INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES: A VIEW FROM THE HOME

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1 INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES: A VIEW FROM THE HOME Dr Leslie Haddon 1995 In Kollman, K. and Zimmer, M.(eds) Neue Kommunications- und Informationstechnologie für Verbraucher Verlag des Österreichischen Gewerkschaftsbundes Wien, pp

2 2 What are the telecommunication needs of domestic phone users? What will families do with multimedia? In helping to manage the home, what possible roles have PCs? And what social trends will have a bearing on the future use of all these information and communication technologies (ICTs)? Such questions will be familiar to anyone involved in developing, evaluating or forecasting the potential of such technologies for the home. The problem is that as formulated above, the questions themselves narrow our horizons and often fail to do justice to the complexity of how technologies are experienced in the home. The purpose of this paper is to broaden these questions and add to our frameworks for thinking about ICTs. The potential for domestic ICTs has usually been discussed in very utilitarian. terms: what are the possible applications, uses, benefits and, more problematically, how they might fulfil consumer needs. Such an approach emphasises the functionality of technology. Of course, this is not to deny that technologies are used to achieve ends, but they are simultaneously symbolic goods. This dimension becomes clearer at some points more than others: when people talk of the Yuppie mobile phone, the aesthetics of satellite dishes or the latest must have consumer electronic which is in fashion. There is also a good deal more to the process of consuming of ICTs than mere use. Their presence is the subject of negotiation, they have to be located and at times relocated in the home, access to them is regulated and sometimes contested, software is exchanged and both ICTs as objects and the media content which they can deliver provide topics of conversation both inside and outside the home. Hence, there is more to the experience of TV, to home computing or to games-playing than the moment spent in front of the screen. The second of the questions posed above is meant to draw attention to the way many ICT developers focus on the family, which usually means the nuclear family. Consider the adverts or advertising copy which depict scenarios where father, mother and the children can all find different uses for some new black box. This stereotype remains an important guide both for producers and researchers: this is the mass market as opposed to niche markets. But certainly in the UK, nuclear families now constitute a minority of all households at any one time. Therefore, we need to be more sensitive to the diversity of household forms, their dynamics and the consequent implications for ICTs. The third question, using PCs as an example, illustrates the temptation to just concentrate on processes internal to the home. This might involve asking what type of household data could be kept on a computer, how might household accounts be processed, when and in what forms could the computer provide entertainment. But even if a home product is bought from household finances and then located and used within the home that usage may relate to people s experience beyond the domestic boundaries. In the case of PCs, at least advertisers were aware that computers might be used to assist with the homework arising from children s participation in schooling. But we need to look at the other, varied relations and involvements which household members have with the outside world and which effect what ICTs they acquire and what they subsequently do with them in the home. Finally, if we ask about the social trends which might have a bearing on the consumption of ICTs, typical items on the agenda might include movements like environmentalism or changing lifestyle options or work practices. But when forecasting the future it is also worthwhile paying attention to cohort effects: how the earlier experiences of people, of generations, can have a bearing upon their later life. The benefits of being sensitive to 2

3 3 the passage through time of different cohorts in the population are twofold. We can better appreciate their current outlooks and behaviours. But the more we know about their past and present experiences, the better position we may be in to speculate about future orientations when they are at a later stage of the their life. Over the course of the last six years research has been conducted in the UK on the consumption of domestic ICTs. The work was initiated by Professor Roger Silverstone at Brunel University, where a team developed general theoretical frameworks and carried out initial empirical research (Morley and Silverstone, 1990; Silverstone, 1991; Silverstone et al, 1992). The last three years of that research have been conducted by Professor Silverstone and myself, both at Sussex University. This latter phase entailed empirical case studies of teleworkers, lone parents and the young elderly, each of whom were seen as strategic for developing different facets of our framework (Haddon and Silverstone, 1993, 1994 and forthcoming). Apart from the individual reports on each social grouping, examples from all three have been used to exploring themes such as issues around the phone (Haddon, 1993), how access to ICTs relate to debates about new haves and have-nots (Silverstone, 1994) and the longer term careers of ICTs after they have been acquired (Haddon, 1994). In this paper, that material is used to address the four areas outlined above: 1) General Processes in the Consumption of ICTs 2) Household Structures and Dynamics 3) The Relationship between Home and the Outside World 4) Cohort Analysis: The Influence of Earlier Life Experiences General Processes in the Consumption of ICTs First it is necessary to clarify why we need to consider ICTs in terms additional to just their functional use. There is a growing literature on the consumption of goods and services in general, itself derived from the contributions of various academic disciplines. Asking what food, clothes, furniture, or housing architecture mean for us, these writings refer to how goods relate to our identities, our lifestyles, our tastes. We may need food and clothes to sustain our bodies, but when we make particular choices between goods there is often much more involved than just considerations of physical survival. Such insights have been more rarely applied to technologies in general or to ICTs in particular although histories of the early years of such now familiar technologies radio, TV, the telephone, the VCR and the computer discuss this symbolic dimension. When we first encounter ICTs in the marketplace and have the possibility of acquiring them, there are a whole set of social processes involved in bringing these artefacts into the home. They have to be assessed in terms of what they stand for or how they might change patterns of domestic life. This may involve some degree of negotiation or even conflict amongst household members over how to set priorities over how household finances are spent. In some cases, the arrival of a new ICT might even be resisted. For instance, some people continue feel ill at ease with the role television plays in their life or that of their children, and so can be wary of letting in any more equipment which could threaten to increase the amount of TV watching, such as cable, VCR or second TV. 3

4 4 Similarly, fears of addiction to interactive games has made others concerned about video game technology. The point is that others in the household can have an important role to play in the acquisition of ICTs apart from any main end-users. Once ICTs have crossed the threshold, part of the further process of their domestication - i.e. making them fit into the home, finding them a place there - involves locating these technologies both spatially and temporally. Where these technologies are placed may relate to aesthetic considerations or to strategies for displaying technologies: as when some of our teleworkers arranged their equipment to emphasis to other household members and visitors that they were serious workers. Where ICTs are located may also reflect as strategy to control them - as when the telephone is not located in the main living room so that it cannot intrude into the heart of the home. How they are fitted into routines and the structure of the day is significant. Some broadcast output provided temporal markers, dividing up the day, for some of our home-based lone parents and young elderly. TV watching could be used to pass time, or on other occasions time had to be found, to be set aside from other obligations, to use ICTs. To understand patterns of use, it is important to appreciate how consumption often involves household members, some with more power than others, formulating rules about use and about access to the ICTs. Who is who is allowed to use the PC and under what conditions? Is there a limit to TV watching? Are there any understandings about how much the phone should be used, about what counts as justified or unnecessary calls? But such rules may themselves be broken or resisted, as when some teenagers illicitly use the phone or view banned horror films. In other words, the home is a place where values exist, but so too does domestic politics, and this is the context into which ICTs are placed and given meanings. The role of those ICTs does not simply remain static after a settling down period. New technologies or services become available which transform the possibilities of who to use ICTs already in the home - answerphones can have implications for how we use the phone, as can new telecoms services and options. Meanwhile, the personal circumstances of households change, as children get older, as adults enter new phases of their lives, as work changes, as housing changes: all of which can have a bearing on the role of ICTs in our lives. From all these illustrations it is clear that those who produce ICTs and those who evaluate their effect on everyday life need to take into account all this social complexity beyond simple benefits and uses of the technology. Household Structure and Dynamics Some recent studies have examined changes in the use of ICTs at different points in the life course. For example, in their survey of US telephone use Dordick and LaRose examine market segments including lone person households, nuclear families with younger and older children, empty nesters whose children have left home, and the young and older elderly (Dordick and LaRose; 1992). In fact, after nuclear families the elderly appear to be the next most researched group as regards ICT use (in relation to the telephone, Kordey, 1993; Wald and Stöckler, 1991; Williamson, 1994; in relation to TV, Tulloch, 1989; Randell, 1990). Yet there is still often the assumption of a progression through the nuclear family stage which does not do justice the diversity of household forms, each with their own dynamics, which people can experience at some point in their 4

5 5 lives. Hence, it was worth illustrating how diverse household structures can make a difference to the experience of ICTs. One example is those households where there is some degree of communal living, some sharing of many or few common resources, as well as some degree of independent living space within a shared household. This is often the experience of students or other young people, but also some of our lone parent sample had lived in such households at different stages of their lives. Hence there may also be children present in such shared homes. There are also the households shared by just two adults whose relationship can consist of various degrees of closeness: where they can be partners, gay or heterosexual, friends or just otherwise sharing for cost reasons or to provide company. As with communal households, there can be more or less shared resources and private space, but also differential power depending on arrangements for control or ownership of the property. Third, there are the arrangements whereby families or couples of whatever age define a households primarily as their home, but have extra people staying with them, be they friends, other relatives, au pairs, longer term lodgers or bed and breakfast guests. Some of our lone parents stayed with of move back to their parents home, thus creating three generation households. The point is that we might expect a different set of dynamics between such adults, sometimes peers, than we would in the case of the parent-young children/teenager relationships of nuclear families. Presumably we would also have to consider potentially different gender relations. So what might some of the implications be for the experience of ICTs? To the extent that technological resources are shared between a number of people, we are likely to see more complex, collective decisions and negotiation over access and use, but perhaps also over acquisition since these adults can pool group resources to buy new ICTs which might be neither affordable nor justifiable for any individual. For instance, in one of our related studies when we applied our perspective to the study of CD-i, the earning power and limited demands on income of one gay male couple we interviewed was such that they could afford an extremely rich and up-market technological environment (Silverstone and Haddon, 1993). To the extent that individuals in shared households lead separate lives, we might also expect some duplication of ICTs like computers or audio-equipment. Alternatively, such households may provide the chance for some to experience the technologies of others prior to acquiring their own set-ups. Finally, particular issues can arise around those ICTs financed on a pay-per-use basis. For instance, some of those lone parents and teleworkers who had lived in shared households recalled the extra interest they had in those circumstances in monitoring phone usage, and devising systems for financing it, Indeed, some implemented various forms of blocking outgoing calls. Clearly there can be more concern in shared households with the surveillance and control of technologies. The other, contrasting, example of alternative households forms is provided by lone parents. In the UK, 1 in 7 children currently live in lone parent families (Bradshaw and Millar, 1991:1). Although not all have a low income, many, usually female, lone parents live on social security payments and/or part-time work and form a substantial portion of all households classified as poor. This fact is related to household composition in that there are the costs and constraints which come from the presence of dependent children yet neither the income nor daily support of a second parent. There are positive dimensions to this experience. Many of lone parents refer to the greater degree of control over their lives, to how the conflicts which sometimes used to exist with partners ended and to their greater personal development through coping on their own. However, the 5

6 6 absence of a second adult can create particular constraints, demands and household dynamics. For example, many lone parents can feel trapped in home in the evenings because there is no-one else to mind the child. Organising the logistics of child management, such as getting someone to pick a child up from school, can be more complicated for just one parent. And older children can sometimes achieve a stronger negotiating role as regards household rules when only one parent is present in the home. Limited income often means that anything beyond very basic ICTs such as the phone or TV is beyond the horizons of many lone parents. The poorer ones also tend to be more conscious of costs such as phone bills, sometimes even rationing their calls and those of their children. Such constraint, and the lack of options to even investigate whether new ICTs and services can play a part in everyday life, can be considered to be one more dimension of deprivation, of a lack of ability to have access to the same resources as peers and hence participate fully in their social culture. The dynamics of how ICTs are acquired reflect limited economic resources: for instance, phone handsets, old TVs and VCRs are more likely to be gifts and/or second hand. But apart from the effects of low income, the other consequences of lone parenthood can have implications for the experience of technologies. The phone is often more of a social lifeline for those trapped in the home, and certainly can take on more significance as a tool for organising and coping with daily life. And, in effect, more voting rights for children means they sometimes have a larger say in how ICTs were consumed. Household composition can also be somewhat fluid. For example, where a family has broken up, children can find themselves spending time in more than one household. Certainly this was the case with some our lone parents, which of course means that on occasions when the children were visiting the other parent, they became for a time singleperson households. Where both parents find new partners we have the phenomenon known as bi-nuclear families, and certainly among our teleworkers there were households where at any one time their could be no children, two children or four children depending on whose turn it was to have the children from previous partnerships. Finally, in a household adults can have only a part-time presence: as when some of our lone parents spent weekends or part of the week in the home of a boy- and girlfriend. Children, or indeed adults, spending time in two different households may experience different rules and regulations, different regimes, relating to ICTs. One example would be those cases where a parent allowed his or her children to watch particular TV programmes when visiting which the ex-partner prohibited in the other household. Parttime household members can have access to different equipment in different households: in one of our studies, the children complained that they could not watch there favourite satellite TV programmes some of the week because their mother did not have, nor want, this facility. Travelling between homes means that equipment may be duplicated in different households - e.g. having a video console in both - or else more portable ICTs are sought which can be carried from one household to another. Finally, household composition is dynamic: people pass through different types of household at different points in their life. In addition to the above examples, many experience living alone at some point earlier or later in their life. And there are the years which couples spend together after children have left. But to emphasise specifically significance of the alternatives that have been discussed above, a third of all children in the UK are part of a lone parent household at some time reflecting the more general break-up and re-formation of both partnerships and families (Bradshaw and Millar, 6

7 7 1991:1). The very transition between household forms can be traumatic or at least require some re-adjustment in life, which itself can give rise to new demands on ICTs. For example, for lone parents the phone often took on a very important role as a lifeline to supporting communities in the period immediately after the dissolution of previous relationship and resulting upheaval. To reiterate, nuclear families constitute a minority of households at any one time. But even if individuals live for some time in nuclear families, they often have a far wider experience of different household forms. Some of these may seem like niche markets to producers, or statistically uninteresting variations to researchers. But taken together they constitute the mass market for ICTs products, which is clearly more fragmented and diverse than is often assumed. The Relationship between Home and the Outside World In the introduction to this paper, the PC was given as an example of a stand-alone technology some of whose uses could stem from people s various involvements in the world outside the home. Phones by their very nature link the home with others outside. Their use too can be influenced by commitments and roles in networks outside the home. Again, it is not just sheer use, i.e. applications, which needs to be examined, but the whole process of how what happens outside the home has a bearing on the organisation of domestic time and space and hence on the place of ICTs in the home, as well as the very acquisition and then regulation of those ICTs. The three examples used to explore these processes are paid work, unpaid-work and links to the extended family. Commitment to paid employment outside the home shapes the amount of time available to spend in the home and hence the time available to use PCs, to watch TV or otherwise participate in other ICT-based leisure and to be contactable by phone or free to contact others. Moves to more flexible working hours and to the shift work in organisations operating 24-hours a day means more varied times to consume ICTs, although timeshifting technologies such as the VCR and answerphones have enabled people to better cope with being out of synchronisation with more mainstream leisure times. Apart from structuring time, work reaches into the home in various ways, certainly as telework but also as overspill work (or indeed, a second job) where people bring home some work and initiate or receive work-related communications. Our own research illustrates how such cases often lead to ICTs coming into the home to support work, either in the form of bringing the laptop home or else re-duplicating in the home work facilities such as the PC. Some mobile workers now have their next day s work faxed to them at home as well as being relayed as a phone message and mobile worker are increasingly supported by mobile communications and even mobile offices. That other mobile element of work, work-related commuting, has also lead some people to utilise mobile ICTs to make more productive use of travelling time. Mobile or home-based ICTs acquired for work are often used for non-work purposes. Other research has noted how the initial use of mobile phones for work can eventually open up one route to a mass consumer market (Wood, 1993). Our own research indicates how teleworkers who would never have acquired variety of equipment for purely domestic purposes, including PCs, can justify this because of work and then discover 7

8 8 domestic applications. Indeed, sometimes the equipment is free in that it is funded or loaned by an employer or client. Once in the home, not only teleworkers but other family members can gain familiarity with the technology, experiment and develop their competences and awareness of its possibilities. The home-based work fax machine has been used to contact relatives, the photocopier has been used for school projects. But work entering the home not only brings with it new ICTs: it can change the experience of existing ones. The best example from our research concerned the phone. Where a second work line was not justifiable, as in the case of some clerical self-employed teleworkers, the domestic phone took an additional role as work tool and rules concerning its use often had to be re-negotiated. Household members, including children, had to learn how to answer appropriately, or when not to answer. Issues arose over blocking the phone line at certain times with social calls when this might prevent work calls arriving. And the whole sound regime of the home had to be reviewed, with teleworkers deciding where the phone was to be re-located and controlling domestic background noise in an attempt to create a good impression of their working environment when dealing with calls from prospective clients and employers. Related issues emerged over access to PCs where telework now competed with computer games, school homework or other applications. Unpaid work can of course include domestic labour, but the focus here is specifically on voluntary commitments outside of home. This can include voluntary work to help others, taking part in committees, running sports clubs, and participating in interest groups, be they hobby-orientated or concerned with wider social issues. Across our studies we found a considerable involvement in the wider community, with greater and lesser degrees of formality, where a teleworker might head the school Board of Governors, a lone parent might organise activities for Gingerbread (the organisation of and for lone parents) or a retired person might captain the local bowls team or run a church group. In fact, many of the young elderly were especially active as they sought to replace paid work with a constructive and social involvement which could structure day-to-day life, keep them mentally alert and add purpose to life. We might add that it is not only adults who develop such commitments: our research supports the observations of other writers that contemporary childhood can often entails children participating in a range of organised activities in clubs and other organisations for children and youth (Büchner, 1990). These involvements often generate organising work, administration and other forms of production. We have examples of computers being used to word-process school reports, desk-top publishing tickets for sports matches, up-date records of hobby groups (e.g. what has been listened to in music appreciation societies), handle official correspondence on behalf of clubs, maintain treasurer s accounts or customise church hymn sheets. Equipment such as photocopiers have been used for reproducing the music scores for bands. Meanwhile the telephone is the medium for organise outings and other events, arranging speakers and players or calling meetings. Other telecoms equipment such as answerphones and even mobile phones can find similar roles. Less formally, others within social networks made use of our participants ICTs as a resource, asking if it was possible to use the fax or other facility. Here we see the modern day technological equivalent of asking to borrow a cup of sugar from a neighbour. Lastly we have the case of support for extended family, which was again most acutely illustrated in the study of the young elderly. Both because of the ages of their own parents and their adult children and their own free time plus search for constructive and 8

9 9 active roles, this group often find commitments in terms of either caring for their own infirm elderly parents or minding young grandchildren. In managing these tasks, the basic telephone in particular becomes an important organising tool for arranging visits and travel, as well as for monitoring developments in their relatives households or providing security in the case of emergencies. The other technology of significance for the extended family is the camcorder, as either the young elderly or their children took on the role of preserving family memories. Cohort Analysis: The Influence of Earlier Life Experiences The study of the young elderly was partially designed to explore the influence of people s earlier life experiences on their current relation to ICTs. On the one hand, some of consequences of their current situation have already been noted. To cope with the absence of paid work and reduction in domestic responsibilities once the children have left home many develop new routines to structure their life: many take on a more active involvement in the community, with family, or with friends although some become more home-centred and socially isolated. A certain amount of physical deterioration, such as some hearing loss or greater fatigue, has a bearing on their options as does the economic constraint of a fixed income which is often lower than a previous salary. However, the wider prevalence of occupational pensions has meant that many of the young elderly of today are not so poor as these young elderly of the past who lived only or mainly on state pensions. In fact, this is one way in which the current cohort of young elderly have a different experience from the previous cohort. The question of interest here is in what other ways do the opportunities, constraints and lifestyles of this cohort s earlier lives have a resonance today, and indeed, can we anticipate how they might be different from future cohorts who lived out their younger days in different historical circumstances? Many of this cohort were from working class backgrounds and underwent upward social mobility in their own lifetime as middle-class occupations expanded. Hence, it was common to have lived as a child in somewhat austere conditions from the pre-war era into the early post-war years. Although they enjoyed more affluence from the 1950s, in certain respects non-consumerist values were retained: those in our research would often talk about knowing the value of money. They were careful spenders, interested in getting value for money. They often resisted rushing to buy the latest version of a commodity, and had always been more inclined to replace items when they were sufficiently worn out. Hence, coping with fixed and somewhat reduced income was not necessarily too much of a hardship for this cohort: they had managed before and just had to be careful. On the other hand, many had enjoyed a lifestyle which had been somewhat different from the previous cohort: with holidays abroad, a car-oriented culture and shopping patterns long geared to supermarkets. Some had experienced the break up of traditional working class communities and many had seen their children and friends move away with prevalence of generally greater geographical mobility. The second set of considerations relevant here is at what point in their biographies various technologies became more widely available and how they evolved over the course of this cohort s lives. Radio became a mass market product when they were in their youth. Familiarity with the phone often came first through work as it became an increasingly common tool in many jobs, especially the expanding white collar ones. 9

10 10 Television made its in-roads into the home in their early adult life in the 1950s and early 1960s. But on the whole this was still not the computer generation. Many of those now nearer to being 75 years old had not lived through office automation during their working lives, while others had actively tried to avoid computers because being very near retirement age they had and had not wanted to have to take on new ways of working and learn computing skills at this stage. At the same time, their own children had usually been too old to be swept up by the computer and games boom of the 1980s. While basic phones, televisions, multiple TVs, TVs with teletext, VCRs and various audio equipment could usually be found in the homes of this cohort, there was a conservatism as regards acquiring newer ICTs, or additional facilities. On the whole they were not impulse buyers, and acquisitions had to justified. Hence they argued in terms of not needing any more equipment, facilities or services rather than not desiring them. They already had all the ICTs they had got used to and would often point out that they had been without various facilities for all their life so far and had managed. While some were more adventurous, most clearly did not want to try too much experimenting at this stage. In contrast with some of their own parents, most of the young elderly were at ease with the phone, having gained competence in using it so early in their lives. Most had had their own phone for many years. It had been and was still important for maintaining social contact with dispersed friends and children. And many knew through years of practice how it might potentially be used - for instance, phoning to pay by credit card or phoning ahead to check whether something was in stock at a distant store to which they had to drive. Phone-related equipment was usually a fairly straightforward extension of the familiar: with modern or additional handsets and some cordless phones. But answerphones were still rare, mobile phones virtually non-existent and newer telecom services held little interest. As for the computer, while there were some adopters who had been used to the technology at work, for most it was beyond their horizons not only because it would be difficult to master but because their could not envisage how they would fit into their lives and routines. Interactive games held virtually no interest. Radio listening in the evening had already been largely displaced by TV watching habits developed over a few decades, but the older technology still resisted TV in the morning and during the day. Audio equipment, with the exception of walkmans, had often been acquired some years previously and for many musical tastes, if not classical, were predominantly from the pre-1960s popular music era. Although most of our interviewees had been willing to take on a VCR, often at the instigation of their own adult children, at least this technology had been around for some years before retirement. But satellite and cable were too new, and not justifiable. Apart from some interest in war programmes by those who had taken part in action, the films from their cinema going days often appealed as did travel programmes relating to their own visits abroad. Some soaps were attractive because they portrayed a sense of community which they had lost. The fairly universal critical standpoint on forms of realism and particularly sex and violence on TV reflected in part their earlier exposure to broadcasting based on very different values in the 1950s. Here we see the various ways in which the past has helped to shape habits and routines, values and tastes and the very perception of what that technology can offer. Being sensitive to this cohort dimension of experience can help inform speculation about the future. What will be the difference when those who are currently middle aged themselves become the next young elderly? This cohort had not grown up under such 10

11 11 conditions of austerity, their youth and early adult years had been in the boom years, which may yet prove to be an historical atypical period but which affects their orientation and points of reference. They grew up with the phone even more than the current young elderly, and grew up with TV which was already developing new programming styles when they were younger. And while personal computers were not around when they were younger, they had been more likely to encounter them at work. To show how the latter experience may be significant, it was noted earlier that many of the current young elderly were involved in community activities that entailed some administration - yet few used PCs to support this: they worked with paper and typewriters. This may well change for the next cohort. To take another minor example, many of the current young elderly engaged in activities which were to some extent time fillers but also provided an intellectual challenge. Such activities include filling in crosswords, doing jigsaws or watching quiz shows. TV in general was itself sometimes used to pass away a few minutes. In our separate study of CD-i, we found examples of those in their middle ages who had been made redundant or whose work gave them spare time to fill and who had started experimenting with games and other multimedia packages (Silverstone and Haddon 1993). In other words, new ICTs might in the future find a role currently fulfilled by other means. Finally, this form of analyse has a wider applicability to any age groups: we can examine the experiences of cohort of people at any stage to anticipate what difference they might make in a few years time when they reach a different point in their life course. For example, some writers have pointed to the changing nature of childhood: compared to children of previous decades there is steady move to a less localised culture where friends and activities are at more of a distance (Büchner, 1990). Certainly our studies would support these German observations about parents having to ferry their children around in the car more. The German research notes that children have to organise their commitments more and manage their time from an earlier age: including using the phone as a support. To take another example, our own participants noted that there is more media marketing aimed at children now, for instance, concerning the latest video releases. One common observation made by a variety of commentators is that these children definitely are a computer generation, getting used to the machines very early on. The point being underlined in the above examples is that we can look far beyond one particular technology in assessing what bearing contemporary childhood will have as this cohort reaches adulthood. Conclusion Theoretical and empirical research at Brunel and then Sussex Universities has attempted to chart what the consumption of ICTs entails, taking into account the process, politics and dynamics of the home and its relation with the outside world. The anecdotes cited here are probably familiar from everyday life, yet they can all too easily be forgotten when developing or evaluating new technologies and services. This richness and complexity can often be lost in the more narrowly defined discussions of applications (Cawson, Haddon and Miles, 1995). In addition to outlining some general principles which need to be considered, three aspects have been developed in more detail which can 11

12 12 help to re-formulate and extend the original questions. It might well be more insightful to ask the following: In general, 1) What is the nature of domestic context into which ICTs are be fitted, and what are the consequences of this context for how they are experienced? Specifically, 2) What possible role can ICTs have and what problems might they create within diverse, fluid and changing household structures? 3) In addition to those possible uses related to social processes within the home, what could households relations with the outside world mean for the use of these domestic technologies. 4) When assessing what bearing contemporary and possible future social trends will have on ICT consumption, how might the past and current experiences of a different age groups influence their future disposition towards these technologies? Acknowledgements The research discussed in this paper was funded as part of the PICT (the Programme for Information and Communication Technologies) initiative with support at Sussex University from the SPRU Centre for Information and Communication Technologies. References Bradshaw, J. and Miller, J. (1991), Lone parent Families in the UK, Department of Social Security Research Report No.6., HMSO: London. Büchner, P. (1990) Das Telefon im Alltag von Kindern, in Forschingsgruppe Telefonkommunikation, Telefon und Gesellschaft, Vol.2, Volker Spiess, Berlin. Cawson, A., Haddon, L. and Miles, I.(1995) The Shape of Things to Consume: Bringing Information Technology into the Home, Avebury, London Dordick, H. and LaRose, R. (1992) The Telephone in Daily Life: A Study of Personal Telephone Use, Temple University, Philadephia. Haddon, L. and Silverstone, R. (1993) Teleworking in the 1990s: A View from the Home, SPRU/CICT Report Series, No. 10, University of Sussex, August. Haddon, L. (1994), The Phone in the home: Ambiguity, Conflict and Change, paper presented at the COST 248 Workshop: The European Telecom User, April 13-14th Lund, Sweden. Haddon, L. and Silverstone, R. (1994) The Careers of Information and Communication Technologies in the Home, in Bjerg, K. and Borreby, K. (eds.) Proceedings of the the 12

13 13 International Working Conference on Home Orientated Informatics, Telematics and Automation, Copenhagen, June 27th-July 1st. Haddon, L. and Silverstone, R. (1995) Lone Parents and their Information and Communication Technologies, SPRU/CICT Report Series, No.12, University of Sussex, January. Haddon, L. and Silverstone, R. (forthcoming) The Young Elderly and their Information and Communication Technologies, University of Sussex. Kordey, N. (1993) Nutzung der Telekommuikation durch Ältere Menschen: Qualitative Studie in Ausgewälten Lebenslagen und Soziale Situationen, Wissenschaftliches Institut für Kommunikationsdienste, Bad Honnef., No.117. Morley, D. and Silverstone, R. (1990) 'Domestic Communication - Technologies and Meanings', Media, Culture and Society, 12. 1, Randell, E.(1990) Switching on at 60-plus, in Willis, J. and Wollen, T.(eds) The Neglected Audience, BFI, London Silverstone, R. (1991) Beneath the Bottom Line: Households and Information and Communications Technologies in an Age of the Consumer, PICT Policy Research Papers 17, Swindon, ESRC. Silverstone, R. (1994) Future Imperfect - Media, Information and the Millenium, PICT Policy Research Paper No.27, Brunel University. Silverstone, R.,Hirsch, E. and Morley, D. (1992) 'Information and Communication Technologies and the Moral Economy of the Household', in Silverstone, R. and Hirsch, E.(eds.) Consuming Technologies, Routledge, London. Silverstone, R. and Haddon, L. (1993) Future Compatible? Information and Communications Technologies in the Home: A Methodology and Case Study, a report prepared for the Commission of the European Communities Socio-Economic and Technical Impact Assessments and Forecasts, RACE Project 2086, SPRU/CICT, University of Sussex. Tulloch, J.(1989) Approaching the Audience: The Elderly, in Seiter, E. et al.(eds) Remote Control: Television, Audience and Cultural Power, Routledge, London. Wald, R. and Stöckler, F. (1991) Telekommunikation und Ältere Menschen, Wissenschaftliches Institut für Kommunikationsdienste, Bad Honnef, No.62. Williamson, K.(1994) Drinks on the Phone at Five O Clock: Telecommunication and the Inforamtion and Communication Needs of Older Adults, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Melbourne. Wood, J.(1993) Cellphones on the Clapham Omnibus: The Lead-Up to a Cellular Mass Market, SPRU CICT Report No.11, University of Sussex, Falmer, November. 13