The Evolving Computer Threat

In 1973 the most common complaints about the computer were about billing errors ("the computer did it") and lost airplane reservations ("the computer is down"). The threat from the computer was the threat from the impersonal system that knew you only as a number. Now the threat seems all too personal, captured in the fear that a child or a spouse will get "hooked" and become addicted to a machine.

- From The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit by Sherry Turkle (published in 1984)