The Paradox of Automation: QWERTY and the Neuter Keyboard

With the neutering of the QWERTY keyboard in the early 1980s following largely successful clerical worker organizing, male workers in offices began taking on clerical work that, until recently, they would have considered beneath both their job descriptions and their manhood. Paradoxically, the men who now began typing, filing, and performing data entry for themselves did not generally consider the imposition of these new tasks an increase in work. Rather, they called it “automation.” Employers’ and computer manufacturers’ regendering of the QWERTY keyboard from feminine to neuter in the last quarter of the twentieth century was an example of the uses and power of the automation discourse, an ideological commitment that obscured the intensification of human labor behind utopian rhetoric and technological enthusiasm. Employers regendered the keyboard to get more work out of their employees, and as they did so, they claimed that no one did the work at all. Obscuring human labor behind technological marvels, the claims that the work was done by “automation” proved persuasive, even as human labor was sped up and intensified.

Care, Indifference and Anxiety—Attitudes toward Location Data in Everyday Life

Modern mobile devices are replete with advanced sensors that expand the array of possible methods of locating users. This can be used as a tool to gather and use spatial information, but it also brings with it the specter of “geosurveillance” in which the “location” becomes a product in itself. In the realm of software developers, space/place has been reduced and discretized to a set of coordinates, devoid of human experiences and meanings. To function in such digitally augmented realities, people need to adopt specific attitudes, often marked with anxiety. We explored attitudes toward location data collection practices using qualitative questionnaire surveys (n = 280) from Poznan and Edinburgh. The prevailing attitude that we identified is neutral with a strong undertone of resignation—surrendering personal location is viewed as a form of digital currency. A smaller number of people had stronger, emotional views, either very positive or very negative, based on uncritical technological enthusiasm or fear of privacy violation. Such a wide spectrum of attitudes is not only produced by interaction with technology but can also be a result of different values associated with space and place itself. Those attitudes can bring additional bias into spatial datasets that is not related to demographics.

Care, Indifference and Anxiety—Attitudes toward Location Data in Everyday Life

Modern mobile devices are replete advanced sensors that expand the array of possible methods of locating users. This is often viewed in a positive light, as a tool to gather and use spatial information, but it also brings with it the problem of “geosurveillance” in which the “Location” becomes a product in itself. In the realm of software developers, this has been reduced and discretized to a set of coordinates, devoid of human experiences and meanings. To function in such digitally augmented realities, people need to adopt specific attitudes, often accompanied with anxiety. We explored attitudes toward locational data collection practices using questionnaire surveys (n = 280) from Poznan and Edinburgh. The prevailing attitude is neutral with a strong undertone of resignation, in which surrendering personal locational information is viewed as a digital currency. A smaller number of people had stronger, emotional views, either very positive or very negative, based on uncritical technological enthusiasm or fear of privacy violation. Such a wide spectrum of attitudes is not only produced by interaction with technology but can also be viewed as a result of different perceptions and values associated with space and place itself.

Articulating ICT Use Narratives in Everyday Life

The most common definition of the information society lays emphasis upon spectacular technological innovation and the transformative effects of new information and communication technologies. The key idea is that breakthroughs in information processing, storage, and transmission have led to the application of information technology in virtually all, public and private, sectors of society (Webster, 1995). By the 1990s, to admire and indeed enthuse over new ICTs had become highly fashionable and popular. Such technological enthusiasm has become so pervasive that it has seeped not only into political and policy discourses, but also into the whole spectrum of the media and fora of public communication (Preston, 2001). In addition, discourses of the information society are often dominated and shaped by male commentators (e.g., Castells, 2000; Gates, 1995; Kelly, 1999; Negroponte, 1995). For example, when compiling a collection of the dominant players of international information-society discourse, Cawley and Trench (2004) were hard-pressed to find female commentators, succeeding only in finding 3 out of a total of 18 critics.1 We argue that the focus on the artefact, and thus technological celebration, takes precedence over the largely ignored field of technological uses and consumption issues. Hence, we present a study that analyses the individual user experiences to challenge the stereotypical user traditions represented by the information-society discourse. We wish to present a counternarrative that shifts the emphasis from technical expertise, and technological and transformative benefits of artefacts to more individual-user-focused narratives. As a result, this brought about a dual-narrative process through which the respondents described their experiences. We found that when people described their uses, consumption patterns, and domestication2 experiences of ICTs, they tended to do so by employing contrasting frames of reference. These frames of reference we have termed the objective lens (or narratives) and subjective lens (or narratives). Through what we term objective narratives, we found that some respondents would describe their use through official and technical frames of reference. For example, they employed primarily dominant information-society jargon to frame how they made sense of technologies and their use experiences. Through subjective narratives, we found that respondents would describe their use and experiences from primarily a personal perspective to explain how the technology fitted their lives, the role it played in their everyday routines and habits, and the associated meaning and significance of the artefact. While these contrasting narratives are not mutually exclusive or contradictory, it became clear from the interviews that a pattern of use narratives was emerging. We found that such narratives slightly reinforced traditional gender roles in which men tend to talk about technologies in highly technical terms of reference, while women portray themselves as technologically helpless or ignorant (Gill & Grint, 1995; Gray, 1992; Lie, 1995). Although we did not look for or find stable gender categories, the emergent gender narratives seem to renew the existing gender roles that link masculinity and technology (Vehviläinen, 2002). With the development of computer technologies, we have witnessed a shift from IT to ICTs. This has resulted in a redefinition of the computer as an artefact: from a mere computational device to the newly emergent multimedia-enhanced computers, or what Paul Mayer (1999, p. 1) calls a “meta-medium.” Today, the conceptualisation of the computer is more problematic. It may be thought of as the Web or Internet, computer games, CD-ROMs (compact disc read-only memory), reference works, e-mail, and a diverse range of applications for displaying and manipulating text, images, graphics, music, databases, and the like. Spilker and Sørenson (2000, p. 270) argue that computers are no longer “primarily about programming, systems, control and calculation,” but instead “a gateway to communication and cultural activities.” The shift in identity has opened up or unlocked the conceptualisation of the computer. Therefore, it is possible for wider audiences and previously excluded groups (such as the elderly and women) to translate the computer into something meaningful in their everyday lives. As a result, we were not solely focused on the computer as a separate technology, but instead on the wide range of information and communication technologies that are available in the domestic setting.

Articulating ICT Use Narratives in Everyday Life

The most common definition of the information society lays emphasis upon spectacular technological innovation and the transformative effects of new information and communication technologies. The key idea is that breakthroughs in information processing, storage, and transmission have led to the application of information technology in virtually all, public and private, sectors of society (Webster, 1995). By the 1990s, to admire and indeed enthuse over new ICTs had become highly fashionable and popular. Such technological enthusiasm has become so pervasive that it has seeped not only into political and policy discourses, but also into the whole spectrum of the media and fora of public communication (Preston, 2001). In addition, discourses of the information society are often dominated and shaped by male commentators (e.g., Castells, 2000; Gates, 1995; Kelly, 1999; Negroponte, 1995). For example, when compiling a collection of the dominant players of international information-society discourse, Cawley and Trench (2004) were hard-pressed to find female commentators, succeeding only in finding 3 out of a total of 18 critics.1 We argue that the focus on the artefact, and thus technological celebration, takes precedence over the largely ignored field of technological uses and consumption issues. Hence, we present a study that analyses the individual user experiences to challenge the stereotypical user traditions represented by the information-society discourse. We wish to present a counternarrative that shifts the emphasis from technical expertise, and technological and transformative benefits of artefacts to more individual-user-focused narratives. As a result, this brought about a dual-narrative process through which the respondents described their experiences. We found that when people described their uses, consumption patterns, and domestication2 experiences of ICTs, they tended to do so by employing contrasting frames of reference. These frames of reference we have termed the objective lens (or narratives) and subjective lens (or narratives). Through what we term objective narratives, we found that some respondents would describe their use through official and technical frames of reference. For example, they employed primarily dominant information-society jargon to frame how they made sense of technologies and their use experiences. Through subjective narratives, we found that respondents would describe their use and experiences from primarily a personal perspective to explain how the technology fitted their lives, the role it played in their everyday routines and habits, and the associated meaning and significance of the artefact. While these contrasting narratives are not mutually exclusive or contradictory, it became clear from the interviews that a pattern of use narratives was emerging. We found that such narratives slightly reinforced traditional gender roles in which men tend to talk about technologies in highly technical terms of reference, while women portray themselves as technologically helpless or ignorant (Gill & Grint, 1995; Gray, 1992; Lie, 1995). Although we did not look for or find stable gender categories, the emergent gender narratives seem to renew the existing gender roles that link masculinity and technology (Vehviläinen, 2002). With the development of computer technologies, we have witnessed a shift from IT to ICTs. This has resulted in a redefinition of the computer as an artefact: from a mere computational device to the newly emergent multimedia-enhanced computers, or what Paul Mayer (1999, p. 1) calls a “meta-medium.” Today, the conceptualisation of the computer is more problematic. It may be thought of as the Web or Internet, computer games, CD-ROMs (compact disc read-only memory), reference works, e-mail, and a diverse range of applications for displaying and manipulating text, images, graphics, music, databases, and the like. Spilker and Sørenson (2000, p. 270) argue that computers are no longer “primarily about programming, systems, control and calculation,” but instead “a gateway to communication and cultural activities.” The shift in identity has opened up or unlocked the conceptualisation of the computer. Therefore, it is possible for wider audiences and previously excluded groups (such as the elderly and women) to translate the computer into something meaningful in their everyday lives. As a result, we were not solely focused on the computer as a separate technology, but instead on the wide range of information and communication technologies that are available in the domestic setting.