Vernacular Technical Practices Beyond the Imitative/Innovative Boundary: Apple II Cloning in Early-1980s South Korea

Abstract

This article seeks to reinstate the significance of microcomputer cloning in the history of computing, seeing it as a vernacular technical practice that is outside of the institutional domain yet entangled with it. While exploring the practices of Apple II cloning at the Cheonggyecheon electronics market, and its contribution to promoting the computer industry in South Korea during the early 1980s, the study examines how the vernacular technical practices of cloning moved beyond the imitative/innovative boundary. It has two parts. First, the cloning of Apple II computers is traced with a focus on cottage industry technicians at the electronics market and their East Asian translocal connections. Second, the entanglements of the vernacular with the institutional are analyzed in relation to how clones were sometimes superior to the original while retaining compatibility with it, which in turn made large firms rely on such vernacular practices. Arguing that the boundaries of copy/original, imitative/innovative, or vernacular/institutional were permeable, this study concludes that vernacular technical practices of cloning, although outside formal institutions and official histories, constitute a critical part of the computer industry and the history of computing.

Keywords:

• Vernacular technical practice
• Apple II clone
• electronics market
• computer industry
• history of computing

1 Introduction: Local Histories of (Micro)computing and the Vernacular

The microcomputer was one of the first global popular digital technologies. Among others, the Apple II, which originated from the American hacker culture of the 1970s, is acknowledged for being particularly successful at opening international consumer markets to personal and home computing, and this was true as well for East Asia. The Apple II was also amongst the most popular early microcomputers in South Korea. However, was it the actual “Apple II” that was embraced by local users? It was, rather, clones of the machine whose workings and appearance echoed the American-designed system that became available at an electronics market in 1980. Furthermore, was the “Apple II” just a purely authentic machine that was manufactured without any relation to these clones?

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