Invisible Users
By:Jenna Burrell
Published on 2012-05-04 by MIT Press
The urban youth frequenting the Internet cafés of Accra, Ghana, who are decidedly not members of their country's elite, use the Internet largely as a way to orchestrate encounters across distance and amass foreign ties--activities once limited to the wealthy, university-educated classes. The Internet, accessed on second-hand computers (castoffs from the United States and Europe), has become for these youths a means of enacting a more cosmopolitan self. In Invisible Users, Jenna Burrell offers a richly observed account of how these Internet enthusiasts have adopted, and adapted to their own priorities, a technological system that was not designed with them in mind. Burrell describes the material space of the urban Internet café and the virtual space of push and pull between young Ghanaians and the foreigners they encounter online; the region's famous 419 scam strategies and the rumors of |big gains| that fuel them; the influential role of churches and theories about how the supernatural operates through the network; and development rhetoric about digital technologies and the future viability of African Internet cafés in the region. Burrell, integrating concepts from science and technology studies and African studies with empirical findings from her own field work in Ghana, captures the interpretive flexibility of technology by users in the margins but also highlights how their invisibility puts limits on their full inclusion into a global network society.
This Book was ranked at 19 by Google Books for keyword phone accessories.
Book ID of Invisible Users's Books is dPfn7O2RRbcC, Book which was written byJenna Burrellhave ETAG "0+53+RZlVTA"
Book which was published by MIT Press since 2012-05-04 have ISBNs, ISBN 13 Code is 9780262300681 and ISBN 10 Code is 0262300680
Reading Mode in Text Status is false and Reading Mode in Image Status is true
Book which have "248 Pages" is Printed at BOOK under CategoryTechnology and Engineering
This Book was rated by Raters and have average rate at ""
This eBook Maturity (Adult Book) status is NOT_MATURE
Book was written in en
eBook Version Availability Status at PDF is true and in ePub is false
Book Preview
Comments
Post a Comment