size of the room, and how willing you are to schlep pounds of speakers, a pointing device, and an external monitor” (Angus, 1995, p. 69). In 1997, portables were said to “go ultralight and superheavy,” including “ultra-ultraportables” that would, as one user noted, “‘allow people to write from the road and get their E-mail—the two things users need most of all. I call them E-mail machines, and I have been looking for them for a long time’” (Blodgett, 1997, p. 14).

Employing that framing of multimediality and availability (Schrock, 2015), we might consider contemporary smartphones to be “ultra-ultraportables” of sorts. The convergence and connection between portables and mobile phones was even more clearly articulated in 1989 by Charles Russell, a product manager for Sharp Electronics in New Jersey, who stated, “‘A lot of people really believe that someday we’ll use computers just like we use telephones’” (Lazzareschi, 1989, p. 1). A 1992 Inc. article on portable computing spoke of “shrinking phones” expressly in terms of portables: “In a nutshell, mobile phones come in three types: permanently mounted car phones, 5-pound transportables the size of a phone book, and pocket phones or flip-phones about the size of a TV remote control” (Stewart, 1992, p. 35).

Further bridging portables and smartphones was the Poqet PC, introduced in 1989. It was a roughly 1-lb pocket-sized computer (hence the company’s name) that ran on AA batteries (Nichols, 1989). In 1999, a Computerworld article reviewing the prior 50 years of innovation in portable computing referred to the Poqet PC as the progenitor of the Palm Pilot: “Poqet never gained broad market support at a list price close to $3000. Still, [it] was the predecessor to later systems such as 3Com Corp.’s PalmPilot, released in 1996” (Brandel, 1999, p. 82). A 2006 design history of “powerful portables” drew a timeline between the Osborne 1, Poqet PC, Palm Pilot, and Sony Ericsson P80, a smartphone introduced in 2002 that was the successor to the Ericsson R380, the first device marketed as a “smartphone” (Wong, 2006).

The language of the laptop partly enabled this transition from portable to smartphone. The term “laptop” itself evolved from the 1880s notion of working on one’s lap using a “lapboard” (Safire, 1988). The Atari Portfolio and Poqet PC were referred to as “palmtops”: “To enter information into one of the palmtops, [software developer David] Nanian has learned to wrap his fingers around the back and type with his thumbs” (Stewart, 1992, p. 29). The Poqet PC’s small size and QWERTY keyboard influenced the Sidekick cell phone, designed by software company Danger, Inc. and popularized in the U.S. by wireless network operator T-Mobile. The phone was originally called the Hiptop when released in 2002, a clear invocation of laptop that orients technology to the hip. Chris DeSalvo (2014), one of Danger’s original programmers, writes that the name for the Hiptop originated in the idea “that you’d wear it in a belt holster, and thus computing had gone from the desktop, to the laptop, to the palmtop, and ultimately to the hiptop.” The lasting traces of “-top”—be it on top of the lap, palm, or hip—indelibly connect the histories of portables, tablets, cell phones, and smartphones as types of mobile computers whose mobility is relative to that of the human body.

Personal, portable, pedestrian?

The influence of portables on the historical development of the imagined affordances of mobile communication and computing is not only a matter of marketing terminology, form factor, and technical specifications though, but also of stories of situated and potential use. In reference to mobile communication, Ito writes that “the features of portable, personal, and pedestrian refer not to technologies but to action and experience that can be altered and enhanced by new media technologies” (Ito, 2005, p. 13). When portable computers were new, they expanded and transformed conceptions of action and experience—of the personal, the portable, and the pedestrian—in relation to the material and embodied nature of mobile computing.

Personal

William Safire, the heralded The New York Times “On Language” columnist, offers a useful reflection on the multiple meanings of “personal” as reflected in personal computing and portables. In comparing the language of the “pocketbook” (a place to hold books) to the “personal digital assistant” (a computer to be held in pockets or pocketbooks), Safire writes, “The word personal was used to differentiate computers that could fit on desktops from mainframe computers; are we now stuck with personal to describe anything small?” (1993, p. 28). He suggests that any number of terms could have been used other than personal: “How about a word like little? Or, if we could figure out a way to hold off the eavesdroppers, we might try private. A last resort: pocket” (1993, p. 28). As Safire alludes, portables were imagined to be personal in at least two ways: first, in how they were defined in relation to bodies and embodiment, and second, in that they enabled affective and emotional experiences through intimate connections to mobile computing.

Bodies and embodiment

Product reviews and news articles on portables regularly included discussions about the weight of the machines and the relationship between that weight and the abilities of the human body. Some journalists at the time emphasized how using portables ran the risk of bodily injury and repetitive strain. One was on a search for a portable computer to take on overseas writing trips that would “not fracture my spinal column as I carry it aboard an airplane” (Stone, 1984, p. 45). Akin to current discussions about “texting thumb” and concerns of mobile device screen brightness interfering with sleep cycles (e.g., Mulvin, 2018), one teenage girl worried that the small screens of “carryable computers” negatively impacted her vision and memory (“Greats & Glitches,” 1985, p. 24). Writing about the Osborne, one journalist claimed that “portable” was a misnomer because “you could get a hernia if you carried one more than three city blocks and you would have crushed your thighs if you had ever tried to put it on your lap” (Schrage, 1984, p. WB17). “How useful these computers are,” wrote another, “depends on your own needs, the type of machine, and in some cases, the condition of your back” (“Buyer’s Guide,” 1984, p. 48).

The benefits of handheld portables for upright computing were also discussed in terms of ergonomic safety and worker efficiency, reflecting a broader history of standardized human factors in computing (Jain, 2006). Wrote one journalist, “Grid Systems executives say there is a large pool of potential users among people who primarily work standing up, like delivery truck drivers, law enforcement officers and nurses” (Fisher, 1989, p. D1)—individuals whose jobs required their bodies to be in constant motion. Touchscreens would be preferred by those who “find it hard to use a computer if they have to work standing up” (Lewis, 1990, p. 8). The public-facing rationale for using handheld portables in the workplace was largely focused on improving employee comfort more so than advancing the bottom line for employers, even though employers expected more work to be conducted due to the availability of mobile computers.

Pop culture icons of extreme physical strength and hypermasculinity also appear in discussions about the possibility of portables being carried around (Atkinson, 2005). “Some portables are so heavy (up to 30 pounds),” wrote one journalist, “you have to be Mr. T to lug ‘em around” (Marini, 1984, p. 47), referring to the U.S. actor and professional wrestler who gained fame in the 1980s. In an overview of luggables on the market, one reviewer wrote, “Welcome to bodybuilding for hackers! . . . Just eat your Wheaties and carry a spare can of spinach if you’ll have to carry any more than a block or two” (Gajeway, 1986, p. 64). Moving and using a luggable was a feat of strength reserved for famous athletes and the animated spinach-eating strongman character Popeye the Sailor Man. PC Magazine noted that all the over-20 lb Compaq Portable 386 and Portable III “require is a luggage carrier (or a strong arm)” to transport (Howard, 1989, p. 115). Portables helped to shape the early years of mobile and personal computing’s complex relationship to embodiment and ergonomics at home, in the workplace, and on-the-go.

Mobile intimacy

The “personal” nature of portables was also relative to the affective qualities and emotional relationships that individuals bestowed upon and developed with the various computers that they regularly encountered. Portables, as one form of mobile media, afforded symbolic and material forms of intimacy (Hjorth & Lim, 2012). For example, the May 1985 “Buyer’s Guide to Portable Computers” in Family Computing stated that “laptops are purely personal computers,” with the reasoning that “[your] files are stored inside, and are visible when you turn on the machine. It’s more immediate and real than pulling out a disk and booting it up” (Wilson, 1985, p. 39). Here, the personal nature of the portable computer concerns physical immediacy and the digital availability of information.

Personal intimacy was also associated with being the only person to use a portable, compared to an earlier era of multiuser computer time-sharing (Rankin, 2014, 2018). The author of the aforementioned “Buyer’s Guide” shared an anecdote from a woman he met at a conference, who reportedly told him about her laptop:

The thing about this machine is that it’s really mine. Nobody else uses it the way we all use the IBM at the office. Only I use this one, and that makes this a much more personal machine. I have typed things on the keyboard of this machine that I would never dare to type on the IBM. (Wilson, 1985, p. 39)

Her experiences call to mind Sherry Turkle’s 1984 reflections in The Second Self, where she observed that “People buy an ‘instrumental computer,’ but they come to live with an intimate machine” (Turkle, 1984/2005, p. 173). The woman considered her portable a “personal machine” due to a feeling of intimacy provoked by the device (“it’s really mine”).

The mobile intimacy of portables was not only cultivated in the minds of users but promoted by companies as well. Upon the introduction of the Apple IIc at a press preview event, two Enter reporters reflected on their impressions of the company’s sales pitch:

They . . . called it the “cuddliest” computer ever to hit the market. We’re not sure what they mean by that. In fact, we didn’t get a chance to “cuddle” it, or use it in private, so this is not a hands-on review. (Meyers & Lhamon, 1984, p. 52)

Portables like the Apple IIc set a precedent for mobile devices and bodies to be imagined, per Ito, as a “snug and intimate technosocial tethering” (2005, p. 1). A review of the Olivetti M-10 portable earlier in that same issue of Enter points to ubiquitous computing as the next stage of portables: “We’re waiting for the ultimate portable, the one that carries you, instead of the other way around” (Chevat, 1984, p. 14). From an envelope-sized computer to a computer that envelops, portable computers were personal in making possible new ways of imagining mobile intimacy in addition to new ways of imagining the computer-using body.

Portable

Mobility and transportability

In addition to reshaping ideas about “personal” computing, the “portability” imagined to be afforded by portable computers was relative to broader notions of mobility and transportability. Journalists in the early 1980s attempted to delineate portables at the time from other transportable and mobile communication technologies by articulating a threshold for portability. One definition of a portable computer offered in Byte was that it had to be easy to carry around:

Don’t confuse “portable” with “transportable.” Any computer can be transportable if you have a big enough truck. For the purposes of this article, a portable computer is one that can be carried by one person—but not necessarily easily carried. (Wszola, 1983, p. 35)

While the size of a computer can be standardized, the individual people who might or might not be able to carry one in a given situation and on a given day vary greatly, leaving much to be desired in a universal definition of portable computing based on the object being “easily carried.”

Portable computers were debatably mobile technologies, with those debates shaped by a range of user experiences with existing consumer communication technologies. Prior to the ubiquity of the term “mobile phone,” it was suggested that portable computers be categorized instead as “mobile,” borrowing from the history of the radio:

In radio communications parlance, portable means capable of being carried, mobile means capable of being moved from place to place, and portable-mobile means capable of being operated while in motion. In computer parlance, portable can also mean mobile; there’s the laptop computer, the portable computer, and the luggable computer, for example. We need a new term to distinguish hardware that can be easily carried from place to place and easily plugged in and used. Let’s use radio’s mobile. (Wortman, 1985, p. 46)

Here, the use of “mobile” is explicitly linked from the affordances of the radio to that of the portable computer. “Mobile” spans not only what is technically possible to do with the portable, but what is also imagined as possible in specific social and cultural contexts (Nagy & Neff, 2015).

These tensions around the mobility and transportability of portable computers also included vehicular transportation and its role in the broader history of mobile communication technologies (Goggin, 2006). To emphasize the mobility of portables to consumers in their early years, the computers were regularly depicted as being used by individuals while riding on modes of transportation (see Figure 1). Physical movement was accentuated by showing children and adults using portables when traveling via car, skateboard, motorcycle (Marini, 1984), plane, and even up and down on a see-saw (Nadler, Pagan, & Weinstein, 1984).

Yet, a great number of transportables may never have been transported at all. One journalist noted that they “appear to have a misleading name. Studies show that 80 percent of transportables are never moved, according to Peter Teige, industry analyst at Dataquest of San Jose, California. ‘Essentially, they’re more compact desktops with the option to move’” (Chabal, 1986, p. 11). The immobility of a portable computer raises the question of how central movement is to making computing mobile. For example, an advertisement in the September 1986 issue of Family Computing plays off the popularity of portables to sell wheeled furniture for desktop computers (see Figure 2). It reads, “Next best thing to a portable . . . A Mobile.” The ad is not referring to a mobile as in a mobile phone, but the Mobile Station, a computer desk on wheels. “Bring the computer to you,” states the ad, “Work comfortably at your own desk.” Here, portability is bringing a computer with you, and mobility is bringing a computer to you.

Figure 2.

Advertisement for MicroLand Furniture Co., Inc.

Accessories

The previous discussion of the mobility and transportability afforded by a portable computer was also materially shaped by the various accessories such as straps and bags that could be added to it (Alper, 2017). The portability of a portable computer was mediated by a variety of add-ons, including the briefcase (Atkinson, 2005), bags, backpacks, and straps. The Apple Macintosh, for instance, debuted in 1984 with an optional padded bag for US$99 (US$285 in 2018) “to be hoisted over your shoulder or placed under an airline seat” (Magid, 1984, p. 5). In its print advertising, Apple declared that the Macintosh was “The first Apple you can carry in a bag” (see Figure 3), alluding to the already easily carried lightweight fruit of the same name. At 20 lbs, the Macintosh was “advertised as portable, since it comes with a carrying case” (Chevat, 1984, p. 14), though one might not automatically associate the heavy Macintosh with contemporary mobile computing.

Figure 3.

Advertisement for Apple Macintosh, 1984.

Today’s backpacks and purses with laptop and tablet sleeves owe much to this time period, in which specially designed packs were marketed to carry (relatively) portable computers. The Compupak, for example, was a waterproof nylon backpack with an aluminum frame designed by Oakland, California company Sage Designs specifically for the purpose of carrying a portable computer weighing up to 30 lbs, at a cost of US$139 (US$342 in 2018), “The Compupak really isn’t designed to take along on a wilderness trip,” noted Enter, “It’s mainly for the wandering data searcher who must frequently cart a computer between home and work or school” (“Bits: Have Hardware,” 1984, p. 8). Ad copy for the Compupak in a 1983 issue of InfoWorld reads, “Want to make your Osborne portable?” suggesting that the first “portable” computers were not inherently portable and needed to be made so by a backpack.

Such accessories were not only intended to make carrying a portable easier, but to ensure that the computers could be used whenever and wherever, particularly by both blue-collar and white-collar employees. The first commercial handheld portable computer, the GRiDPad, came with straps on the back to affix it to a user’s forearm: “They are handy, because the computer can get awfully heavy at the end of a long shift. The straps also make it easier to hold the computer and write on it at the same time” (Lewis, 1990, p. 8). A bag that could hold a computer, as well as the rest of one’s belongings, would “solve that ‘second bag problem,’” as one computer executive noted (Winter, 1988a, p. 4). If laptops could be brought down to the size and weight of a book or magazine, then “[there] will be no barrier to having a computer with you all the time” (Winter, 1988a, p. 4). Computer portability was defined in part by material objects that made portables easier to move around with.

Pedestrian

As the previous discussion illustrates, early portable computers were personal and portable to some extent. They were far from pedestrian though, as in commonplace; they were primarily marketed to individuals with enough accumulated wealth and disposable income to purchase a second computer (Atkinson, 2008). One major “factor inhibiting the growth of laptops is price,” one computing consultant offered, “The fact of the matter is, if laptops were cheaper, users would buy more of them” (Wohl, 1986, p. 13). It was challenging at that time to purchase a computer with removable storage and robust word processing capacity for less than US$4,000 (US$9,218 in 2018), and difficult for the average family to afford, considering the median household U.S. income at the time was US$24,897 (US$57,246 in 2018; U.S. Census Bureau, 2018).

Portables were instead “ideal for people who already own a [desktop] computer” and “perfect for the two-computer professional” (Wilson, 1985, p. 38), including those engaging in telecommuting and working, as traveling sales people. The consultant contended that “laptop users don’t buy laptops instead of a computer for their office. Instead, they buy them to supplement an existing system” (Wohl, 1986, p. 13). Handheld portable computers were intended first for business and then as consumer electronics items: “Researchers believe that the devices have the potential, once prices drop, to become as popular a consumer electronics item as the pocket calculator because they will be a blend of a notebook, calendar, telephone and computer terminal” (Lazzareschi, 1989, p. 1). Portables expanded the market for owning a suite of computers beyond portable calculators, just as Apple iPhones, iPads, and Watches have further widened the company’s share of mobile communication technologies over the past decade.

Portable computers also symbolized status and reflected conspicuous consumption, as computer ownership could now be displayed outside the home. For instance, Family Computing profiled Shirley Corriher, a “cooking teacher and consultant” who had recently purchased “a Keystyle80, a notebook-sized model that weighs three pounds and fits into the Gucci bag that never leaves her side when she travels across the continent” (Ditlea, 1987, p. 40). The jet-setting privilege afforded by a portable computer required autonomy over time and location, particularly in work and labor. “Freedom is not having to find an outlet whenever you want to work,” wrote one journalist of battery-powered laptops (Wilson, 1985, p. 38). Yet, freedom as a political concept does not solely concern battery power, but also power and sovereignty over one’s labor. This is reflected in Byte’s advice to readers that “[when] considering the purchase of a portable computer, ask yourself one more question, ‘Where do I need a computer most?’ . . . Your ideal working environment is critical in your choice of a computer” (Wszola, 1983, p. 47). The extent to which portables enabled “freedom” was relative to one’s class positioning, and accordingly, its institutional intersections in the workplace and family with race, ethnicity, and gender.

In addition to technology journalists and business professionals, academics were another group of early adopters of computing and word processing software that wrote about the benefits of portable computing (Kirschenbaum, 2016). Those engaged in anthropological and archeological fieldwork in remote locations, for example, reflected on the durability of portables (Coder & Chu, 1987). One archeologist used a rugged Sharp PC-1500 on a dig to archive each find because “much though I would like an Osborne, the machine would not take kindly to being dragged around in the dirt and the rain” (Powlesland, 1983, p. 145). Ethnographic fieldwork on the islands of Indonesia required one researcher to recharge his Epson PX-8 using a solar pack. It “proved no more inconvenient [to carry] than a standard dust-proof aluminum camera case slung over the shoulder” (Ellen & Fischer, 1987, p. 677). Another computer programming teacher wrote about being “grateful for my Epson laptop computer, which allowed me to work in Nova Scotia’s natural surroundings” while completing course planning for the coming school term (Wilson, 1985, p. 38). Though bringing a laptop on summer vacation to write syllabi is nowadays unremarkable, the portable shaped new routines for those privileged enough to make their own work schedules and work from anywhere, but also newly burdened with expectations to work everywhere and all the time.

Conclusion

Portable computers are an important but understudied historical form of mobile communication. Their development laid technical, social, and cultural groundwork for an array of mobile devices including tablets, PDAs, cell phones, smartphones, and wearables to be understood as “personal, portable, [and] pedestrian” (Ito, 2005, p. 1). By critically reflecting on the imagined affordances of portable computers as depicted in the popular press during the mid-1980s to mid-1990s, this article has provided new entry points to enduring discussions about technologically mediated mobile communication (Jensen, 2013). What might be learned from the era when personal computers became portable that can help us consider the conceptual and theoretical possibilities, per this special issue, of “mobile media beyond mobile phones?”

First, cultural insights into mobile—and relatively immobile—technologies expand the scope of the material and embodied turn in communication research (Dourish, 2001). Materiality, writes Sterne (2014, p. 121), “refers to both physical things and the irreducibly relational character of reality.” Those relationships, according to feminist and disability approaches to science and technology studies (STS), are always defined in part by differential power relations that shape the context of any technology’s production and use. Within the field of mobile media, research that incorporates critical feminist epistemologies (Hjorth & Lim, 2012; Rodino-Colocino, 2006; Spigel, 2001) and disability studies (Alper, 2017; Mills, 2011b) examines material assumptions about the body and bodily practice that underpin prevailing technosocial norms, values, and categories in the marketing and design of new media.

In the case of portables in the 1980s and 1990s, feminist disability STS perspectives allow for a more critical understanding of how the normative body was popularly drawn upon in imagining the portable computer’s default user, or what disability media scholar Ellcessor (2016) refers to as the “preferred user position.” Terms such as “luggables” and “transportables” make the capacities of the productive human body and the body of the preferred user central to the verbiage of the portable computer. They implicitly refer to a body that lugs and totes a computer as large as 20–30 lbs without risk of injury. Additional allusions to weightlifting—Mr. T and Popeye—in selling portables to consumer audiences all emphasized strength and sturdiness, even if many portables stayed put. As feminist disability theorist Garland-Thomson (2011) argues, nonnormative bodies, and disabled bodies in particular, constantly negotiate a material world rarely built with them in mind. If a computer is said to be “easily carried,” one must ask, “Easy for who and under what conditions?”

Second, there is also more to be written about how the material and embodied history of portables and their imagined affordances links up with emergent ideas about possibilities for telecommuting and flexible employment in the 1980s via personal computers and mobile phones (Cassidy, 2001; Rakow & Navarro, 1993) and in the present moment with the so-called “gig economy” (Ticona & Mateescu, 2018). Workers on-the-go can conceivably maneuver a lightweight computer, but “lightweight” is a relative term considering the different demands placed on a laboring body and where a computer can be carried and set down, particularly with respect to the shifting emphasis on work and the workplace as “agile” and “flexible.” As Friedman (2005, p. 61) notes regarding the impact of mobile media on work, “Much of the gains of productivity may be a reflection of how new technologies such as email, laptops, and cell phones put extra, uncompensated demands on workers, rather than making their lives easier.” Handheld portables shifted computing to the hand without feeling the weight of a computer strain other parts of the body like the shoulder or back, but they also brought added expectations of output for workers, be it greater numbers of Amazon package deliveries to be made, more traffic tickets to be written, or more houses to clean through the Handy app.

Lastly, the presence and permutation of product terminology within the “portables” category reminds us that the emergence of mobile media and its afforded uses as we know them today were not inevitable or predetermined. As noted by Marvin (1988, p. 5), “New practices do not so much flow directly from technologies that inspire them as they are improvised out of old practices that no longer work in new settings.” The persistence of the handheld portable in the current formation of the tablet computer serves as a cautionary tale against premature announcements of its technological “failure” (Atkinson, 2008) and the domestication of the personal computer (Berker, Hartmann, Punie, & Ward, 2006; Silverstone & Hirsch, 1992) without accounting for broader economic and political shifts. While portables were initially imagined as secondary to primary desktop computers, the idea of going “mobile only” shades current conversations about the technical inadequacy and security vulnerabilities of mobile phone-only Internet connectivity for low-income individuals (Gonzales, 2014).

In closing, this paper contributes to the history of “mobile media beyond mobile phones” by accounting for the emergence of portable computers in the late 1980s and how it shaped and continues to shape the imagined affordances of personal, portable, and pedestrian computing. The field of mobile communication tends to locate its history in that of wireless communication (i.e., phone, wireless telegraph) more so than the history of mobile computing (i.e., portable, tablet; Goggin, 2006). The smartphone may have marked the convergence of the PDA and the cell phone—along with the digital camera, the Walkman, and handheld gaming device (du Gay, Hall, Janes, Mackay, & Negus, 2013)—but the portable computer is a clear antecedent. The twin histories of mobile phones and portable computers tell different but complementary stories that merit further scholarly attention about the relationship between technologies and the bodies that use them, and between computers and the bodies that carry them.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author biography

Meryl Alper is an assistant professor of Communication Studies at Northeastern University. Her work focuses on the social and cultural implications of communication technologies. She is the author of Giving Voice: Mobile Communication, Disability, and Inequality (2017) and Digital Youth with Disabilities (2014), both published with MIT Press.

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