consuming

communication
technologies at home

BUNGA DEWARA ASIH

DEVI NOVITA
RETNO SUHERMEN
 consumption, technology and the home

pro and cons consuming technology at home

pro
1. we need technology for new informations and communications as the key to the
future
2. providing ever new forms of entertainment and leisure

cons
1. it is easy to dismiss such rhetoric as hollow, misguided or naive
2. technology has come to be associated by many with risk and uncertainly
 t

- the effects of technology

 the effects are not determined by its production, its pyhical form or its
capability but these depend on how they re consumed.

*home and technology

the sociologist kay pal (1984) and jonathan gershuny (1983) agued that the family
has shifted from being a unit of production to one of consumption.

critisized by
1. ann oakley, 1974 said that for conveniently forgetting the fact that for most
women the home is a site of work, but there can be a little doubt that leisure time
spent in the home increasedly
 2. tomlinson,1990 said that 80 per cent of leisure time is spent in the home
according to one estimate .

 tomlinson argues that the development of the home as an autonomous, self-

suffient and self-contained unit constitutes a form of privatization

 it is a process atomization, in which there is a shifting emphasis on

consumption, consumer power, and cultural tastes, and a retreat from the
public the community
 leisure technology is thus a key element of the privatization which raymond
william discuss (1983)

 by 'provatization' williams refers not to some sort of isolation, but to a key in

tendency in urban indrustrial society for homes to be physically and socially
more distant

 daniel miller has argued in chapter 1, home isn't privatized in the sense of being
impervious or impermeable, but in that it is place where we can feel secure and
from where we can enjoy concatc with the world beyond.
 3. technology and social relations

3.1 what do we mean by 'technology

 donald mackenzie and judy wajcman (1985) argue that th first of three 'layers
of meaning' technology

 - the physical artefact

it is commonly argued, a technology is an artefact does nothing without some
human purposes

third layer of meaning to any technology : the sistematic human knowledge, or

know-how, which went into its design ( its maintance or the design of the next
generation of the technology)

clearly such a defenition points us to the profoundly and inherently social nature
of technology : technologies are not simply isolated, physical entities.
 3.2 technological determinism

 the nature of our culture is determined by prevailing techlogy.

 technology based on technological determinism is something which develops

outside of society, following some sort of trajectory of its own making.
 3.3 The Social Shaping of Technology: The Home computer

 Technological determinism is rejected by Mackenzie

and Wajcman because it ignores Social process
surrounding the technology
Technology is going to develop, so the culture can do
is perhaps to mitigate the worst excesses of the
inevitable
The home computer was a product not of cooporatw
capitalism and organization like sony but of the
counter culture of California.
The home computer emerged from culture of
enthusiasts — hobbyists and hackers
The home computer is not for corporating profit but
by a concern to change the world and empower
ordinary people
Self- referential of computer was transdformed by 2
factors
–The emerge of discourse of IT in edication
– The rapid growth of home computer games
A hobbyist machine, to a business machine
The social shaping of technology focuses attention
on actors–engineers, manager, consumers – and the
networks in which they are implicated
Technological shaped by culture not culture by
technology
 3.4 The Constraining Capacity of The Physical

However much technologies are aocial in

origins,once they arrive, technologies restrict what is
possible, and thus exercise some degree of
determination
In the process of design,new technologies are
constrained by the material.
Whatever the priorities of the social formation,there
is always a degree of material constraint, a degree of
technological determinsm.
4.1 The Encoding and Decoding of Artefacts

Technologies,like other texts are encoded- in a physical

sense in their design,and symbolically in their stuling and
marketing- and are decoded - that is read by the
consumer
When symbolic "work" is being done, there is where
cultural studies extends sociologist 'social shaping of
technology' approaches technology.
Cultural studies aproach alert on symbolic significance of
technologies.
The encoding/decoding model has the merit of allowing
some capacity of determination to the technology.
 4.2 Power and Contest

Cultural consumption see the role of consumers as a passive

activity
The consumption of ICT's in household seems an active
process.
Among these aberrant or propositional decodings are
possibilities for that progressive apropriation of new
technology.
The transformation of technologies by consumers can be
taken much durther than such 'countercultural' uses-
especially at the moment of arrival.
Rather than being built into hardware, technologies are
shaped by local everyday lives and routines in households.
 4.3 Shifting meanings/emerging technologies

The meanings of technologies have shifted

dramatically as they have become more
commonplace and diffused through our culture.
The cultural shaping of technology is not confined to
function, to the uses to which technology is put: the
same flexibelity applies to the meaning, the symbolic
significance,of the technology.
Terimakasih