Computer World

Recorded at Kling Klang between 1978 and 1981. Hütter said: "We live in a computer world, so we made a song about it." The album is about computer technology and its rise within society, and despite that theme its production was completely analogue. The band did not own a computer when they made it, and some electronic vocals were generated with a Texas Instruments language translator. The cover shows a computer terminal displaying the heads of the four members, in a font suggestive of OCR-A. Emil Schult created the inner sleeve artwork, which Günter Fröhling photographed.

The album reached number 15 on the UK Albums Chart and was certified silver by the BPI on 12 February 1982. NME ranked it the second best album of 1981, although David Hepworth of Smash Hits found it predictable and gimmicky and gave it 4 out of 10. Pitchfork placed it 18th among the albums of the 1980s in 2018, and Tom Ewing called it the group's most satisfying record. The Computer World tour ran from 24 May to 14 December 1981. Afrika Bambaataa's Planet Rock took the rhythm of Numbers, Coldplay's Talk used the melody of Computer Love and La Roux's I'm Not Your Toy its main riff.