Mackenzie, A. (2005) Untangling the unwired : Wi-Fi and the cultural inversion of infrastructure. Space and Culture : International Journal of Social Spaces, 8 (3). pp. 269-285. ISSN 1552-8308
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
Cultural and social studies of technology have regarded infrastructure as less significant than the interfaces, devices, materials, and practices where processes of consumption, representation, attachment, embodiment, identification, and sociality are most visible. Infrastructural elements of new technologies usually remain in the background of analysis. What would it mean to invert the figure-ground relation between technology and "infrastructure"? Via a case study of an increasingly popular, everyday contemporary wireless networking technology, Wi-Fi, the author suggests that infrastructures have begun to figure as sites of cultural contestation. Infrastructures work as highly potentialized fields, triggering a multiplicity of interpretations. Using textual and ethno-graphic materials, the author suggests that rather than being the immobile grounds of technological cultures, different imaginings and practices of connectivity run through the many Wi-Fi projects, enterprises, and visions of the past 2 years. In seeking to understand these different imaginings of connectivity, the author suggests that contemporary infrastructures embody cultural logics at odds with each other.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Journal or Publication Title: | Space and Culture : International Journal of Social Spaces |
| Additional Information: | RAE_import_type : Journal article RAE_uoa_type : Sociology |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | mobility • infrastructure • Internet • communications technology |
| Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HM Sociology |
| Departments: | Faculty of Science and Technology > School of Computing & Communications Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences > Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences > Sociology |
| ID Code: | 3461 |
| Deposited By: | ep_importer |
| Deposited On: | 14 Mar 2008 15:56 |
| Refereed?: | Yes |
| Published?: | Published |
| Last Modified: | 26 Jul 2012 17:38 |
| Identification Number: | |
| URI: | http://eprints.lancs.ac.uk/id/eprint/3461 |
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