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126 Steve Woolgarconcept of technology in our analyses. The second part of the chapter attemptsto address these questions by reflecting more specifically on the experiencesof the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) “Virtual Society?”research program.RECENT TRENDS IN INTERNET STUDIESWe have now reached the stage in Internet studies where we might usefullyturn our attention to key questions about the analytic status of our efforts tomake sense of the Internet. A very large number of different theoreticalperspectives have thus far been deployed. Yet there have been few attemptssystematically to compare and contrast the main theoretical currents. On thebasis of recent UK research, the following observations can be noted.First, a notable feature of recent Internet studies is the very rich diversity ofviews, interests, perspectives, disciplines, assumptions, and methods beingbrought to bear on the topic. What accounts for this diversity? It seems thetechnology, the Internet, pulls us together. This is so, not just in the sense ofenabling communication between us but also in providing a common focus.We are now used to conferences being organized around the topic of theInternet, where it is unlikely that many of us would be talking to each otherbut for the central unifying concept that ties our discussions together. As mostfacets of modern social life are inevitably related to or about the Internet, weenjoy a new set of interconnections and interactions with interests andperspectives we might not otherwise entertain. The social organization of ourInternet research makes possible more of the connectedness that fascinates usabout the Internet in the first place. In other words, the Internet is a classic“boundary object” (Star and Griesmer, 1989). It means a lot of different thingsto different people. Interpretively speaking, the Internet is a malleable, perhapsfluid object. We make sense of it from many different perspectives, and itallows us to do so together. We share an interest in the Internet even thoughthis can mean profoundly different things to different people. This is, ofcourse, a great benefit as a community holding mechanism, but we also needto reflect on the analytic status of the technology in our research.So a second persistent and recurrent question of social research on technologyis what status we should give to the technology in our analyses. Theclassic framing of this issue is around technological determinism. The literatureexhibits an intriguing and enduring ambivalence on this question. Veryfew scholars now explicitly support the basic theses of raw technologicaldeterminism; for example, that the Internet straightforwardly causes social,economic, and political change. These processes are recognized to be subjectto complex mediation by a range of variables. Yet the main thrust of much