1982

Home Computer Named Machine of the Year

Otto Friedrich (1929–1995)

TIME® magazine’s “Man of the Year” franchise took a digital detour in 1982, naming the personal computer the “Machine of the Year.” Subtitled “The Computer Moves In,” it was the first time the iconic magazine had named a nonhuman as the year’s most influential force. As the editors stated, “There are some occasions, though, when the most significant force in a year’s news is not a single individual but a process, and a widespread recognition by a whole society that this process is changing the course of all other processes.”

The momentum behind the decision is understood best through journalist Otto Friedrich’s 11-page cover story, an homage to personal computers. Friedrich’s article encapsulated the general public’s wonder and excitement about the opportunities to be had with a personal computer and made explicit through colorful examples how doctors, lawyers, housewives, and even a former NFL player improved the quality of their work and created new business opportunities around knowledge and computer power.

While the article’s description of what the PC could do was impressive, even more profound was its message about what a person could become by using a PC to extend his or her cognitive and physical capabilities. At its most fundamental level, 1982 was the year the public understood that their own human limitations might no longer be limitations at all.

The anxiety and exhilaration that accompany breakthroughs and weighty transitions were also visible throughout the issue, which touched on the function (and value) of face-to-face community, the potential neurological effects on the brain if humans didn’t have to spend time thinking about routine work, notions about how computers might change the business of crime, rumination about how the young use computers differently than those over 40, and the long-term impact of computers on employment.

For many, the idea that a machine might replace the “Man of the Year” crystallized the sense that an uneasy shift was underway in America. For others, it crystallized the notion that the need to have a “competitive edge,” whether professional or personal, was about to accelerate to warp speed, and with it the pace of everyday life.

A father and son use an early personal computer. The widespread use of the home computer in the early 1980s inspired TIME magazine to announce the personal computer as “Machine of the Year” on its January 3, 1983, cover.