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Payment of foster carers has long been a controversial issue, reflecting the question of whether fostering is a voluntary or professional activity. This article explores explanations for the change that took place during the twentieth century concerning economic compensation to foster parents for caring for other people’s children in their homes. The study is based on document analysis of the child welfare discourse and practice in Sweden. The data consists of documents selected from a municipal child welfare board, documents from the child welfare agent and child welfare assistant at the county level, and documents from national‐level sources, such as legislation and leading social work journals. Foster parents who took care of other people’s children in their homes often received some economic compensation for the care from the municipal child welfare board. In the early twentieth century, this compensation was usually greatest when caring for younger children and lower for older children. Radical changes took place during the century, however, that affected the payment system. In the 1970s, the boards instead paid the greatest compensation to foster parents who took care of teenagers. Starting in 1974, the boards also began paying a subsidy to foster parents. The article analyses explanations for these changes. In summary, the following explanatory factors are discussed: changing perceptions of childhood, changes in circumstances in which children were placed in care, urbanization, and women’s transition to paid employment.

This paper discusses the process of recognition of early computer art not as iconic but as a purely intellectual or conceptual form as it took place during a debate on the pages of PAGE, initiated by Frieder Nake’s “Statement for PAGE” and his seminal text “There Should Be No Computer Art.”

In April 1965, the Howard Wise Gallery in New York City held a show of computer-generated pictures by Bela Julesz and Michael Noll. This show was a very early public exhibit of digital art in the United States. This essay is a memoir of that show.

Holograms reached popular consciousness during the 1960s and have since left audiences alternately fascinated, bemused or inspired. Their impact was conditioned by earlier cultural associations and successive reimaginings by wider publics. Attaining peak public visibility during the 1980s, holograms have been found more in our pockets (as identity documents) and in our minds (as video-gaming fantasies and “faux hologram” performers) than in front of our eyes. The most enduring, popular interpretations of the word “hologram” evoke the traditional allure of magic and galvanize hopeful technological dreams. This article explores the mutating cultural uses of the term “hologram” as markers of magic, modernity and optimism.

Art critic Jerry Saltz is regarded as a pioneer of online art criticism by the mainstream press, yet the Internet has been used as a platform for art discussion for over 30 years. There have been studies of independent print-based arts publishing, online art production and electronic literature, but there have been no histories of online art criticism. In this article, the author provides an account of the first wave of online art criticism (1980–1995) to document this history and prepare the way for thorough evaluations of the changing form of art criticism after the Internet.

This essay explores the relationship between pictures and the lighting conditions in which they were originally viewed. The theoretical interrelationship between brightness, illumination and depiction is explored in a case study of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper mural at the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan. Advanced rendering software allows for the reconstruction of the refectory as it stood when Leonardo painted The Last Supper and demonstrates the complex interaction between light and space in the mural. This analysis illustrates how digital humanities might bridge traditional art-historical methods and forensic visualization.

Since the end of World War II, the U.S. government has embraced the rhetoric of the peaceful use of the atom. Following the government’s lead, architect-designer-philosopher Richard Buckminster Fuller espoused similar ideas. Like U.S. President Lyndon Johnson and other “atoms for peace” enthusiasts, Fuller thought that the revolution then occurring in architecture was an outgrowth of the peaceful atom. And, like Johnson, Fuller believed that technology based on the atom did not just favor Americans but could be applied for the benefit of all humanity. Fuller thought atomic technology could help extend humankind’s knowledge base and thus be applied to develop better architecture. This article explains how Fuller, like politicians of the time, believed that the potential for fearful products of destruction—of war and its weaponry— could be applied for peacetime applications, particularly when designing his geodesic dome, including his Expo ’67 pavilion.

In this short biography, Edmond Couchot tells how, after having attempted a plastic-art synthesis between gestural painting and lumino-kineticism, he became interested in cybernetics and visual arts and the participation of the spectator in aesthetic perception. Then we learn how, in the early 1980s, he took part in the creation of a new degree course in art and technology of the image at the University of Paris-VIII.

In this Historical Perspective, we ask what information is needed beyond connectivity diagrams to understand the function of nervous systems. Informed by invertebrate circuits whose connectivities are known, we highlight the importance of neuronal dynamics and neuromodulation, and the existence of parallel circuits. The vertebrate retina has these features in common with invertebrate circuits, suggesting that they are general across animals. Comparisons across these systems suggest approaches to study the functional organization of large circuits based on existing knowledge of small circuits.