Endre Dányi
This paper shows how various meanings of a new communication technology are
born or get transformed when placed in a different political context via a case
study of a program organized by the Soros Foundation in 1984 to promote democratic
values (the idea of an ‘open society’) in Hungary. This program,
called the Xerox project, helped hundreds of public institutions acquire photocopy
machines. Under the suppressive Hungarian regime of the 1980s the appearance
of photocopy machines as a new means of copying texts had serious political
consequences. By means of historical research and expert interviews this paper
analyses the nature of these consequences and examines how certain meanings
and uses of photocopy machines evolved in the latter half of the 1980s.