Beyond Mere Sociology: Apparatgeist

Singapore.
The final presentation in this ICA 2010 session is by James Katz, who describes the various theories outlined here as lenses for understanding reality; he adds to this the contribution of cognitive sciences as a useful set of tools. He also notes the Western, educated, industrialised, rich, and developed (WEIRD) nations focus of much research - which does not translate well to the study of the use of mobile telephony in developing nations, for example. There is also a mentalist and positivist orientation here which attempts to work out what takes place in people's brains, and to find a 'scientific' statistical breakdown of factors influencing people's behaviours.

Postconvergence makes this more and more problematic - simple and/or overly positivist explanations no longer make any sense. Also, James notes that people tend to have a very poor understanding of their own motives for their actions, which undermines quite a lot of the minutely survey-based sociological studies. Other studies tend to focus on technology rather than people's socially embedded technological practices, which is similarly problematic.

The postconvergent mix of channels and devices further complicates things, then - for example, 'privacy' has now become a virtually meaningless concept to many users, and there are conflicting trends towards more privacy control as well as more personal visibility in desirable social settings which are not easily reconciled. One perspective in response to this is the theory of 'Apparatgeist': it accepts that people are not very rational, but magical in their thinking; they anthropomorphise the objects upon which they depend (and which seem to take on human characteristics). But researchers tend to be unaware of people's unawareness, reading all too much into the behaviours they observe.

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