Book ID: CBB001210090

User Unfriendly: Consumer Struggles with Personal Technologies, from Clocks and Sewing Machines to Cars and Computers (2011)

unapi

Corn, Joseph J. (Author)


Johns Hopkins University Press


Publication Date: 2011
Physical Details: 272 pp.; ill.
Language: English

We've all been there. Seduced by the sleek designs and smart capabilities of the newest gadgets, we end up stumped by their complicated set-up instructions and exasperating error messages. In this fascinating history, Joseph J. Corn maps two centuries of consumer frustration and struggle with personal technologies. Aggravation with the new machines people adopt and live with is as old as the industrial revolution. Clocks, sewing machines, cameras, lawn mowers, bicycles, electric lights, cars, and computers: all can empower and exhilarate, but they can also exact a form of servitude. Adopters puzzle over which type and model to buy and then how to operate the device, diagnose its troubles, and meet its insatiable appetite for accessories, replacement parts, or upgrades. It intrigues Corn that we put up with the frustrations our technology thrusts upon us, battling with the unfamiliar and climbing the steep learning curves. It is this ongoing struggle, more than the uses to which we ultimately put our machines, that animates this thought-provoking study.

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Description The focus is 19th and 20th centuries.


Reviewed By

Review Jesika Butler (2014) Review of "User Unfriendly: Consumer Struggles with Personal Technologies, from Clocks and Sewing Machines to Cars and Computers". Icon: Journal of the International Committee for the History of Technology (pp. 174-176). unapi

Review Rubin, Lawrence C. (2012) Review of "User Unfriendly: Consumer Struggles with Personal Technologies, from Clocks and Sewing Machines to Cars and Computers". Journal of American Culture (p. 286). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001210090/

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Authors & Contributors
Blaszczyk, Regina Lee
Cynthia Brokaw
Christopher A. Reed
Tchudi, Stephen
Baydo, Gerald
Vaidhyanathan, Siva
Concepts
Technology and culture
Technology and society
Technology
Consumers and consumerism
Users of technology
Automobiles
Time Periods
20th century
19th century
21st century
20th century, early
20th century, late
18th century
Places
United States
Great Britain
Istanbul (Turkey)
Pakistan
Germany
China
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