Digital Kultur

Hverdagsliv

I dag

• Experiential stories (Bell)• Hverdagsliv (Lister)• Teknologi og det sociale (Mackay)• Pause• Tekst-guides

Myter om cyberspace, David Bell

• Three kinds of stories about technology (Bell/Hayles):– Material (what it is)– Symbolic (what it means)– Experiential (what it does) TODAY

• Stories blend together, themes concur

representation/stories about cyberspace

versus

cyberspace!

cyberspace has become mundane (Bell)

"THERE IS A VIRUS GOING AROUND CALLED THE A.I.D.S VIRUS. IT WILL ATTACH ITSELF INSIDE YOUR COMPUTER AND EAT AWAY AT YOUR MEMORY THIS MEMORY IS IRREPLACEABLE. THEN WHEN IT'S FINISHED WITH MEMORY IT INFECTS YOUR MOUSE OR POINTING DEVICE. THEN IT GOES TO YOUR KEY BOARD AND THE LETTERS YOU TYPE WILL NOT REGISTER ON SCREEN. BEFORE IT SELF TERMINATES IT EATS 5MB OF HARD DRIVE SPACE AND WILL DELETE ALL PROGRAMS ON IT AND IT CAN SHUT DOWN ANY 8 BIT TO 16 BIT SOUND CARDS RENDERING YOUR SPEAKERS USELESS. IT WILL COME IN E-MAIL CALLED "OPEN: VERY COOL! :) DELETE IT RIGHT AWAY. THIS VIRUS WILL BASICLY RENDER YOUR COMPUTER USELESS. YOU MUST PASS THIS ON QUICKLY AND TO AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSLE!!!!! YOU MUST!"

The arrival of a new technology

• Who bought it and why?

• How was model chosen?

• Who decided where to keep it?

• Did it look right?• Who learned to

use it first?• Changes and

consequences

MacKay, 1997: 279-82

Computers as any other part of everyday life

Progress dream

Status symbol

Need to join!

the dream of the smart home

Heightened control of our environment, technology provides comfort: adopt!

Everyday Life

“By everyday life we mean the family relationships, routines, cultural practices and spaces through which people make sense of the world.” (Lister, 2003: 220)

“The category of “everyday life” can help us to see the pervasive and intrusive nature of the “information revolution”. For it points to the ways in which the rhythm, texture, and experience of social life –the very segmentation of time and space– are being transformed and informed by capital. And, furthermore, it allows us to see how relations of power penetrate and infuse the social body.” (Robins/Webster in Lister,2003: 225)

Example: telecommuting

-A new practice: new individual and social freedom

-Merge of office and home / leisure and work / public and private

-Do-it-yourself creativity

-Everyday life intensively mediated

-Limits of corporate and bureocratic systems are not overcome but reinforced

-Colonisation of everyday life

Context mediates the effects of technology

Beyond discourse analyse into the study of social praxis

Technology and social relations

• Technology has three layers of meaning:

1. The physical artefact (design, function)2. Surrounding human activity (meaning in use)3. Human knowledge (know how, social practise)

• Vs technological determinism (ex. The stone age, the steam age, the silicon age?)

• Determinism ignores the social processes surrounding the technology

MacKenzie/Wajcman, 1985

Technology and social relations II

• Technology is contested and transformed (ex. First home computers from hobbyist machines to business machines to consumer good)

• Social issues shape technology creation: ex. Miniaturized circuits as product of US military research in cold war time (walkman, computers)

MacKenzie/Wajcman, 1985

Close inspection of technological development reveals that technology leads a double life, one which conforms to the intentions of designers and interests of power and another which contradicts them –proceeding behind the backs of their architects to yield unintended consequences and unanticipated possibilities.

Noble, 1984: 324-25

resistance and transformation?

technology shifts meaning over time

MacKay, 1997: 274-76

Technology has gender

Different use of technology by gender: example of Rakow´s work on American suburbuan housewives´use of the telephone.

Rakow, 1992

radio capturing time and space in the home

“First the technological and aesthetic form of the receiving apparatus changed dramatically, turning it into a fashionable piece of living-room furniture.

Second was the formation of radio discourses that symbolically constructed their audience as “the family”, and which sought to interpellate mothers as monitors of domestic life. Finally, broadcasters increasingly ordered programmes into “routinized” schedules that revolved around the imagined daily activities of the housewife.”

Moores, 1993: 80

give us a break!

Tekst-guides

-Computers in everyday life

-Situated use and/or consumption practice

-Methodology examples: quantitative/qualitative, ethnographic

Til næste gang• Læs:

– Stone, Allucquère Rosanne. 1992. “Will the Real Body Please Stand Up? Boundary Stories About Virtual Cultures.”

– Cheung, Charles. 2004. “Identity Construction and Self-Presentation on Personal Homepages: Emancipatory Potentials and Reality Constraints”.

• Ethnography: participant observation in Facebook (guidelines for this exercise in the course website, see under ”exercises”)

Bibliography

• DE CERTEAU, M. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: UCLA Press.

• HARAWAY, Donna. 1991. “A Manifesto for cyborgs: science, technology, and socialist feminism in the 1980’s, in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. New York; Routledge.

• LISTER (et.al). 2003. New Media: A Critical Introduction. London Routledge.

• MACKAY, Hugh. 1997. “Consuming Communication Technologies at Home”. In Mackay, Hugh (ed.) Consumption and Everyday Life. London: Sage.

• MACKENZIE, D and WAJCMAN, J. (eds.). 1985. The Social Shaping of Technology. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

• MOORES, S. 1993. Interpreting Audiences: the ethnography of media consumption. London, Sage.

• NOBLE, D. 1984. Forces of Production. New York, Alfred Knopf.• RAKOW, L. 1992. Gender on the Line: women, the telephone and

community life, urbana, University of Illinois Press.