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Playing and Copying: Social Practices of Home Computer Users in Poland during the 1980s

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Hacking Europe

Part of the book series: History of Computing ((HC))

Abstract

In this chapter, Wasiak shows how Polish users appropriated home computer technology during the 1980s in a social, political, and economic climate highly influenced by the Soviet Bloc. He introduces a host of social actors who were instrumental in shaping Poland’s home computer market: state institutions, computer experts, private entrepreneurs, and hardware and software retailers. The chapter argues that these social actors not only filled the supply and demand for home computers but also offered the scripts for using them. At the same time, users were actively co-constructing the technology through gaming culture, hobby computing circles, and the computer-oriented subculture known as “the demoscene.” The process of disseminating home computer technology was based on the transnational flow of material artifacts, software objects, and information. The study thus questions the distinction between global and local practices and how these are linked with local culture, the economic situation, and legislation in the cross-border appropriation of technology.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This chapter was written with the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences and a research grant from the Foundation for the History of Technology. I would like to express my gratitude to Gerard Alberts, Ruth Oldenziel, Markku Reunanen, and Antti Silvast for valuable comments on my manuscript.

  2. 2.

    Home computers were very rarely used for editing samizdat magazines. One well-known case was when a ZX Spectrum helped to locally scramble the state TV signal and enabled pirate broadcasting of a Solidarity statement lasting a few minutes. Reported online at http://w.icm.edu.pl/tvS/tvs.htm. Accessed 20 Dec 2010. For an overview of computer crime stories see Buck BloomBecker. 1990. Spectacular computer crimes: What they are and how they cost American business half a billion dollars a year!. Homewood: Dow Jones-Irwin.

  3. 3.

    Madeleine Akrich. 1992. The de-scription of technical objects. In Shaping technology/building society: Studies in sociotechnical change, ed. Wiebe E. Bijker and John Law, 205–224. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; Ruth Oldenziel, Adri Albert de la Bruhèze, and Onno de Wit. 2005. Europe’s mediation junction: Technology and consumer society in the twentieth century. History and Technology 21(1): 107–139.

  4. 4.

    Steve Woolgar. 1991. Configuring the user: The case of usability trials. In A sociology of monsters: Essays on power, technology and domination, ed. John Law, 57–102. London/New York: Routledge.

  5. 5.

    Christina Lindsay. 2003. From the shadows: Users as designers, producers, marketers, distributors and technical support. In How users matter: The co-construction of users and technology, ed. Nelly Oudshoorn and Trevor J. Pinch, 29–50. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

  6. 6.

    “About 5,000 respondents,” Bajtek (June 1989): 4. Because these were predominantly male, I will refer to single users as “he.”

  7. 7.

    Komputer (February 1988): 8.

  8. 8.

    “Nylon curtain” is the metaphor invoked to describe the flow of cultural phenomena across the Iron Curtain: Gyorgy Péteri (ed.). 2006. Nylon curtain. Transnational and transsystemic tendencies in the cultural life of state-socialist Russia and East-Central Europe, TSEECS no. 18. Trondheim: TSEECS.

  9. 9.

    See Gyorgy Péteri (ed.). 2010. Imagining the West in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.

  10. 10.

    Almost all domestic electronics were brought to Poland from Western Europe. Despite frequent travels to USA, the import of home media electronics was rare due to the incompatibility of the American NTSC analog television system with PAL and SECAM used in Europe and differences in voltage.

  11. 11.

    For technology transfer during the Cold War, see Gary K. Bertsch (ed.). 1988. Controlling East–West trade and technology transfer: Power, politics, and policies. Durham: Duke University Press; Frank Cain. 2005. Computers and the Cold War: United States restrictions on the export of computers to the Soviet Union and Communist China. Journal of Contemporary History 40(1): 131–147; Michael Mastanduno. 1992. Economic containment: CoCom and the politics of East-West trade. Ithaca: Cornell University Press; Paul N. Edwards. 1996. The closed world: Computers and the politics of discourse in Cold War America. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

  12. 12.

    Case studies of consumerism in socialist countries can be found in Susan E. Reid, and David Crowley (eds.). 2000. Style and socialism. Modernity and material culture in post-war Eastern Europe. Oxford/New York: Berg Publishers; David Crowley, and Susan E. Reid (eds.). 2002. Socialist spaces: Sites of everyday life in the Eastern bloc. Oxford/New York: Berg Publishers.

  13. 13.

    The impact of trade tourism on consumer culture in Poland is discussed in Ursula Weber. 2002. Der Polenmarkt in Berlin: zur Rekonstruktion eines kulturellen Kontakts im Prozeß der politischen Transformation Mittel- und Osteuropas. Neuried: Ars Una; Małgorzata Irek. 1998. Schmugglerzug Warschau-Berlin-Warschau: Materialien einer Feldforschung. Berlin: Das Arabische Buch.

  14. 14.

    Jerzy Szperkowicz. 1987. Skąd się biorą komputery? [Where computers came from?] Horyzonty Techniki, special issue 64 strony o komputerach (64 pages on computers), 34.

  15. 15.

    Alejandro Portes, Manuel Castells, and Lauren A. Benton (eds.). 1995. The informal economy: Studies in advanced and less developed countries. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press; Janine Wedel (ed.). 1992. The unplanned society: Poland during and after communism. New York: Columbia University Press.

  16. 16.

    Roman Poznański. 1985. Informatyka na Perskim [Informatics on the Persian Bazaar]. Bajtek, October, 24–25.

  17. 17.

    One popular modification was tuning TV sets produced in Poland and the Soviet Union from SECAM to PAL signal system to work with home computers and VCRs bought in Western Europe.

  18. 18.

    After numerous appeals, Bajtek finally withdrew its patronage from the Warsaw bazaar in 1989 due to mass piracy and shady businesses. The decision had minimal impact.

  19. 19.

    Pirate software was also distributed through a mail-order system. In catalogues of pirate software available in Poland, games constituted about 70 % of the programs. A list of catalogs is available on http://atarionline.pl. Accessed 20 Dec 2010.

  20. 20.

    A large list of publishers’ bootleg brochures and books is available at http://atarionline.pl.Accessed 20 Dec 2010.

  21. 21.

    Currently computer bazaars only exist in Warsaw. New and used hardware and legal software is offered there cheaper than in retail stores and pirate games are available.

  22. 22.

    Interview with Wencel, Lucjan. 1986. Head of cooperation with Eastern Europe at Atari. Komputer (August): 11–12. Atari was the only home computer manufacturing company which had a marketing campaign in Poland before 1989. Atari computers were also distributed in Hungary, GDR, and Yugoslavia. Commodore International Ltd. officially entered the Polish market in 1991: “Nareszcie w Polsce” (Finally in Poland), Commodore & Amiga (February 1992), 2. There is no evidence of any other computer manufacturers interested in the Polish market before 1989; obviously, computer magazines would have welcomed such information.

  23. 23.

    Interview with Wiesław Migut, Head of Atari computers marketing branch in foreign trade for the company Karen, Komputer (August 1986): 12.

  24. 24.

    Bajtek (November 1986): 24.

  25. 25.

    As proof of the continuing popularity of the platform, an active Polish community of retro Atari XE users exists to this day: http://atarionline.pl. Accessed 20 Dec 2010.

  26. 26.

    Rob Kling, and C. Suzanne Iacono. 1995. Computerization movements and the mobilization of support for computerization. In Ecologies of knowledge. Work and politics in science and technology, ed. Susan Leigh Star, 119–153. Albany: State University of New York Press.

  27. 27.

    Młody Technik was a very popular Polish magazine on hobby electronics and tinkering, which aimed to promote technical culture – a counterpart of the Soviet Tekhnika Molodezhi.

  28. 28.

    TPI Bulletin 10 (1982). http://www.cs.put.poznan.pl/archiwumpti/. Accessed 20 Dec 2010.

  29. 29.

    “Rzecz głęboko matematyczna, rozmowa z Władysławem M. Turskim, prezesem PTI” (About mathematics, Interview with Marian Turski, chairman of PTI), Życie gospodarcze (April 4, 1986): 39.

  30. 30.

    Waldemar Siwiński. 1989. Poza priorytetem [Outside the priority]. Bajtek, March, 2.

  31. 31.

    Maciej M. Sysło, and Anna B. Kwiatkowska. 2008. The challenging face of informatics education in Poland. In Informatics education – Supporting computational thinking, ed. Roland T. Mittermeir and Maciej M. Sysło, 1–18. Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer.

  32. 32.

    Bajtek (September 1985): 2.

  33. 33.

    Interview with Marcin Kozieł, Commodore & Amiga Fan (December 2009): 14. http://ca-fan.pl. Accessed 20 Dec 2010.

  34. 34.

    Interview with Klaudiusz Dybowski, Commodore & Amiga Fan (November 2008): 10. http://ca-fan.pl. Accessed 20 Dec 2010. Later Dybowski became editor in chief of Commodore & Amiga, a popular magazine published from 1992 to 1995. In the 1990s, computer magazines contained a considerable amount of hints for software use, programming tutorials, and advice on graphics, music, and DTP, written by hobbyists, not professional journalists.

  35. 35.

    One ingenious practice of hardware hacking is rigging a joystick from easily available parts of electronic devices and gear levers. Interview with Waldemar Czajkowski by “V-12/Tropyx,” January 12, 2010, www.riversedge.pl. Accessed 20 Dec 2010.

  36. 36.

    Bajtek (June 1989): 4.

  37. 37.

    The last issue of Bajtek was published in October 1996. Komputer had vanished in 1990.

  38. 38.

    Computer clubs in schools are not included here. Kultura w 1993 r. (Warszawa: Główny Urząd Statystyczny, 1994), 188–189. Data for previous years is not available. Given the severe cutbacks in funding cultural centers in the early 1990s, the centers counted in 1993 probably existed before 1989.

  39. 39.

    Klaudiusz Dybowski, and Michał Silski. 1986. Maniak. Bajtek, May–June, 30.

  40. 40.

    Arti. C&A Fan – złedobregopoczątki. Commodore & Amiga Fan (August 2009): 27.4. http://ca-fan.pl. Accessed 20 Dec 2010.

  41. 41.

    See Steven Kent. 2001. The ultimate history of video games: From Pong to Pokemon and beyond: The story behind the craze that touched our lives and changed the world. New York: Three Rivers Press; Diane Carr, David Buckingham, Andrew Burn, and Gareth Schott. 2006. Computer games. Text, narrative and play. Cambridge: Polity Press.

  42. 42.

    Benedykt Dziubałtowski interview with Paweł Zgrzebnicki, May 7, 2009. http://www.ppa.pl/. Accessed 20 Dec 2010.

  43. 43.

    Komputer (February1988): 8.

  44. 44.

    Karol Wiśniewski interview with Dariusz Bartoszewski, January 7, 2008. http://atarionline.pl. Accessed 20 Dec 2010.

  45. 45.

    “Kaz” Interview with Michał Brzezicki March 28, 2009. http://atarionline.pl. Accessed 20 Dec 2010. The phrase “chodzić na komputer” literally meant “going for a computer” and was used to describe visits to gain access to a computer at someone else’s home. “Rąbać” literally means “to chop.” In Polish computer jargon, it was a popular term for intensive computer gameplay with joysticks.

  46. 46.

    The role of users as coproducers of technology was briefly mentioned by Lindsay, From the shadows, 37–40.

  47. 47.

    Marek Jędrzejewski. 1987. Gdykomputer jest bożkiem [When a computer becomes an idol]. Argumenty, September 27, 12.

  48. 48.

    “Kat” interview with Michał Brzezicki, March 28, 2009. http://atarionline.pl. Accessed 20 Dec 2010.

  49. 49.

    “V-12/Tropyx” interview with Waldemar Czajkowski, January 12, 2010. www.riversedge.pl.Accessed 20 Dec 2010.

  50. 50.

    There were 1,680 responses. Top Secret (April–May 1991): 5. Assuming that habits do not change overnight, not even with the transition of 1989, the survey is also relevant for the 1980s.

  51. 51.

    Krzysztof Ziembik interview with Maciej Wiewiórski, January 10, 2010. http://atarionline.pl. Accessed 20 Dec 2010.

  52. 52.

    Paweł Sołtysiński. 1992. Na dobry początek… [To make a good start…]. Kebab, January, 2.

  53. 53.

    Frank Veraart. 2008c. Vormgevers van Persoonlijk Computergebruik: De ontwikkeling van computers voor kleingebruikers in Nederland 1970–1990. PhD thesis, TU Eindhoven.

  54. 54.

    Marek Pampuch, “PASSA C64 TRWA (I),” Horyzonty Techniki (April 1989). http://filety.net/. Accessed 10 Jan 2012. This number could not be compared with the 68,000 members of HCC in 1988, Frank Veraart. 2011. Losing meanings: Computer games in Dutch domestic use, 1975–2000. IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 33(1): 52–65.

    “Komoda,” literally “chest of drawers,” was an affectionate name for C-64, a counterpart of the English “Commy.”

  55. 55.

    Bajtek (February 1986): 27.

  56. 56.

    Frank Veraart. 2008a. Basicode: Co-producing a microcomputer esperanto. History and Technology 28: 129–147, 132.

  57. 57.

    Bajtek regularly published letters from other socialist countries, in which hobbyists praised the magazine, emphasizing its role as source of knowledge for shaping local club activity.

  58. 58.

    Kristen Haring mentioned similar phenomena among ham radio users, where contacts with remote locations were highly desirable; see Kristen Haring. 2007. Ham radio’s technical culture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

  59. 59.

    Benedykt Dziubałtowski interview with Marek Hyla, September 7, 2007. http://www.ppa.pl/. Accessed 20 Dec 2010.

  60. 60.

    For example, Marek Pampuch became editor in chief for the Polish edition of German Amiga Magazin in 1992.

  61. 61.

    Only recently have scholars started researching specific European forms of hacker culture like the “cracking scene” and “the demoscene.” Tamás Polgár. 2008. The brief history of the computer demoscene. Berlin: CSW Verlag. Markku Reunanen. 2010. Computer demos – What makes them tick? Licentiate thesis, Helsinki University of Technology. Markku Reunanen, and Antti Silvast. 2009. Demoscene platforms: A case study on the adoption of home computers. In History of Nordic computing 2, IFIP advances in information and communication technology, ed. John Impagliazzo, Timo Jarvi, and Petri Paju, 289–301. Berlin: Springer; Antti Silvast, and Markku Reunanen. 2014. Multiple users, diverse users: The appropriation of the personal computer by the demoscene hackers. In Hacking Europe. From computer cultures to demoscenes, ed. Gerard Alberts and Ruth Oldenziel, 151–163. New York: Springer.

  62. 62.

    A list of software artifacts from the scene is available on www.pouet.com website. Accessed 20 Dec 2010. At least 700 issues of magazines were published in Poland; most are available at the website www.filety.net. Accessed 20 Dec 2010.

  63. 63.

    Interview with Polonus, Włócznia Wschodu no. 2 [The Spear of the East], 1990, no. 2, http://nonane.c64.org/csdb/. Accessed 20 Dec 2010.

  64. 64.

    Commodore Scene Database, http://nonane.c64.org/csdb/. Accessed 11 Dec 2011. There were similar groups working on ZX Spectrum and Atari but no detailed sources for those platforms.

  65. 65.

    Appropriation of computers in Hungary during the 1980s was briefly described in Polgár. The brief history of the computer demoscene, 92–95.

  66. 66.

    It is worth noting other ingenious names of Polish groups like International Cracking Service, Slaves of Keyboard, and Crazy Boys Software.

  67. 67.

    TG JSL stands for The Great Jarek Software Limited. Author’s e-mail correspondence with J. H., November 23, 2010.

  68. 68.

    Maciek Szlemiński. 1993. Polska scena C-64 teraz i kiedyś [Polish C-64 scene: Past and present]. Commodore & Amiga, July, 36.

  69. 69.

    Interview with “Silver Dream,” Commodore & Amiga Fan (December 2009): 75. http://ca-fan.pl/. Accessed 20 Dec 2010.

  70. 70.

    Polgár stated that in communist Hungary, it was forbidden to send diskettes abroad, but crackers were somehow able to evade this restriction, Polgár, The brief history of the computer demoscene, 95. I have not found any such regulation in socialist Poland.

  71. 71.

    Interview with Polonus, Inverse no. 10 (2002), http://nonane.c64.org/csdb/. Accessed 10 Jan 2012.

  72. 72.

    Ibid.

  73. 73.

    Konstantin Elfimov. 2008. Brief history of Russian Speccy demoscene and the story of Inward. Mustekala Kulttuurilehti [online journal]. http://www.mustekala.info/node/35580.. Accessed 30 Jan 2014.

  74. 74.

    Sherry Turkle. 1984. The second self: Computers and the human spirit. New York: Simon & Schuster.

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  1. Institute for Cultural Studies, University of Wrocław, Wrocław, Poland

    Patryk Wasiak

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  1. Korteweg-de Vries Institute for Mathematics, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Gerard Alberts

  2. School of Innovation Sciences, History Department, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

    Ruth Oldenziel

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Wasiak, P. (2014). Playing and Copying: Social Practices of Home Computer Users in Poland during the 1980s. In: Alberts, G., Oldenziel, R. (eds) Hacking Europe. History of Computing. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-5493-8_6

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