I'm not sure the key change over time here is the about "emergent technology". My observation is that, as computers were increasingly networked (particularly after the explosion of the Internet), perception of computers shifted much more to being a communication tool... and that's now literally true as the primary computer people interact with is their phone. Even before smartphones, once the networking became ubiquitous things started changing. Email was initially the primary use for networked computers, and then with the web they became tools to interact with remote people/organizations, and with the explosion of social media they became tools primarily for interacting with other people. Before networking, the person at the other end of the conversation was just so much more removed/abstract, so most people's mental models were left with only the device itself in the interaction.