How does technology get involved in social life?

I. Hutchby talks about the, in sociology recurring question, whether technologies influence the social life, or that the social life demands the technologies that get invented.  So basically it’s the old question; ‘what was first; the chicken or the egg’. The only difference is that Hutchby claims to know the answer to his question. He says that technology doesn’t just affect the society. The people would have no choice, like the injection needle theory. An example that assists this is that not every invention has its intended effect. Like the television, witch was intended to be like a telephone with vision. So he rejects this deterministic approach. He also rejects the opposite approach, witch says that the society completely shape the technologies they get offered. People who say ‘guns don’t kill, people do’ agree with this. But if we use this approach we would say that for example a toilet and stapler could both be used for the same things, but it’s just the people’s interpretation that set the rules. (Surely we don’t staple our paper with a toilet.) Hutchby’s solution is just in the middle of these approaches. He says that some qualities of the technologies are predestined, and others are open for interpretation. Let’s give an example. When the telephone-lines came widely in use, the makers had intended it to carry two-way conversations, and just audio. After that the fax, which was actually invented before the telephone, could use this network of telephone-lines to become used. And now days we even use this line for internet usage, and conversation with images! (So the computer took the qualities the television intended to have.)

How much does the virtual ‘communication atmosphere’ differ from the real one?

A virtual alter ego can be exactly the opposite of your real ego. This is because of what Novak calls liquid architecture; cyberspace is like liquid; it doesn’t have one shape, and no distances or measurements. This means you personality can be liquid as well; one day you’re a spoiled boy, the next you play an old lady. I emphasized the word ‘play’ because you won’t be completely capable of being someone else. You will always reveal some of your personality. And because the internet is a disembodied space, as Dodge and Kitchin call it. There is no physique boy or lady present.

Most of the people on the internet don’t get involved in mass communications, though they are following it. Dodge and Kitchin say that ‘people remain silent for the same reasons they are reserved in ‘geographic´ spaces.’ So most people don’t become an entire different person. This and the fact that most online metaphors refer to the real word, like chat rooms and cybercafés, shows that the atmosphere online is like the on offline. Let’s take me as an example. The people on my msn-list are all people I know in the real world, some of them I speak on an everyday basis. And I don’t speak as much on forums either, just like I wouldn’t speak to a complete stranger in the real world.