Untitled - socium.ge

Reflexive Internet? The British experience 131highlights, with results from projects each contributing to one or more theme.More importantly, this way of organizing the findings makes it possible toextrapolate the results to other technologies.Rule 1 The uptake and use of the new technologies depend crucially onlocal social contextDifferent aspects of “context” bear upon the reception and deployment of electronictechnologies. The importance of these “non-technical” circumstances isthat they explain, for example, why the current rate of straightforward, rapidexpansion may not continue; see, for example, Wyatt et al. (2002) on thediscovery of large cohorts of teenage Internet drop-outs; or Swann and Watts(2002) on the lack of take-up of virtual reality technologies. Close socialpsychologicalstudy of the comparison between computer-mediated communicationand face-to-face communication shows that reduced bandwidth andincreased anonymity can actually accentuate feelings of group belonging andidentification (see, for example, Watt et al., 2002).By taking specific senses of context into account, we glimpse the basis foran accentuated, perhaps even novel form of sociality arising from the use ofInternet communications. Studies of the different kinds of “e-gateway” whichpromise access to and participation in the virtual world (cybercafés, telecottages)suggest that “third place” characteristics of local social context – asocial setting separate from both domestic and economic spheres – provide akey to the successful integration of the real and the virtual (see, for example,Liff et al., 2002).Rule 2 The fears and risks associated with new technologies areunevenly socially distributedThe research demonstrates that views about new technology – the anticipations,concerns, enthusiasm, and so on – are unevenly socially distributed. Theresearch shows, for example, the transformative power of expectations about,and performances of, technological artifacts in social action (see, for example,Knights et al., 2002, on financial services); how views about technology areconstantly “at stake” (for example, McGrail, 2002, on the use and reception ofCCTV and related surveillance technologies in high-rise housing); and that avariety of counter-intuitive usages of technology at work are not easily classifiableas either conformity or resistance to surveillance-capable technologies.Thus, for example, Mason et al. (2002) find that, against expectation, theirrespondents accorded a markedly low priority to the question of privacy inrelation to the impact of surveillance-capable technologies on social relationsat work. Mason et al. (2002) use this finding as the basis for challenging some