Kevin Driscoll est l’auteur de The Modem World : Une préhistoire des réseaux sociaux, co-auteur de Minitel: Welcome to the Internet, et responsable du Minitel Research Lab, USA avec Julien Mailland. Il est professeur associé en études des médias à l’Université de Virginie.

Today, artificial intelligence systems are portrayed as massive, remote, costly, and obscure. But there is nothing natural or inevitable about these characteristics. This talk will consider how microcomputer enthusiasts made sense of the 1980s artificial intelligence boom (and bust) through an exploration of hobbyist print media of the period. Beginning in the mid-1970s, an international literature of how-to books, magazine articles, and “type-in” programs promised to teach new computer owners the fundamental principles of AI through hands-on engagement with BASIC code. Recovering and re-running these materials with the help of software emulation reveals a different set of beliefs about technology and expertise than those that have come to dominate today’s AI discourse. Glimpses of a “micro” AI invite us to imagine an alternative future in which AI is imminent, affordable, accessible, and comprehensible to expert and non-expert computer users alike.