SYSTEM PREFERENCES is an animated documentary that tells the story of computer pioneer Bashir Rameyev, who is on a quest to achieve something extraordinary for his country in order to prove that he and his family are not 'the enemies of the people'. The result of his struggle is the invention of a computer used to launch Sputnik into space and, as a consequence, to spur the headlong development of Russian and American microelectronics. The second narrative woven into Rameyev's story is organized around a central argument that USSR's 1969 decision to curtail national computer research in favor of cloning American products had tragic consequences not only for Russian computer science, but for the global community of computer users today.