The Internet in everyday life: Computer networking from the standpoint of the domestic user

This thesis examines the evolution of the Internet into a mass medium. The focus in this examination is the domestic (home) environment. The thesis provides insight into the ways in which non-professional, "ordinary" users interpret, domesticate and creatively appropriate the Internet by integrating it into the relevance structures and activities of their everyday lives.;The theoretical argument developed in the thesis draws on social constructivism, critical theory of technology and cultural studies to constitute the user as an active and significant figure in the social shaping of the Internet. It identifies everyday life as the main terrain of user activity. It offers a perspective on the place of technology in everyday life and the home combining insights from phenomenological sociology and critical theory.;The empirical work reported in the thesis looks for creative appropriations of the Internet in the daily life of users' homes. The objective has been to grasp the logic of the relationships users establish with the Internet from their standpoint in the actualities of their everyday lives. How and why does the Internet become drawn into subjects' systems of relevance and activities? How is its use related to their social and biographical situations'? What are the empowering potentialities and the alienations stemming form domestic Internet use?;On the basis of in-depth interviews and "tours" of the home and computer space of 21 respondents, several types of relationships to the new technology and patterns of inscribing it into the spaces, activities and interactions of the home are identified. The study demonstrates that domestic users engage in a complex signifying process rendering the technology place and function, meaning and value. They generate a repertory of use practices that obtain wider social currency and come to represent a formative strand in the social shaping of the Internet. Drawing on theory of language, these reoccurring practices are referred to as "use genres" arising in typical situations.;The different user-technology relations and Internet use genres discerned in the everyday practice of the 21 respondents are examined with a view to the degrees of empowerment and alienation implicit in them. It is argued that such a discriminating evaluation represents an important instance of consciousness raising and broadens the field of action and choice open to ordinary people with regard to the Internet.;The thesis concludes that the empowering use genres initiated by everyday users represent a basis for advancing a critique of the reality of technological development from the perspective of the possible. This is a constructivist critique outlining and actively pursuing a democratic counter-project for the shaping of the Internet as a technology and communication medium.