Microcomputers: From Movement to Industry

Abstract

The microcomputer is the child of an odd marriage between the military industrial complex and counter-culture hackers from the fringes of the new left. Ironically, this product of the anti-authoritarian visions of its inventors has become the darling of financiers and a symbol of the hope of the renewed dynamism of U.S. capitalism. The history of the microcomputer industry is thus a case study in both the constraints on innovation within large capitalist firms and the ability of those firms to coopt and control the products of renegade inventors. It is also the story of the creative energies unleashed by the liberatory impulses of the late 1960s, and the idealistic but fallacious belief that technical innovation per se can challenge the centralization of information and power, and the foundations of capitalist rule.

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