The Domestication of New Technologies as a Set of Trials

Abstract

This article examines the domestication of technologies by following different phases of adoption. These phases are studied as a set of trials in which the capabilities of humans and non-humans are tested in many ways. I will begin the article by investigating the period in which interest in a piece of technology is slowly aroused. This involves the collective assessment of the ‘need’ for an object and, before an actual acquisition is made, consultations with friends and relatives who can act as ‘warm specialists’. Next, I analyse the initial period of living with new technology: the way the technology in question needs to be fitted into pre-existing technological and human relationships. Finally, I examine the ways in which a technology that has become an integral part of everyday lifeslowly becomes less and less present until, at last, it seems to have been done away with. As a whole, the set of trials forms a general process of domestication whereby new user knowledge is created and the moral order of the household is negotiated recurrently.