Information and Communication Technologies and Everyday Life: Individual and Social Dimensions
Information and Communication Technologies and Everyday Life: Individual and Social Dimensions
Information and Communication Technologies and Everyday Life: Individual and Social Dimensions
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Book section
Original citation:
Haddon, Leslie and Silverstone, Roger (2000) Information and communication technologies and
everyday life: individual and social dimensions. In: Ducatel, Ken, Webster, Juliet and Herrman,
Werner, (eds.) The Information Society in Europe: Work and Life in an Age of Globalization.
Critical media studies. Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, MD, pp. 233-258. ISBN 9780847695904
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In Ducatel, K., Webster, J. and Herrmann, W. (eds) (2000) The
Information Society in Europe: Work and Life in an Age of
Globalization, Rowman and Littlefield Inc, Lanham, Maryland.
Pp.233-257.
Chapter 10
men it is a site of work for women (Gray 1992). This has a variety
of ramifications. Much of women’s attention when viewing TV is
more fragmented as they simultaneously go about other jobs
(Morley 1986). They can feel guiltier when indulging themselves
in the consumption of programs (Morley 1986, Gray 1992). When
acquiring ICTs a key consideration is how it is going to help with
everyday pressures (Meyer and Schultz 1995). Also, women find
it harder to justify time spent experimenting, or “playing”, with
new ICTs such as computers (Haddon 1990). In fact, some studies
have indicated how women have been wary of getting involved in
some ICTs, like operating the VCR, in case it lead to them ending
up with yet more work recording items for other people (Gray
1992). The main case where women have been favorably disposed
to a communications medium is the telephone (Martin 1988,
Rakow 1988, Moyal 1989). Here, women's conventional
responsibility for maintaining family links and social circles is a
key reason for acceptance.
It is clear from research (Cowan 1989, Wacjman 1991, Haddon
and Silverstone 1996b) that there are fundamental aspects to the
inequalities of gender in the family. Both the control over and the
quality of space and time have been seen as having significant
implications for women. Haddon and Silverstone (1996b) have
discussed the notion of temporal capital as a way of identifying
time as a crucial resource in the management of everyday life. It is
clear that there are not only differences in the amount and quality
of time which households can mobilize, but that both amounts and
quality of “free –time” are profoundly gendered. Similar
differences can be seen in access to and control over space,
perhaps most dramatically in the comparison of male and female
teleworkers (Haddon and Silverstone 1993)
It is possible to see how the household superimposes new
meanings on the public definitions of ICTs. In so far as the moral
economy of a household is structured through gender difference,
ICTs have to be fitted in and consumed in accordance with
existing routines and rituals, responsibilities and conflicts. At one
level, the implications are difficult to assess, since there is a strand
of feminist writing which has been very critical of the ways in
262 Information in a Living Society
The first is that with work entering the household, the boundaries
between home and work blur and therefore need to be more
consciously managed: sometimes through the adoption of new
ICTs, sometimes through changes in the patterns of use of existing
ICTs. The second is that work brought home introduces ICTs into
the home, which then find a domestic role. These last two points
can be explored further through a case study of telework.
Case study: teleworking and ICT
There are many types of teleworking, and many experiences of the
phenomenon. An executive or professional in control of their
work and accessing distant databases is far removed from a low
paid typist working at a home based word-processor, unsure when
the next work will come and having to respond to clients at short
notice. For some, telework is wonderful and provides great
freedoms. For others it is a mere phase in their life that enables
them better to manage their circumstances. For yet others it is
perhaps the only viable option open to them (Haddon and
Silverstone 1993).
Haddon and Silverstone (1993) have shown how work entering
the home can change the experience of existing ICTs. The best
example concerns the phone. Where a second work line is not
justifiable, as in the case of some clerical self-employed
teleworkers, the domestic phone takes on an additional role as a
work tool and rules concerning its use have to be re-negotiated.
Household members, including children, have to learn how to
answer appropriately, or when not to answer at all. Issues arise
over blocking social calls at times when they might prevent work
calls arriving. And the whole sound regime of the home has often
to be reviewed, with teleworkers deciding where the phone is to
be re-located and controlling domestic background noise in an
attempt to create a good impression of their working environment
when dealing with calls from prospective clients and employers.
This last example also provides an instance when ICTs can come
to the rescue, as the answer phone, fax and e-mail all enable the
control of communication, the protection of privacy and the
display of status. 10
ICTs and Everyday Life 271
Telework can also introduce new ICTs into the home, and the
discovery of new domestic applications follows. Once in the
home, teleworkers and other family members gain familiarity with
the technology, might experiment and develop their competencies
and awareness of its possibilities. Apart from finding new uses for
computers, innovative practices include using a home-based fax
machine to contact distant relatives and the photocopier for school
projects. Teleworking households, then, may not necessarily be
early adopters of future leisure-oriented ICTs, but they are more
likely to be early adopters of those which have a work-dimension
and therefore are significant in the discovery of their domestic
applications.
Families, networks, communities and mobility
There has been a general increase in social and geographical
mobility in the latter half of this century. Its consequences have
long been noted by British researchers examining the
transformation of inner-city traditional working-class
communities (Young and Wilmott 1957). Meanwhile German
research on the unemployed has charted those historical changes
which have led to new patterns of geographical settlement:
namely suburbanization and the break up of local working class
communities (Hu?ermann and Petrowsy 1989, cf. Williams 1974,
Silverstone 1997a). Migration from country to country, as well as
from city to suburb and to rural locations has involved the
progressive fracturing of established communities and networks
and led to increasing isolation, particularly of the elderly (Meyer
and Shultz 1995).
Of course it needs to be recognized that community formation is
an on-going process. New communities form, maybe different in
nature from previous ones, when people move to a new area.
Meanwhile, despite a decline for many in the intensity of face-to-
face contact it must also be remembered that much interaction is
often maintained, even though people are now located at a greater
distance from each other. The cars, public transport and, perhaps
principally, the telephone have helped maintain social links
despite geographical dispersal, within extended families and
272 Information in a Living Society
References
Berg, A. (1990) 'He, She and I.T. Designing the Home of the
Future', in Sorensen, K. and Berg, A. (eds.) Technology and
Everyday Life: Trajectories and Transformations, Norwegian
Research Council for Science and Humanities, Trondheim
Keen, B. (1987) 'Play It Again Sony: The Origins and Double Life
of Home Video Technology', Science as Culture, No.1
Spigel, L. (1992) Make Room for TV: Television and the Family
Ideal in Postwar America, University of Chicago Press, Chicago
1. Much of the social shaping literature has concerned itself with the process of design
and production, arguing against a technologically determinist position from the
perspective of the institutional and wider social processes that define and frame how a
new technology will appear. The inevitable consequence has been to downplay or
entirely ignore the continued shaping of technology in use (Cockburn 1992).
2. The stress on the consumer is one that is increasingly being shared by the ICT
industry. Policy makers are also beginning to recognize that taking the consumer into
account at an early stage is essential in the research and development of new
technologies and services as well as at the point of market launch. There are a number of
reasons. Rising competitiveness in less regulated markets (for example in
telecommunications). The struggles of a converging industrial structure to define a new
market (for example in multimedia). An increasing fragmentation of consumer tastes in
a market that is both expanding and changing rapidly (a shift across the sector from
hardware to software and services).
3. While the data for other European countries may vary, it is likely that many of the
trends will have a more general validity.
4. See on radio (Douglas 1986, Forty 1986), on TV (Spigel 1992), on the telephone (de
Sola Pool 1977, Marvin 1988), on the VCR (Keen 1987), and on the computer (Haddon
1988, Skinner 1994).
5. For a discussion of the household as a “moral economy” and its relevance to the
consumption and use of ICTs, see Silverstone 1994b. See also other research on ICTs,
such as home computers and Minitel in Norway (Lie and Sorenson 1996, Aune, M.
1992, Berg 1994a 1994b). This form of analysis sensitizes researchers to themes that
they might investigate when exploring how a new ICT might be perceived, received or
resisted and to household conflicts that might emerge from it.
6
See: for the UK, Haddon 1995a 1995b Haddon 1988, Haddon and Skinner 1991,
Skinner 1994, on the Netherlands, Presvelou 1986, Nissen and Riis 1989, on Sweden, on
Norway Aune 1992, and on France Jouet et al 1991
292 Information in a Living Society