Www.virtualsociety.org.uk Reflections on the Virtual Society? Steve Woolgar ESRC Virtual Society? Programme Saïd Business School University of Oxford

www.virtualsociety.org.uk

Reflections on the Virtual Society?

Steve Woolgar

ESRC Virtual Society? Programme

Saïd Business School

University of Oxford


ICUST 2001, Paris, 12-14 June 2001



• The context

• The Virtual Society? programme

• Results: four rules of virtuality

• Reflections

• Conclusions: future directions



• The context



• Reflections



• The promise of the new technologies: cyberbole

• Recent developments– dot com failures; market slow down; end of bubble; but

underlying growth continues?

• Assumptions to be tested– Technology has definitive effects/capacity

– Access is advantageous and desirable; have-nots want access

– Access leads to (meaningful) use



• The context



• Reflections




• The context



• Reflections



Virtual Society? - the problem• Massive growth of new electronic technologies, but social

context of use still poorly understood• Fundamental shifts in how people behave, organise

themselves and interact as a result of new technologies?• Significant changes in the nature/experience of

interpersonal relations, communications, social control, participation, cohesion, identity, trust?

• Is a Virtual Society possible?


Virtual Society? - the Programme

• 1997-2001: 22 projects in 25 UK (and 4 EU) universities

• 76 academic researchers; HQ at Oxford

• wide range of application areas

• counter-intuitive results: “interesting if true”

• PROFILE 2000 and website


Some key analytic themes • Effects of technology are socially constructed not determined• Users are configured: development of technology is a process

of defining, enabling and constraining the user • Reception and use are socially distributed; delivery does not

follow a linear model• Detailed ethnographic studies of actual usage



• The context



• Reflections




• The context



• Reflections



Four Rules of Virtuality

• Impact and use of new technologies depends crucially on local social context– Current rate of straightforward rapid expansion may not continue.

• Fears and risks associated with new technologies are unevenly socially distributed

• New technologies tend to supplement rather than substitute for existing practices and forms of organisation

• The more virtual the more real!


1: Patterns of Access and Use of Internet (Wyatt et al)

• Growth conceals marked shifts in nature and consistency of usage

• Evidence of a strong drop off in usage among sub groups

• People stop using Internet because– become bored

– loss of institutional access

– too difficult to use

– too expensive

– intrusion of advertising


2: Experience of Internet Use (Lea et al)

• Does Internet usage engender isolation and loneliness?• US evidence (CMU) that Internet can cause depression,

loneliness, sense of isolation, anomie• Lea et al show visual anonymity enhances identification

with group, and reinforces existing social boundaries


3: How much public access is there to the Internet? (Liff et al)

• Attracts a much broader cross section than in overall population of Internet users

• Access points augment rather than replace home ownership• The policy gap: infrastructure of telecommunications cost

and access; but little support for projects on the ground• Social space facilitates/constrains use by different groups:

access is a social rather than technical problem


4: Technology, work and surveillance (Mason et al)

• Use of surveillance capacity depends on local context• Little evidence that employees fear threat to privacy• Positive circumvention rather than “resistance”: borrowing

PIN numbers• Workers use surveillance capabilities to their own

advantage


5: Virtual community care? (Burrows et al)

• Huge growth and scope of wired welfare globally• Internet as knowledge base for middle class

welfare• Self organising structure of cyberspace• Problems of status of knowledge obtained on the

Internet


6: The virtual consumer (Lunt and Moor)

• Importance of shopping (not just transaction) for household structures and activities

• “It’s just typing not shopping”: preference for reproduction of existing shopping arrangements online

• Retailers don’t reproduce shopping experience online• E-commerce is boring (lack of issue engagement)


7: Groupware and the mediation of memory (Brown and Lightfoot)

• Designed for the preservation of organisational memory• “Political” uses of email: copying in; prolonging exchanges;

public flogging• Hording and storing email as accountability strategies• Email as a highly formal and politicised space (cn the

promise of informal communication).


8: Where the virtual meets the real (Hughes)

• The move to “virtual organisation” in banking: need for radically new skills and working practices?

• Preserving the normality of the interaction and maintaining customer confidence

• Making the new technology at home within existing working practices


Four Rules of Virtuality

• Impact and use of new technologies depends crucially on local social context– Current rate of straightforward rapid expansion may not continue.

• Fears and risks associated with new technologies are unevenly socially distributed

• New technologies tend to supplement rather than substitute for existing practices and forms of organisation

• The more virtual the more real!



• The context



• Reflections




• The context



• Reflections



Counter-intuitive results

• The temptations of revelatory irony– the value of social scientific research!

– “the results are counter-intuitive!!”

• But what has happened to our intuitions?• Intuitions derive from visions of technology which are top

down, synoptic, summarising, clumping– government policy pronouncements, supply side visions,

advertising rhetoric, media polarisation


Counter-intuitive results

• Media treatment depends on contrast between definitive versions of what the technology can do– eg the media storm

• The appeal of counter-intuitive/ironic outcomes; the inversion of claims about definitive effects – eg tele-shopping depots


Mundane experiences of technology

• None of this pays attention to mundane experiences of T• Practical day-to-day usage does not depend on synoptic,

definitive versions of what the technology can do• Our mundane experiences are more characterised by ambivalence. Technology is:– good/bad

– love/hate

– works/does not work


Revisiting the research rationale

• “Virtual society” is one example of the recent profusion of epithets

• Epithets are synoptic, top down, claims to novelty, change• Epithetical visions should be understood as part of wider

processes of change and accountability• These visions to be treated as agonistic claims• Hence the genealogy of the “?” in Virtual Society?



• The context



• Reflections




• The context



• Reflections



The New Agenda

• New policy context/agenda: post hype deflation of dot.com bubble; evidence of partial saturation

• New emphasis: from access to use


From access to use

• Promises of universal access are unrealistic (cf telephones)• Access does not guarantee use; use does not require access

(cf Trinidad); meaningful use requires building upon (existing) social relations


The New Agenda

• New policy context/agenda: post hype deflation of dot.com bubble; evidence of saturation

• New emphasis: from access to use• Need to work from mundane, bottom up experiences• Emphasise situated context of use, inter-media and on-line/off-

line relations• New forms of sociality: rethinking central concepts of social

theory: information, power, organisation, discourse, knowledge


Conclusion: principles for future analysis

• Anti-clumping: dis-aggregate, dis-aggregate!• Focus on mundane experiences: ambivalence• Analytic scepticism

– technography: an anthropological/ethnographic perspective on actual experiences of use

– beware cyberbole! - institutionalise the “?”



Steve Woolgar

ESRC Virtual Society? Programme

Saïd Business School

University of Oxford


ICUST 2001, Paris, 12-14 June 2001

Documents

Www.virtualsociety.org.uk Reflections on the Virtual Society? Steve Woolgar ESRC Virtual Society? Programme Saïd Business School University of Oxford