Abstract
In this autoethnography, the author uses the context of a research fellowship to interrogate and resist diffusion perspectives and practices embedded in digital adoption ideologies. Musing from the vantage point of a Global South academic, her negotiation of and resistance toward the digital environment are enacted by discussing the historic and contemporary ways in which cultural imperialism is experienced. The fellowship itself becomes an occasion to relinquish doctrinaire positions on cultural imperialism, and conceptual gaps become a lived reality. In this article, she argues for a reflective scientific agenda which critiques theoretical traditions in academia, recasts the contemporary digital environment through a Gramscian lens, and concludes by legitimizing personal agency and meaning-making in the use of digital tools.
“Our societies are increasingly structured around a bipolar opposition between the Net and the Self.”
Starting Something New
Earlier today I prayed that this day would end better than it started. It is now 9 pm on a cool and comfortable, but overwhelmingly lonely evening in a town in Essex. I’m in the Mother Country, sitting at mother’s dining table. I’m here on a research fellowship, part of a mid-career strategy to revive my relevance in academia. I want to do a paper on young people, media and family dynamics, from a Caribbean perspective. Or something like that. Much is hanging on this Michaelmas term. I’m turning off the laptop and preparing to wind down for the day, and I have an idea. I’ve been thinking of how rapidly I’m having to learn new things in order to make anything meaningful of this encounter. And I’m thinking how much what I’m learning is mediated—technologically, culturally, philosophically. I’m out of my depth. But deluge meets opportunity. I need to write about this experience. I resist my first impulse, which is to reach for pen and paper. A confession—I like writing implements, the kind that fit between finger and thumb. I like pressing down on paper or card or canvas—making strokes, flourishes, doodles—it helps my ideas to take shape. I like analogue media. But to be authentic to this process, I would have to use my new tablet. I need to make this other transition—becoming comfortable enough with this portable, all-purpose device to capture the oft-conflicted thoughts of a forty-something wife and mother, away from family, trying to be a scholar in a strange land. I would be one of the almost billion people using tablets, part of the 16 percent on the positive side of this particular digital divide (eMarketer, 2015). But predictably, I would be part of the late-growth global population for tablet use, as adoption has begun to wane. I got interested after the buzz had ebbed. Again. My first real challenge is immediate—I haven’t figured out how to save a new document on my tablet. I know where to go on my laptop—the toolbar. I find the “file tab” and click “save as,” give my work a name and type it in the document title bar. One more click on the “save” button and it’s done. On the tablet I am able to find the document creation app, open a page, and start writing. But then what? Until this first knowledge gap is sorted out, it will be a no-name file in some internal memory. Or maybe it won’t even exist. I’m not sure . . . if it isn’t named, is it really there? It is at once a digital literacy and critical dialogic dilemma. “To exist, humanly, is to name the world, to change it,” Freire (1970) once said. When naming the world of necessity intersects with certain kinds of technological knowhow, some voices risk being silenced. Perhaps those voices don’t exist.
Remembering
Years ago, as I sat in class in undergrad media of a Caribbean university, I decided without any deep reflection that I was a classic laggard (Rogers, 2003). I was definitely on the latter, normalizing end of the diffusion bell curve, ensconced among the sluggish sixteen percent. I could be smug about it then—arguing persuasively that unfettered importation of cultural artefacts, electronic hardware and a Western ethos wasn’t necessarily a good thing for societies in the Global South. I would argue that the process had consequences for local culture—culture here taken to refer to the symbolic, instrumental, and social engagements of people with their context (Brown, 1995). Examples were pervasive—in the 1950s islands like Jamaica, Trinidad, and British Guiana enjoyed radio at the behest of subsidiaries of Rediffusion Company of London. The installation of this service was considered part of the colonial apparatus—to facilitate the administration of territories overseas and enlighten native populations (Mock Yen, 2002; Ruprecht, 1990; Surlin & Soderlund, 1990), which explained the oft-disconnect between broadcast content and audience realities.
Phone service was rolled out along similar fashion with goals of integrating developing countries with more advanced territories (McDowell, 2003). As a consequence, the communicative needs of citizens within countries were often underserved, telephone service across the region was fragmentary, and the telecommunication monopoly was virtually impregnable (Dunn, 1995). Telecommunication was sometimes perceived as a new form of colonization.
There were also the consumer goods like videocassette recorders, Walkmans, and later, cellular phones, as well as more traditional novelties like imported clothes and food lining the shelves of stores in the region. These commodities worked in tandem with north to south information flows and communication, particularly through international advertising available by satellite, to nurture Western tastes and aspirations (Henderson, 2008; Schiller, 1976).
As I sat in class gazing at the neem tree through the window, I would posit, contemplatively, that technologies are a cultural practice, bearing the ideological imprints of their context (Feenberg, 1991; McOmber, 1999; Thomas, 1995). Schiller’s (1976) definition of cultural imperialism—that cluster of forces by which a society’s elite groups were “attracted, pressured, forced and sometimes bribed” into constructing institutions favorable to capitalism’s newest center, America—resonated like strains from a steel pan. The Caribbean’s communication sector was already in the process of conforming to aspects of the Western model—in structure and content. I did not then, have all the intellectual tools to explain my disquiet, but I could point out that cornflakes were different to homini corn, a Hollywood movie to fireside storytelling, and that each aspect of social life presupposed a set of values, priorities, ways of social engagement—some more indigenous and communal than others.
I learned diffusion theory but rejected the triumphalism undergirding its embrace.
But that’s all academic, in the sense of being “not especially useful,” at this present moment. My academy seems to have gone post-critique, and I’m in a new phase of life. I’ll have to get with it. I’ll have to draw on inner resources of adaptation—to the university where I’m doing this fellowship, to changes within my discipline, to the distance from my nuclear family. I look out the window. No neem trees here. A fir tree or two, ashen against a wintery evening sky. As the unseen sun sets on a bleak evening, there is that annoying term I grapple with: digital immigrant. They say I’m one of them; I have my foot in the past, in the pre-singularity. I’m an organism in a new habitat. I guess the question is—and I hate to have to ask it of myself—am I a classic laggard? Am I “stuck?” And I guess this academic recharge phase is as good a time as any to find out. If only I could figure out how to save a new document when I’m doing it on a tablet.
Made A “Category”
Studies have shown that new things—perspectives, practices or artifacts—are adopted by a social group in particular ways (Greenstein & Prince, 2007; Heidegger, 1977; Rogers, 2003). The process of adoption is influenced by the characteristics of the innovation itself, the ways in which information about it is transmitted, time factors, and the social system (Rogers, 2003). Roger’s diffusion theory argues that adopter categories can be generalized from metastudies of investigations tracking the patterns of acceptance for innovations and that these people groups remain fairly stable across societies. The categories range from innovators—the segment of the population most likely to develop and experiment with new tools—to the laggards—a people group characterized by sluggish adoption of innovations, and in some instances, complete resistance. Between the two poles is a larger group further subdivided by their pace of acceptance of innovations as early adopters, early majority, and late majority.
There is a sense in which any classification system describes those who develop the boundaries for what applies within the category (Bourdieu, 1984). Rogers’ (2003) diffusion of innovation theory has been invaluable in outlining the processes by which various societies have attained developmental benchmarks in critical spheres such as public health, agriculture, and technology uptake. It is associated with the cluster of theoretical traditions that examine sociological aspects of information flows (Rosenberry & Vicker, 2009). However, it is also associated with the Western ethos of modernity that promotes a particular kind of technological advance as an index of progress for developing societies (McDowell, 2003; Unwin, 2009), and with it, a view of technology as primarily a cause but not a consequence of, social change (McOmber, 1999). Although careful review of Rogers (2003) modulates the view, the focus on innovation adoption rates and people categories predisposes a proinnovation bias. In respect of the connotation of the term “laggards,” Rogers notes, “The title of [this] adopter category carries an invidious distinction” (Rogers, 2003, p. 287). Rogers maintains that the term “laggard” is not a value-laden classification exercise of academia, but the association of early adopters with higher literacy, social status, empathy, and intelligence seems to suggest that laggards, on the latter end of the adoption curve, exhibit binary opposites of those admirable qualities.
I’ve finally figured out how to save a document! I tapped the floppy disc icon (which I find ironic) in the top righthand corner of the tablet, and it prompted me for a document title. I found out that the device has a “what-you-may-call-it”—a “ting de” in my creole—at the bottom that produces a list, including a “save as” option. I want to say “duh” but that would be unnecessarily self-deprecating, and well . . . millennial. Today I also sent a picture on Whatsapp to each son, separately. “Mom, download Whatsapp on your mobile phone before you leave” the younger one had said, and with his help, I did. The photograph is a picture of my brother’s children, posing coyly in their living room, beside the fireplace . . . My sons will immediately notice how much their cousins have grown. I’m sure there’s a more efficient way to send the picture, so that both sons receive it on their own mobile phones simultaneously. But I haven’t figured it out yet, and the desire to share the moment I’m having with their cousins is more urgent than deciphering the functions of a message app. In seconds—a minute at most—each son responds. I’m taken aback. This hasn’t happened to me before. Yes: I feel like it’s “happening to me”—a threat to personal agency. I’ve never sent a message using a Web 2.0 application with a picture attachment, and I’ve never had my sons get back in touch with such speed. At 4,704 miles away their responses cover 78 miles per second, and communication with that kind of immediacy must mean they are in some sense with me, in the living room with the fireplace and the two strapping cousins. So maybe it’s a good threat. I don’t ponder it much, but we’re in Castell’s (1996) space of flows, my sons and I. They’re over there (but probably not in the same room), I’m over here, and we’re all in this conversation, together—somewhat. The inconvenience of the non-contiguous spaces we occupy is momentarily suppressed, and we meet—kind of. We chat about the mundane things on Whatsapp—like staying dry if it rains, and homework. And what I should buy them from England. But then the space of place (Castells, 1996) re-announces its presence. I’m overwhelmed with desire to see my sons and sadness that I am so far away, in equal parts. The cousins must not see the tears welling up in my eyes. My sons must not sense any anxiety in my messages. I’ll act cheerful. I’ll engage the technology. Distance is the enemy and time zones are a nuisance, but perhaps with Whatsapp and a little ingenuity I can stay in touch. I can do this . . . I think.
Working Advantages
In the Caribbean, smartphones have become the most popular mobile computing device because of their utility for tasks like messaging people, engaging on social networks, and for enjoying music, and access to mobile phone services surpasses 120% throughout much of the Caribbean region (World Bank, 2013). The Internet protocol telephony applications like Viber, Skype, and Whatsapp are a welcome alternative to the reliance on paid phone services, since prepaid or postpaid call packages can be expensive, especially if calls are being made overseas.
This burgeoning information and communication environment has led to a menu of new advantages that are enthusiastically welcomed following the lack of communicative access typical during the wired telephony era. Whatsapp is a good example of an innovation with relative advantage. Youtube, Chrome, and Facebook are popular smartphone apps in Latin America and the Caribbean, based on monthly active user data, but reports indicate that Whatsapp is the most popular (Ericsson, 2015). The relative advantage (i.e., the perception of its superiority over other technologies Rogers, 2003) of Whatsapp as an innovation characteristic has influenced how quickly this new idea or tool would be accepted. In this case, free is better than the alternative—costly calling packages. Many people still remember the time when they did not have a telephone, and when service eventually arrived, they remember the exorbitant fees that were often associated with the new privilege, especially for the select few who could afford a “cellular phone.” The app is also comparable with texting features of most mobile plans, requiring minimal learning and few new skills, and thus compatible with past experiences of persons who are thinking of adopting the app. Importantly, the innovation is also fairly straightforward to use. These features—relative advantage, compatibility, and moderate complexity (Rogers, 2003), help explain why Whatsapp has been so successful in the region.
I’m an adopter! I feel, I feel . . . exhilarated!! Finally! A way to keep in touch without spending money! All I need is WiFi and I’m on, working things to my advantage. It feels good. I’m still in the app, half expecting—or is it hoping?—that a torrent of messages will come in from one or both of my sons, about something inconsequential but urgent. Inconsequential has never felt quite so important. But the mobile phone is quiet. “So what do you want to do now, Aunty?” asks my nephew, as he picks up his DS. Mischief dances in his eyes. I guess I know what he wants to do. The phone is still silent, so I turn my attention to him. And we make a pact—while I’m in England, he’ll teach me everything he knows about videogames, and I’ll be his student.
Language as Complexity
I’ve learned that the “what-you-may-call-it” is actually the menu key. I clicked on the device’s help feature to find out what it is called. The menu key gives me the options associated with any screen I’m on at that moment. When I think about it the design of the menu key does suggest its function, in a minimalist way. It reminds me of a list, or a scroll, something to unfurl, with writing on it. I wonder whether the product designer had this association in mind. For some reason I assume it was a “he”—did he think that one day an owner of this device would see the box with the three little lines and say: Ah ha! This button will give me the information I need! My aesthetic side appreciates this scaffolding. The familiarity of the icon provides a conceptual bridge, although aspects of the tool itself—and even its functions—are unfamiliar.
As digital technologies become increasingly accessible/routine in the lives of individuals in developing societies, exploring the conditions under which new sign systems connected to the digital landscape emerge and are learned becomes important. The complexity of signs and symbols associated with new technologies is an aspect of their adoption likelihood and rate of adoption (Rogers, 2003). This exploration can be useful from the vantage point of structural linguistics for which Ferdinand de Saussure’s idea of language as a sign system becomes germane, as well as from philosophical pragmatism such as posited by Pierce (1991). In respect of language as a sign system, the capacity of individuals to stay abreast of the burgeoning assemblage of digital artefacts and the nomenclature associated with them is of importance to both consumers and marketers of digital goods, as well as policy makers and educators. How does one keep up? Words like memory, catfish, menu, and interface have new meanings in the current landscape, while retaining their original predigital era meanings, and neologisms like selfie, meme, and LOL are uniquely linked to the rise of the Internet as social space. This process of learning new vocabulary may be more challenging for those still crossing the putative digital divide.
Moreover, Pierce’s (1991) contribution to sign theory is seminal for emphasizing the role of the interpretant—the understanding people derive of signs and their objects—to his perspective. It explores the kinds of translation that may be possible in a meaning-making context. A sign, for example, the menu icon on a tablet, structures my interpretation of that particular feature of the device by drawing attention to its resemblance to similar tools or functions, such as paper notepads or lists.
These signifying constructions are coherent, in the sense that they come to mean—through social convention and marketing—certain things, but they are not uncontested (Hall, 1980). Potential consumers may choose not to become engaged in the new meaning system as a form of resistance or may find themselves excluded due to the sheer deluge occasioned by technology information. This matter is of crucial importance for cultural studies and other critical theory approaches which provide a framework for understanding how the process of attaching symbolic meaning works and what the implications may be for individuals, groups, and societies in the digital age (Rosenberry & Vicker, 2009). Definitions for digital technologies now play an important role in constructing our realities—in determining the extent and form of new meanings and interactions between self and the environment.
A (Self) Critique
I hate this research fellowship. I hate being in England. I hate this stupid academia thing . . . haven’t written anything sensible for days . . . no sense of purpose . . . no energy. I’m miserable. This whole research fellowship thing was a damn mistake. I’m going home. Why did I think I needed to come here to “actualize,” anyway?
Scientific thought is of necessity critical; its quest is to pose questions of existential significance, untrammeled by once-accepted domains of intellectual practice (Hamelink, 2008). If truly reflexive, science must also ask questions of itself. As an important intellectual arena in the Global South, the Caribbean has enjoyed a rich scholarship exploring, querying, and importantly, critiquing the role of cultural formation in national development and global engagement (see Shepherd & Richards, 2002; Walcott, 1974). Caribbean culture has been the fortuitous riposte of a people oppressed by centuries of enslavement and colonization—“talked back” through unique expressions of dance, art, music, and cuisine. Writers have contemplated the pluralism that has emerged from multiethnic intersections (see Brathwaite, 2001; Glissant, 1997), and in a sense, creolization theories have been prescient for describing the adaptive and heterogeneous aspects of cultural formation across time and place which have become routine in an era of globalization. But contributions that have examined the social legacies of slavery and colonialism on West Indian people have opened up space for a relevant discourse that asks uncomfortable (if necessary) questions of the conditions of cultural formation in the region birthed through that oppression (Beckles, 2015; Brown, 2000; Nettleford, 2004; Walcott, 1974). Preserving and valorizing indigenous cultural patterns that emerged from the experience have been posited as indispensable to the process of postindependence development and nationhood (Nettleford, 2004).
An influential stream of the discussion has explored the role of information flow from Global North, culturally dominant societies in impinging on the lifestyles and practices of newly formed societies through technologies of mass communication and supporting policies of infrastructure expansion, under the guise of development (Brown, 2000; McDowell, 2003). In sum, this discourse has argued that the North-to-South advance of global capital through information and communication systems has resulted in a cultural bombardment and dependency linked to other metropole-periphery structures associated with colonialism and imperialism (Schiller, 1976; Wallerstein, 1974). A number of related concepts posited similar ideas such as media imperialism (Boyd-Barrett, 1977), electronic colonialism (McPhail, 1981) and media concentration (Bagdikian, 2004). Cultural imperialism as a construct has been linked with the broader idea of the asymmetric relations of imperialism per se, as well as to the aspect of cultural weakness or vulnerability in recipient societies. Also connected have been discussions about the commodification of cultural artefacts, delegitimization of indigenous art forms, and intellectual domination by Western academia (Alatas, 2003; Appadurai, 1990).
Embedded in the cultural imperialism thesis were several weaknesses. One Achilles heel had to do with lacunae in explaining—with sufficient rigor—the apparent willingness of “the colonized” to embrace the cultural aspects of their colonization. As Brown (1995) made clear, “We have not been coerced into consumption” (p. 52), thereby acknowledging intentionality and choice in Caribbean people’s embrace of imported products and values. The thesis was grounded in some assumptions; that cultural forms of developing societies had been pristine and untouched by foreign influences during previous phases of capitalist expansion, that the appropriation of imported media products was uniform across individuals or groups, and that the Wallersteinian basis for communication industry advance—center-periphery relations—would remain stable over time (McAnany, 2002; Thompson, 1995). In addition, the binary articulation of cultural power versus cultural weakness/vulnerability has come to be scrutinized by a number of thinkers (Appadurai, 1990; Kraidy, 2002). A counter view—and I would argue, ideologically reactionary—is the perspective is that although the Caribbean is located in the economic South of the Western hemisphere, it is in some ways its cultural epicenter (Beckles, 2015; Brown, 2000).
It can be advanced that many cultural perspectives emanating from the Global South carried the mark of what Gilroy (1993) calls “cultural insiderism”—the assumption of ethnic difference in the face of increasing hybridity and creolization. He argues for intermediate concepts which better navigate the space between the local and global. And it is this territory that I had not contended with during my undergraduate years—the space between what constituted my local and the foreign, the global. From within my zone of Afro-Caribbean exceptionalism, reggae, Debussy, and pop coexisted harmoniously, if inexplicably. My boundaries had always been fluid and porous, even when I was at my essentialist best.
In an era of globalization, cultural formation has to be understood as a dynamic process operating in a global arena with diverse flows and possibilities; practices and norms of people groups are appropriated within a shared space, and although the flow has tended to be north to south, current tides mediated as they are by global information systems like the Internet and the Web are multidirectional, nourishing an increasingly deterritorialized pastiche culture. Marshall describes this well, in his discussion of the Barbadian Rihanna as a global icon, arguing that the youth celebration of Caribbean culture today is more likely to be [i]nteractive and commercially hyped, relying less on the immediate surroundings and structures of the nation than on the surreal world of digital media and popular discursive manners of being. This is captured, for example, in musical styles not yet categorizable but decidedly crossover; the artful manipulation of appearances . . . and the reach for iconic self-representation, as with Usain Bolt’s thunderbolt pose (Marshall, 2015, p. 38).
In this sense, the global, technologically driven informational society (Castells, 1996) of contemporary experience is a hegemonic moment; it is a constructed and yet contested unity around which economic, political, and ideological practices revolve (Hall, 1986). Perspectives which argue for a fixed notion of identity, place, and performance located in one era, geography, and cultural group have been displaced by the obvious dynamism and fluidity of the environment, but hegemony theory advances a framework for how that may occur while privileging specific contours—economic, political, and cultural—of a particular movement and how digital information systems, which are the seminal instrumental cultural practice of our time, constitute the node of those processes.
So this is Kleenex #4. Don’t really care about academic stuff right now—Afro-Caribbean identity under threat and blah blah blah . . . Guess it’s going to be a Youtube morning then, since I can’t write. I’m stuck on Darlene Zscheck’s song “Still.” Still? I’m immobile . . .
That was awful. Can’t believe I was so dependent on Youtube today. I mean, I’m a scholar. Shouldn’t need technology to get me through stuff.
Logging On
The term logging on, commonly used to describe the process by which a person establishes communication and engagement with a computer, is archetypical for the broader interaction with the digital space that a person may appropriate. It illustrates the increasing routineness of digital engagement as a range of Web 2.0 applications, digital devices, and broadband opportunities become accessible in various markets, including emergent telecommunication markets like the Caribbean. Communication and information access and engagement is occurring with greater intensity across demographics as people exploit information and communication technologies (ICTs) for educational purposes, social connection, creative output, and to conduct commerce. Facebook, Youtube, and Instagram are visited daily and with increasing frequency by Caribbean people facilitated by increasing ownership of mobile, web-connected devices such as laptops, tablets, and smartphones (Forbes, 2012; Office of the Children’s Advocate, 2016). Regionally, sending and receiving e-mails used to be an important online activity; increasingly, people are going online to telephone over the Internet or use social media (Forbes, 2012). It is evidenced by intense use of digital technologies by young people but also by mature sections of the population and for a range of purposes—professional, educational, and social (Dunn, 2012).
There are two implications of these developments. The first is that early hindrances to online engagement may be overcome when environmental or personal circumstances change (Unwin, 2009; Warschauer, 2002). Technologies that may have had remote utility under one set of circumstances can suddenly become integrated, essential forms of digital engagement in another. The second is that this entrenchment of the engagement of the digital sphere into everyday life leads to a deeper breadth of digital engagement (Helsper & Eynon, 2010). Helsper and Eynon (2010) argue that this widened scope of activity is an important aspect of digital nativeness, properly defined. People still choose, but as more tasks are becoming available in the digital space, it becomes an increasingly desirable arena in which to carry out those activities. As more people are drawn into the sphere of the digital arena for more varied and necessary activities, the novelty or strangeness wanes and the digital community widens.
The revolution currently underway goes beyond putative economic benefits. It is in fact a Gramscian-type hegemonic moment. There is a solidarity, a commonsensicality, a routineness about the global information order that works in the interest of many, providing an intellectual force that “pos[es] . . . the questions around which the struggle rages. . . .” (Hall, 1986, p. 14). Moreover, the global digital divide has a referent at the level of the individual—there is, as Castells (1996) posits, a bipolar opposition between the digital landscape and the self.
OK. So I’m back on track. Emotionally, that is. Yesterday I went in to London to the university where I’m conducting my research fellowship. For the second time, I contemplated taking my tablet along with me. This way I’d be able to write my own notes from books in the library, check my mail on the go, and take photographs along the way. I’m in information and communication technologies (ICTs) Roger’s “implementation stage.” But for the second time, I decided against taking it. It weighs 1.24 lbs, and I had my lunch, a shawl and an umbrella (it’s England!) to carry on the C2C, the London subway and on the walk up the hill to the campus, as well as two books to return. I needed to be nimble. On my first trip to the university, I was given a tour. My guide took me to all the important spots where I could reasonably be expected to go during my stay—the department to which I was attached, the library, the IT unit, the visiting fellows study, a couple cafés. I was struck by how dispersed the buildings were—they aren’t all “in one place.” They are kind of in the same area, but not contiguous. If you didn’t know what you’re looking for, you would probably walk right by it. It reminds me of their online facilities. I have an IT account, and with that I can use the electronic library facilities, get emails, and use the institution’s PCs. I have access. But . . . well it’s a simple matter, but I haven’t been able to change my password, and it’s been over four weeks. The IT guidebook says I should choose a password that is at least 8 characters long, contains an upper and lower-case letter, have a number in it or some kind of punctuation, and not be a dictionary word. I did that. Twice. But I still haven’t been able to change it. I have tried a totally new password, but that hasn’t worked either. I have made contact with the IT desk, but they have provided the same instructions—by email—as is in the paper handbook. I need a tour of their digital domain, with a real person telling me “click on that tab,” or “explore this domain.” Just saying . . .
Selectively Laggardly
There are several factors that influence people’s adoption of new technologies, including socioeconomic challenges, awareness of their utility, and levels of interest. In relation to the use of the Internet, Eynon and Helsper (2011) identify two complex aspects which work separately and in tandem to influence people’s digital engagement—choice and exclusion. Although exclusion is usually associated with income or educational hindrances, choice is an intriguing concept to interrogate; it is not always easy to chart or predict people’s digital choices on the basis of socioeconomic factors. Importantly, even “free choice” and personal agency are connected to socialization (Eynon & Helsper, 2011).
My mother makes the announcement, somewhat sheepishly. “Maybe I should go on Facebook!” She has resisted this millennial craze successfully, until now. I’m not sure why she has changed her mind. Is it because her children, grandchildren, church friends and several acquaintances are on? Is it because we keep telling her she can find out where so and so is, and who married who, and how many children they had, on Facebook? Is it because much of the information that she’s interested in is actually more available on Facebook than anywhere else? While my brother prepares to download the app on her laptop, my mother says to herself—or perhaps to us: Now I can be “friends” with my grandson! She says this half scoffingly, half excitedly. It’s ridiculous, this boundary breaching, anarchic social media space. She has heard enough to know already that privacies and positions are overturned in this arena. The allure seems devious. I wonder about this process. It mirrors a process that took place in my household four years ago, when after much prompting and cajoling, one of my sons prevailed on me to set up my Facebook account. My son sets me up. My brother sets up my mother. What would Vygotsky call this? Multi-generational reverse scaffolding? I’m not sure, but it is fascinating. She’s on. With my brother’s help, she finds photographs of scores of familiar faces, and prompts of who, based on details from her own profile, she should probably draw into her network. My brother assists her in asking her two daughters and two sons to become her Facebook friends, and takes her on an instant excursion of our profile pages, which showcase our activities over the last few days or hours. She is immediately alarmed. This cannot be right. How does “it” know that I probably know him, and her? Is it safe to have so much information on one site? “The world is coming to an end!” With this apocalyptic declaration, her introduction into the world of social media is launched. She doesn’t have Luddite tendencies. But this particular encounter strikes as intrusive, inappropriate, dangerous even.
It is increasingly being recognized that access and use of digital technologies do not by themselves generate benefits to the users; sometimes innovations are taken up more than necessary, pushed by policy initiatives, status considerations, global marketing, and declining prices (Warschauer, 2002; Rogers, 2003). To what uses may particularly digital technologies be put? Under some circumstances, selective tardiness in innovation adoption may be preferable, as individuals establish the range of needs that can be met by the innovation—or not. “There is little point simply in introducing . . . technologies if users cannot see any economic, social or political benefits in paying for them” (Unwin, 2009, p. 76). It is also true that technologies may lie outside the allowances of some people’s sociocultural values. In these instances, persons may opt out of particular devices or gadgets or may use aspects of a technology while deliberately ignoring other aspects. The gravamen of the matter is that innovations are also cultural practices, structuring and inflecting the user’s understanding of, and engagement with, their context.
Confirmation
I’ve started using my tablet regularly now. So, it’s official—I’m not a laggard. But not because of my use or non-use of this particular device. I’ve just decided that I shouldn’t classify myself (Bourdieu, 1984) in that way anymore. I’ve decided against any innovation-bias identifiers which purport to fix me in a specified population or category. I’ll opt in or out, depending on the perceived benefits, my ability to afford the gadget, or other circumstances. I will not be “pressured, forced or bribed” into digital inclusion. I don’t have to be logged on all day. Spaces of aloneness and moments of delay are virtuous. I’ve coined a new word to reflect this struggle: laggardliness. It’s an oppositional stance, where the personal and the private are guarded, and the boundaries of engagement are intentionally enacted. I don’t have to name my world in a digitally mediated way. Sometimes it will be a tweet, other times a pencil scratching on the corner of an already-used piece of paper. But perhaps also an utterance, spoken into a seemingly ephemeral atmosphere. I choose to choose. Can’t believe it took me coming to England to figure this out. LOL.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.