Technobiography: Researching Lives, Online and Off

Abstract

This article is an argument for technobiography, a term coined in Cyborg Lives? Women's Technobiographies, a collection I coedited in 2001. I outline what technobiography is, and how, by allowing access to what it feels like to live certain digital experiences, it can contribute to building a comprehensive picture of cybercultural landscapes. If we want to understand lived experiences of the Internet, we need to study not only online, virtual representations of selves, but also lives and selves situated within the social relations of the consumption and production of information and communication technologies. Drawing on two technobiographical projectsÑone involving a group of black, working-class women returning to education with the aid of networked technologies and computer-mediated distance learning, and another exploring social relations in a digital multimedia production center -I indicate ways in which technobiography can contribute to this important project

A Beautiful Campaign?

“…3. Although bedizens are capable of adopting a virtual identity in cyberspace, Kennedy's (2003) study shows that as a rule, online contributors do not unhinge their identities from their relatively stable manifestations in the offline world. In fact, she reports that in most personal online writing, the offline and online worlds overlap.…”

The Language of Social Media

“…In her major work on women's technology-related lives, Kennedy (2003) defines techno-biographies as participants' accounts of everyday relationships with technology. Ching and Vigdor's work further refines the notion and considers techno-biographies as participants' encounters with technology 'at various times and in various locations throughout their histories' (Ching & Vigdor, 2005, p. 4).…”

Social media and personal blogging: Textures, routes and patterns

“…This again means that the contract between bloggers and their users is constantly refined. Compared to the reader contract of printed self-texts, the contract is now based on criteria such as: availability, usability, frequency, accuracy, consistency, variation, complexity, necessity, ambition/intelligence, feed-back-loop, surprise and personal voice -or, in the words of Dijck, design (Kennedy, 2003;Renov, 2002;Dijck, 2007). These criteria can be said to establish the polyrhythmy of the blogosphere that is further supported by events such as blog prizes, internal surveys, tagging and making thematic chains etc., but not least generic practices.…”