From Amalgamations: Fusing Technology and Culture (ed. by Susanne Lundin and Lynn èkesson), Lund: Nordic
discuss.
  Each new technology makes us blind to the 
 
Domesticating Cyberdreams
Technology and Everyday Life
Orvar Lîfgren and Magnus Wikdahl
œLiberty, Equality, Internetœ was the message proclaimed on advertising pillars in 1996 by the Swedish
telecom company, Telia, in their campaign to win Internet subscribers. Eighty years earlier, the
American telephone company AT&T had ensured people that the new-fangled telephone was an instrument
of democracy: it carried the voice of child and adult alike, with the same speed and fixity of purpose
(Fischer 1992:2). Both these information technology companies assured people, in 1916 and in 1996,
that the revolutionary new technology would shrink the nation and link it together.
In 1996 a pioneering spirit still prevailed, a sense of being on the threshold of the new IT
society. There was an aura about things like home pages, chat groups, and Internet shopping that
provoked curiosity. The rhetoric was inflated. Just a couple of years later, however, a great deal
of the novelty has been incorporated into everyday life, become commonplace, a matter of course. It
 
In the very near future, our ability to communicate is expected to be intensified and multiplied œ
for better or worse. In the age of digital technology it may be useful to remember that people have
always communicated with each other and that all previous societies could also be called information
societies. Every social community has its specific communication needs and creates its own media
tools. When something new comes along, what then does its newness consist of? What are the qualities
of each new œinformation societyœ that previous societies lacked?
If you consult the dictionary you will be told that the word communication comes from the Latin verb
communicare, which literally means œto make common.œ Communication is thus about forging common bonds
between people. This of course can be done in many different ways, but from the perspective of culture
studies, communication is primarily about expressing thoughts and experiences in a form whereby they
are accessible œ both to oneself and to others.
To put it another way, it can be said that communication is about expression and making an
impression. The basis of all communication technology is the potential to make something perceptible
to the senses; this is naturally limited by peopleœs perceptual capacity and must therefore be related
to what can be apprehended by sight, hearing, touch, and so on. Communication technology œ or
information technology if you like œ is a matter of transforming thoughts and experiences into
message-carrying signals that can be perceived by the senses.
Ulf Hannerz (1990) has singled out the media as œthe special technology of culture.œ Each society,
each culture elaborates its own possibilities for communication, its own information technology, and
its own media by creating links and connections in everyday life.
In research into the media, communication technology, and culture, some of the paths across this
multidisciplinary field have been more heavily trodden than others. From an ethnological perspective,
we want to discuss three aspects that do not often receive the treatment they deserve.