ISOCIETY JULY02 JAMES CRABTREE, MAX NATHAN & RICHARD REEVES Reality IT Technology & Everyday Life 0.0 REALITY IT – TECHNOLOGY & EVERYDAY LIFE Contents CHAPTER 1 // pgs 1-9 Introduction – Pulling Power Pragmatic Evolution CHAPTER 2 // pgs 10-13 Ask the Audience – Research Approach Stage 1: Technological Diaries – Tracking Everyday Life Stage 2: Focus Groups – Examining Technology on Everyday Life Stage 3: Quantifying Technology in Everyday Life Stage 4: Statistical Analysis – Clustering Attitudes to ICT CHAPTER 3 // pgs 14-19 Who’s Afraid of ICT? Fun, Function and Fear Fun: Toys Are Us Function: Utility Players Fear: And Sometimes Loathing CHAPTER 4 // pgs 20-30 Enthusiasts, Quiet Pragmatists Confidence and Ownership and Aversives Cluster Tendencies Enthusiasts Quiet Pragmatists Aversives CHAPTER 5 // pgs 31-43 Majority Pursuits – PCs A PC-owning Democracy To Buy or Not to Buy? Type, Browse, Mail Dial Up for Data - Home Internet Use Time Online E-mail -Unloved but in Demand CHAPTER 6 // pgs 44-55 Mobiles and Middle England Buying Mobile Phones ‘I’m on the train’ – Mobile Phones and Social Networks Frequently Dialled Numbers Text Messages – The Joy of Text Messages and Mates CHAPTER 7 // pgs 56-59 Kicks and Flicks - Digital Television (DTV) DTV Domiciles Deciding on Digital Purchasing Passivity Peter Runge House CHAPTER 8 // pgs 60-63 3 Carlton House Terrace, Conclusion – The Invention London SW1Y 5DG of Convention t. +44 0 20 7479 1000 Endnotes f. +44 0 20 7479 1111 www.theworkfoundation.com ISOCIETY JULY02 REALITY IT – TECHNOLOGY & EVERYDAY LIFE 1 CHAPTER 1/ PULLING POWER Chapter 1 Introduction – Pulling Power The peculiarity of what is close-to-hand is that, in its handiness, it must, as it were, MARTIN HEIDEGGER1 withdraw in order to be handy...That with which we have our everyday dealings are not the tools themselves. On the contrary, that with which we concern ourselves primarily is the work – that which is to be produced.1 WILLIAM GIBSON2 The street finds its own uses for things.2 Prediction is fraught with difficulty, techno-utopians, the Internet heralded a become the basis for face-to-face particularly the future impact of new new anarchic world, a web of ‘footnotes interaction, displacing traditional social technology. Michael Faraday, giving without central points, organising network systems.6 The Internet would also the then Prime Minister a tour of his principles, or hierarchies’.3 It was supposed enable total freedom of information, and laboratory, was asked what use the to allow us fluid, multiple identities: this would stimulate radical democratic ‘discovery’ of electricity could possibly In cyberspace, the boundaries of the renewal through instantaneous voting, have.‘I cannot say,’ Faraday replied,‘but human body blur as machines and e-parliaments and so on.7 one day, Her Majesty’s Government humans interact... the body is Conversely, commentators warned darkly will tax it.’ Neither imagined that this reconfigured as more technosocial that our very souls were in peril. Kurt is exactly what would happen. rather than as ‘naturally’ defined by Vonnegut, the novelist, argued: The future of technology is traditionally the boundary of the human skin.4 Computers are cheating people out of debated between techno-utopians, who Not only would we construct and their sociability and also out of relations hope that life is, at any moment, about reconstruct numerous versions of with other people – out of something as to be transformed for the better, and ourselves online,5 our entire lives would exciting as sex. People... are becoming doomsayers, who worry that our very be spent there. Rich virtual communities uninteresting to themselves.8 humanity is at risk of being crushed would appear, organised around shared under the weight of new machines. For interests and values.These would then ISOCIETY JULY02 2 REALITY IT – TECHNOLOGY & EVERYDAY LIFE CHAPTER 1/ PULLING POWER Introduction – Pulling Power Both sets of views, while diametrically At best, this view assumes that an Research into interactive technology, opposed, are based on a shared involved minority allows technology to and particularly the World Wide Web, also assumption that changes in technology change their lives significantly.The data in tended to concentrate on exciting groups change people. Social change would this report suggest that only 7% of the UK of early adopters, whose attitudes and use follow quickly. Because technology makes fall into an attitudinal bracket closely shared little in common with the certain alterations possible, they become associated with being an ‘early adopter’, majority of the population. Researchers inevitable.This is the ‘technology-push’ seeking out technology shortly after enjoyed studying Enthusiasts using new view of the world: technological progress launch with little regard for cost (Figure 9). technology, particularly because they is the main driver of social change; it is For most people, as for society at large, the made for interesting research projects. where we should look to see what lies process is slower and more complicated. More importantly, Enthusiasts enjoyed ahead.9 Such ‘technology-push’ theories The overwhelming majority of people writing about themselves as harbingers are attractive, simple, exciting – and wrong. who use information and communication of change. The technology-push thesis for instance technology (ICT) see it as a useful tool in Yet, most people use ICT conservatively. does not help to explain the dot boom everyday life – no more and no less. Of the over one billion web pages available followed by the dot bomb. Certainly, the Balancing this view, dire predictions online, the average UK user visits on Internet opened up all kinds of commercial that ICT would destroy the fabric of family average only 12 a week.11 More than half possibilities – but who was to say that and community life have also proved false. of all time spent online by US users is spent consumers would bite? The assumption Ordinary people use communication at sites owned by just four companies.12 underlying the over-pricing of dot.com technologies to talk to their partners, Neither figure suggests a huge amount of stocks was that technology would push their children and their friends. E-mail experimentation: the situation has clearly changes in consumption; that simply and mobile telephones, the iSociety data changed.The latter half of the 1990s saw because they could, people would. Mostly, suggests, are supporting, rather than extensive adoption of ICT. As Figure 1 though, people didn’t, and the rest is history. supplanting, rich human relationships. shows, ownership and use of the three MIT professor Wanda Orlikowski challenges Despite the fast diffusion of ICT over the critical interactive platforms discussed in the technology-push view of the world: past five years, two-thirds of us remain this report is close to, or has exceeded, half The digital economy is not just ‘out there’ convinced that we would rather speak of the UK population. Mobile phones may happening to us.Rather,we are its primary to someone than e-mail them. not yet offer much in the way of interactive movers. Much of the contemporary It is not difficult to understand why these computing, but their rapid journey from discourse...is misleading because it creates opposing views of change have vied to city-traders’ toys to everyday object the impression that the digital economy is dominate the early days of understanding has made them astonishingly popular. an external and independent set of forces the ‘deep-impact’ changes of ICT. As Their rise has been helped, most obviously, and conditions,unstoppable and sociologist Manuel Castells notes in by the fact that phones were already inescapable...inevitable and ultimately The Internet Galaxy, most such research established technologies with well- transformative.10 occurred before widespread adoption. understood interfaces and clear benefits: ISOCIETY JULY02 REALITY IT – TECHNOLOGY & EVERYDAY LIFE 3 CHAPTER 1/ PULLING POWER Introduction – Pulling Power Fig 1. Clever Devices UK home technology ownership and use Use at home Telephone Own personally Video recorder Mobile phone Non-WAP mobile Desktop PC Digital TV DVD player Digital camera WAP mobile Fax Laptop PC MP3 player Pager PDA 0 20 40 60 80 100 % SOURCE:ISOCIETY BASE:2006 mobiles simply took away the wires. generations of digital technology, is used some ways worse – pretty much as Close to eight in ten people now use by at least four in ten households. before. Neither wowed nor cowed by them. Such is the speed of take-up that Across all three platforms we can, for new technologies, they buy what seems the decision to go without a mobile the first time, begin to paint a picture of necessary and use what seems useful. phone is now a defining statement of normal technology usage.This is possible Their motivation for using technology a person’s attitude towards technology because of the significant incursion of is dominated by everyday concerns, often (rather than the other way round). these three digital platforms in the last the same concerns which have dominated Homes without computers are now in 2-3 years. In that time, a new group of people in their position for decades.They the minority. users have become clear. In between are neither Enthusiasts nor Aversives.We Personal computers (PCs) have come the revolutionaries and the resisters, call them the ‘Quiet Pragmatists’.They are home: spurred by popular access to the we have begun to see a clearer picture the main characters in the story of society’s Internet in the late 1990s, they are now of the silent minority of UK technology relationship with ICT.They are at the heart used in over half of households for the users.This group take a more mundane of this report. first time. Digital television (DTV), approach to gadgetry, fairly certain that a potential Trojan horse for future life will go on – in some ways better,in ISOCIETY JULY02 4 REALITY IT – TECHNOLOGY & EVERYDAY LIFE CHAPTER 1/ PULLING POWER Pragmatic Evolution Fig 2.
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