Megan Prelinger is a cultural historian and archivist, and the author of Another Science Fiction: Advertising the Space Race 1957–1962. She is cofounder and information designer of the Prelinger Library in San Francisco, where she lives.
"Fascinating…. [A] fantastically geeky visual tour of tech industry
history as seen through the lens of the commercial art that helped
popularize it."
*Meg Miller - Fast Company*
"Attentive readers of Prelinger’s lively chronology will come away
with an appreciation of how the visual representations of
technology are integral to our understanding of it."
*Chris Rasmussen - Bookforum*
"Unusual and insightful…. Filled with retro tech-industry ads,
magazine covers and other commercial artworks, this erudite book
takes readers on a cultural history tour that sharply reveals
‘art’s ability to touch the intangible and render it visible.’"
*John Wilwol - San Francisco Chronicle*
"[An] unusual and compelling study."
*Nature*
"An essential and eye-popping visual history of electronics, a
glimpse of the electronic infrastructure captured in the brief
moment before it miniaturized down to a scale too small for the eye
to see, disappearing from our ordinary view forever, even as it
burrowed into our buildings, streets, vehicles and even our
bodies."
*Cory Doctorow coeditor of Boing Boing and author of In Real Life
and Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free*
"A highly original cultural history of 20th-century technology
examined through the lens of commercial art…. Sophisticated in its
grasp of science and technological history but also accessible to
general readers."
*Kirkus Reviews*
"A tour de force of the computer and electronic age that takes
readers on a fascinating voyage that spans everything from graphic
renderings of theoretical space gondolas to depictions of
transistors as the route to utopia. Like Trevor Paglen’s
exploration of the visual aspects of secrecy, Megan Prelinger’s
Inside the Machine provides readers with a unique window into the
history of electronics and computer science during the Cold War,
and beyond. Merging science with art, Prelinger challenges our
linear notions of scientific progress, helping us see a new
dimension to our modern technological world."
*Sharon Weinberger, author of Imaginary Weapons: A Journey Through
the Pentagon’s Scientific Underworld*
"Because electrons are mostly invisible, our visualizations of them
tell us more about our dreams than about electrons. This cool and
unusual book gathers our earliest collective dreams about circuits
and electronics and makes them visible. It got me thinking about
our assumptions for tomorrow. I love it when a book like this makes
me see the world differently."
*Kevin Kelly, senior maverick for Wired magazine and author of What
Technology Wants*
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