Great Northern Machine Wars: Rivalry Between User Groups in Finland

Author

Saarikoski, Petri ; Reunanen, Markku

Author_Institution

Univ. of Turku, Turku, Finland

Volume

36

Issue

2

fYear

2014

fDate

Apr.-June 2014

Firstpage

16

Lastpage

26

Abstract

The history of computing has been colored by "computer wars" that have raged between various companies competing in the market. The commercial wars have received a great deal of attention, whereas the clashes between supporters of different platforms remain largely undocumented. This article approaches the topic from a Finnish hobbyist perspective through three case studies, ranging from the emergence of affordable home computers and video game consoles in the early 1980s to modern-day wars. The results suggest that even though the social and technological landscape has changed significantly during the last 30 years, the essence of the computer wars has remained largely unchanged.

Keywords

social aspects of automation; Finland; commercial wars; computer wars; hobbyist perspective; social landscape; technological landscape; Commercialization; Companies; Finland; Hardware; History; Marketing and sales; Finnish computing; computer wars; computing platforms; history of computing; home computing; videogame consoles;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Annals of the History of Computing, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1058-6180

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/MAHC.2014.20

Filename

6828545