Design and the Domestication of Information and Communication Technologies: Technical Change and Everyday Life

Abstract Technological innovation is not just a matter of production. Consumption and use are equally essential components of the innovation process. Technological innovation is also not just a matter of engineering. Both new and old technologies are social products: they are symbolic and aesthetic as well as material and functional. Production and consumption are not related to each other in a singular or linear fashion, but are the product of a complex pattern of activities in which producers and consumer-users, as well as those who intervene in and facilitate the process of consumption, take part.