Untitled - socium.ge

134 Steve Woolgaralso involved strategic networking, a concerted effort to persuade “unsuspectingcaptains of industry” of the virtues of academic social science research.The researchers themselves had not only to carry out first-class scholarship,but also to exhibit good citizenship in willingly supporting the experiment ofcommunicating with “users.” Many outside the program had to be willing (orbe persuaded) to adopt this “unicorn role.” 3 Both constituencies were importantin helping to shape and define the research agenda.A notable feature of “dealings with users” was the marked change in thegeneral context and environment in which the program operated over its lifetime.In summary terms, we moved from a general perception that the consequencesof technologies were simply a matter for technologists; throughbreathless expectations about a world radically transformed by technology andthe dawn of a virtual age; to the “busted flush” of sober realization in the wakeof the dot-com crash. Throughout this whole period, it fell to the program totry to provide both a balanced consistency of perspective and a deeper understandingof what lies beneath these superficial judgments. Not only did theprogram manage relations with a bewildering variety of users – for in the finalanalysis there are few areas of social life potentially unaffected by concernsabout new technology – it also engaged with users whose views were changing.As many of the program’s publications point out, the central core of itsresearch findings are “counter-intuitive.” But this simple statement conceals acomplexity in changes of ideas about the new technologies: we also had toconsider for whom (which constituencies) the results were counter-intuitive.The current state of our understanding of the new electronic technologiesrequires our attention to the form of the debate around claimed technologicalimpacts. In particular, it is not enough, it certainly misses the point, and,perhaps, is even wrong-headed to attempt a straightforward evaluation of theseclaims. In simple terms, to set out to assess whether or not a virtual society ispossible is already to accept the terms of reference of the debate. As Cooper etal. (2002) put it, we need some mutual contamination of the categories thatmake up the real–virtual opposition, and should proceed by neither endorsingnor debunking the concept of virtual society. Nettleton et al. (2002) similarlyindicate that alignment with either extreme is inappropriate; they quoteWellman and Gulia’s (1999: 167) observation that “statements of enthusiasmor criticism leave little room for moderate, mixed situations that may be thereality.” 4The challenge is to find a way of interrogating the terms of the debate withoutdisengaging from them altogether. This is an important aim both academicallyand strategically. The terms of the debate are themselves motivated; bywhich I mean that they are deeply imbued with relations, meanings, impliedconnections, and performed communities of associations. These claimsthereby involve, give rise to, and sustain a form of social ordering. So, to