In the late 1970s and early 1980s, from about 1977 to 1983, it was widely predicted that computers would soon revolutionize many aspects of home and family life as they had business practices in the previous decades. Mothers would keep their recipe catalog in “kitchen computer” databases and turn to a medical database for help with child care, fathers would use the family’s computer to manage family finances and track automobile maintenance. Children would use disk-based encyclopedias for school work and would be avid video gamers. Home automation would bring about the intelligent home of the ’80s. Using Videotex, NAPLPS or some sort of as-yet unrealized computer technology, television would gain interactivity. The personalized newspaper was a commonly-predicted application. Morning coffee would be brewed automatically under computer control. The same computer would control the house lighting and temperature. Robots would take the garbage out, and be programmable to perform new tasks by the home computer. Electronics were expensive, so it was generally assumed that each home would have only one multitasking computer for the entire family to use in a timesharing arrangement, with interfaces to the various devices it was expected to control.

All this was predicted to be commonplace sometime before the end of the decade, but virtually every aspect of the predicted revolution would be delayed or prove entirely impractical. The computers available to consumers of the time period just weren’t powerful enough to perform any single task required to realize this vision, much less do them all simultaneously. The home computers of the early 1980s could not multitask. Even if they could, memory capacities were too small to hold entire databases or financial records, floppy disk-based storage was inadequate in both capacity and speed for multimedia work, and the graphics of the systems could only display blocky, unrealistic images and blurry, jagged text. Before long, a backlash set in—computer users were “geeks”, “nerds” or worse, “hackers”. The North American video game crash of 1983 soured many on home computer technology. The computers that were purchased for use in the family room were either forgotten in closets or relegated to basements and children’s bedrooms to be used exclusively for games and the occasional book report.

It took another 10 years for technology to mature, for the graphical user interface to make the computer approachable for non-technical users, and for the internet to provide a compelling reason for most people to want a computer in their homes. Predicted aspects of the revolution were left by the wayside or modified in the face of an emerging reality. The cost of electronics dropped precipitously and today many families have a computer for each family member, or a laptop for mom’s active lifestyle, a desktop for dad with the kids sharing a computer. Encyclopedias, recipe catalogs and medical databases are kept online and accessed over the world wide web not stored locally on floppy disks or CD-ROM. TV has yet to gain substantial interactivity; instead, the web has evolved alongside television, but the HTPC and internet video sites such as YouTube, Netflix and Hulu may one day replace traditional broadcast and cable television. Our coffee may be brewed automatically every morning, but the computer is a simple one embedded in the coffee maker, not under external control. As of 2008, robots are just beginning to make an impact in the home, with Roomba and Aibo leading the charge.

This delay wasn’t out of keeping with other technologies newly introduced to an unprepared public. Early motorists were widely derided with the cry of “Get a horse!” until the automobile was accepted. Television languished in research labs for decades before regular public broadcasts began. In an example of changing applications for technology, before the invention of radio, the telephone was used to distribute opera and news reports, whose subscribers were denounced as “illiterate, blind, bedridden and incurably lazy people”. Likewise, the acceptance of computers into daily life today is a product of continuing refinement of both technology and perception.

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