You can manage bookmarks using lists, please log in to your user account for this.
Media type:
E-Article
Title:
Venerating the Black Box: Magic in Media Discourse on Technology
Contributor:
Stahl, William A.
imprint:
Sage Publications, 1995
Published in:Science, Technology, & Human Values
Language:
English
ISSN:
0162-2439;
1552-8251
Origination:
Footnote:
Description:
<p>Arthur C. Clarke once wrote that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." The language of magic is evident in much of popular discourse about computers. A content analysis of Time magazine reporting on computers and related technologies over a ten-year period revealed that 36 percent of all these stories used explicitly magical or religious language. Together with a qualitative analysis of implicitly magical themes, the patterns in Time's reporting reveal how magic language was used as one strategy to stabilize and close the technological frame of personal computers in the mid-1980s.</p>