In 1983, Time magazine nominated the PC as the ‘Machine of the Year’. The edition's title, ‘The Computer Moves In’, announced the Information Age's entry into our living rooms. On the cover, a man sits alienated in front of his new roommate. What he plans to do with the computer or what the machine might do to him is not quite clear. In January 2007, a computer was again displayed on the Time cover, but this time the computer screen is a mirror reflecting the ‘Person of the Year’: ‘Yes, You. You Control the Information Age. Welcome to Your World’. The cover is a symbol of the emancipation of the computer user from the alienated user of 1983 to the ‘hero of the Information Age’ in 2007.

The attention devoted to the computer in 1983 marks an important milestone in the emergence of what has become known as the ‘information society’. What started as a secret technology for military research – an accounting machine in scientific laboratories and corporate companies, advanced technology initially unthinkable as a mass-produced consumer good – suddenly entered the lives and homes of common users as the microcomputer.

With this microcomputer, users had a high-tech device at their disposal, a machine which was able to execute every task provided in a symbolic language the machine can understand. Over the past two decades, the computer has developed into an everyday medium. Due to easy-to-use interfaces and the Internet, which has increased the reach and use of computers globally, computer use has become common everyday practice. The 24-year interval between the two editions of Time magazine bridges the gap between the introduction of the computer into the consumer sphere and the emergence of a new global cultural practice.