http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2356.en.html

Speakers:     	 Johannes Grenzfurthner

"I can count every star in the heavens above but I have no heart I can't fall in love?".

The image of computers in popular music

A talk (with examples) by monochrom, presented by Johannes Grenzfurthner

Bourgeois culture was paralyzed and finally overrun by modern technologies which broke through the traditional class barriers. It went into a panic and produced these very stupid technophobic manifestos and images e.g. of ?the computer?. Pop music discovered and explored the computer not only as a musical instrument but also as something to sing and reflect about in a less aversive way. In doing so it influenced the conception people had of computers. The public image of computers was shaped by groups such as Kraftwerk as well as through obscure Schlager songs such as France Gall's ?Computer No. 3?. Not only was that image influenced by high culture computer panic but also by naïve technomania, and so it delivered the very dialectics of the computer as a means of cultural technology in capitalist society.