Artwork for this article by Laurence Mathieu

Leslie Haddon teaches and researches at the Media and Communications Department of the London School of Economics and Political Science. With a background in Sociology and Cultural Studies, Haddon has focused his research on (communication) technologies in the home since the mid-1980s. We take many of these technologies for granted now and they have become integral parts of domestic life. Time for Haddon to take a look at the sometimes surprising histories of communications technologies 'at home' and the role of their users who often acted as innovators in this process.

Information and Communication Technologies in Everyday Life

In an industry which is very forward looking, one interested in the future development of information and communications technologies, it can be useful to have a sense of, and learn from, history. The recent pioneering of the use of texting by youth is a well known and much cited example of unexpected innovation. But in fact there have been numerous occasions where technologies have entered our everyday lives through the influence of users, or at least some users, in ways that were unanticipated by industry. Radio technology was first developed to convey a signal to places where a fixed line, i.e. telegraphs, could not reach - such as for contacting ships at sea. But it was ham radio enthusiasts who developed the practice of using radio for social communication. Only after they had experimented with broadcasting and demonstrated a potential market was it taken up by firms and the public sector. To take another example, when early telephones entered the home, the companies mainly saw their product as being useful for more serious, practical purposes such as ordering shopping, finding information, etc. Once again, they were surprised when people started using them for social communications in the 1930s.

Although not a communications device, the idea of a small computer seemed strange within a computer industry which was at the time moving in the direction of larger, more powerful machines. This appeared to be a step backwards. It is well known that it was principally computer hobbyists who developed the first microcomputers, built and bought these machines. When markets in the area of work and education were recognised, they were catered for by the emerging industry and more established firms that had moved into the field. But it was still unclear to many companies that there would be a home market beyond the hobbyists. For many firms, the machine did not seem to be the right type of consumer electronic for the home. What would people do with a computer in their homes? Certainly in the UK, games playing provided the first key application, judging by the usage statistics for the first decade, before word-processing, multimedia enhancements and the internet helped to establish the technology. But to put that into context, even though firms like Sinclair and Commodore always promoted games in the mid-80s, they were at the time a little concerned about how users', especially children's, overwhelming enthusiasm for games was threatening the image of a multi-purpose machine.

To sum up, users have been and continue to be innovative at different levels. In the case of the original microcomputer, and the early software for it, they contributed to the actual technical development. Arguably the Open Source movement carries this spirit. But users' contribution can also be seen in the form of pioneering new practices. Either way, in relation to a number of important innovations it is users themselves who have developed or adapted the technology to fit into their lives and their homes. But as we shall see, that is only one side of the coin. Users can also be quite discriminating.

If 20 years of research in this field sensitises me to the proactive role that users can take in their experimentation, their development of new forms of etiquette as regards use, etc. it also shows the forces of inertia. New technologies, once they start to take off, are often accompanied by a certain amount of speculation, be it from enthusiastic users, media or industry itself, about how they might 'revolutionise' everyday life. But the actual pace of adoption and development of use can be slower than that word implies. To go back to the historical examples, radio was first embraced by enthusiasts as a technological wonder (sound from the ether). It only became more of a mass market after a few more years, when speakers were added, regular programming schedules were developed and when the device no longer looked like a piece of testing equipment but like an item that fitted into the home aesthetically. In the case of the home computer, my doctorate on the British market showed that after being a 'must have' Christmas present in 1983, adoption only increased very gradually, albeit for the most part steadily, over the next 10 years. Research in the late 90s showed that some people still struggled to find the right room for a PC because it did not quite fit in with other consumer electronics, let alone the decor.

Turning to a more contemporary example, when the internet was first developing as a mass market from the mid-90s, there was much hype about the revolution it was going to bring. However, US researchers noted to their surprise that there were for a period as many dropouts as new adopters, in part reflecting the fact that at the time what was on offer was not so valued. In fact, in the UK and US today adoption figures are levelling off, with dropout numbers approaching new adopter ones. It looks as though it is getting harder to persuade some of the very late adopters about the benefits of being online.

There are also social processes that have a bearing upon the development of usage. I remember interviewing people in the late 90s who were adopters, who used the internet a little, but did not move in the social networks where they would find out more about things they could do online. Others, when asked why they did not use the internet more, would point to social commitments in their life, the other things they wanted to do. So time for using new technologies seems to compete with time for doing other things, including time for using other technologies (note the academic discussions of the extent to which time online displaces TV time, and the extent to which it does not).

Finally there is the question of how integrated technologies are in our lives, how committed we are to them, the degree to which we could give them up. My students usually express to me how life without the internet has become unthinkable. They are locked into usage because they have developed practices that assume the internet is there. In fact, they often say the same about their mobile phones. But I have to remind them that as leading edge users in some respects, they might have a false view of the rest of the country. For example, there are the intermittent users who go offline for extended periods of time - which implies that while the internet may be useful for them, it is not essential. A few years ago we had a British survey showing that over a quarter of 'users' had not used the internet at all in the week preceding the survey. A further fifth had accessed it only once or twice. There is what we might call modest use. Of course, these examples of modest users and dropouts add a twist to discussions of the digital divide, which assumes people are missing out on something that is becoming increasingly essential.

All this instancing does not deny that our relationships to technologies can bring changes in the way we lead our lives. Sometimes these changes are major. The telephone has, for example, along with the car, been accredited with helping the historical development of the suburbs. And for many years, one can argue, the key media for shaping our understanding of the wider social world have been the broadcasting ones, first radio, then TV. Right now, there are discussions about social consequences of mobile phone usage, ranging from speeding up the pace of life to changing the logistics of how we organise meetings. However, the time structures of everyday life, the nature of social networks and how we symbolically organise spaces such as the home all have a bearing on how we relate to technology. And often the pace of change resembles more an evolution than a revolution.

Turning to the social consequences of technologies, one always has to ask about the level at which change is occurring. Confronting claims about the revolutionary impact of technologies, one Belgian scholar observed some years ago that the amount of time spent inside and outside the home remained fairly constant over decades - but the actual activities inside and outside the home changed (e.g. such as the amount of time spent going to restaurants). In other words, there is change at one level in what we do and how we do things. But at a deeper level there is not. The related question, albeit with a slightly different emphasis, is: To what extent do technologies enable us to do old things in different ways versus to what extent do they lead us to do things that are new? And, of course, what counts as 'new'?

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