Connecting places - internet cafes as technosocial spaces

Abstract

This is a study about the use of technology in particular places. It is about how spaces are produced through relations and practices involving technology and their users. The study is based on four internet cafés located in two villages, a town and a city in Trøndelag, Mid-Norway. We are going to see how the internet cafés are local meeting places, designed and domesticated differently in various settings, and how they relate to the community in which they are located, as well as to spaces out of reach physically but highly present through the internet connections of the computers. The internet cafés will be conceived as technosocial spaces, implying that the places of the internet cafés as well as the spaces produced from and around the cafés are constructed through the interplay of users and the technologies. The internet cafés are connected places in the sense that they are linked up through the internet. This way they are connecting places in the sense that they are actively involved in facilitating contact between people and places across distance, as well as places of connections in the sense that they are sites or venues for interaction, creating distinct and heterogeneous forms of socialities in the intersection of the technology, its users and the people connected on the other side of the screens.