Computers, Information, and Everyday Life

One way to view the literature on the history of computing is to consider the function of the computing device that comes under historical investigation. However, new uses of computers supplement rather than supplant old uses of computers. For example, we still have scientific calculators, business database machines, and personal computers in the modern era. This article focuses on the computer as a personal machine as a device to gather information through email and Web searches, and hence the focus is on the period starting in the early 1990s and carrying forward to the present. Historians of computing are typically focused on information technology (including its uses), while information science scholars often focus instead on information and its organization, even if information technology plays an important supporting role. The particular concern in this case study is everyday information-seeking behavior, or everyday information for short.