Week 2: The Telephone as Introduction to a Great Many Concepts
This week’s reading and discussion is based on Claude Fischer’s America Calling. Fischer’s rather extensive study of the process by which the telephone became a fixture in American life can serve as a case study for the application of a number of bodies of theory found under the heading of Social Issues in information. Chiefly, and following a discussion on this topic in his first chapter, the spread of the telephone in American society is a wonderful illustration of social constructivism as applied to technological adoption. Fischer shows in detail that rather than dropping into society and wreaking changes, the role and eventual form of the telephone was a negotiation between many parties. Marketers and executives, engineers, lawmakers, and consumers all had a role in shaping the technology, and this produced exogenous consequences which further shaped the process. Fischer explores these, looking at the effects of the telephone on localism and sociability. Make sure to think back on Fisher’s case study as we explore in greater depth the competing theories on technological adoption, impact, and diffusion in the weeks to come.
January 28th, 2009