Intersections of sociability: an autoethnography of using TIC

Abstract

Autoethnography, an descendant of ideas such as Haraway's  "situated knowledge"  (Haraway, 1991), is a relatively new method in the social sciences. For social studies of science and technology, it represents an opportunity to enrich our understanding of technological artefacts by using the subjective experiences of individuals who interact with TICs. In this article, I take myself as the object of study, reflecting on my own dealings with TICs. My own trajectory from a belief in "technological progress" to "technophobia" was nurtured by the popular culture of the 1980s. Those first experiences affected how I later came to understand the canonical product of contemporary technology: the computer. The computer transformed my conception of human relations and opened new vistas of psycho-social research. The virtual and the real can best be understood, and their binary nature deconstructed, in the interface between "online" and "offline".