ABSTRACT
The home computer today needs to be seen not as 'one' technology, but many. It can function as a communications device, an entertainment medium, an information resource and a production tool. A contrasting perspective from the studies of older technologies such as television argues that we might need to be sceptical about grand theorising and instead listen intently to how young people themselves describe their interactions with these new resources. Arguing, as many of the grand theories do, that there is a single way in which technologies are changing all young people's interactions with world, then, may be problematic. The new opportunities for autonomy and control that this medium offers young people may well, indeed, only be opportunities to experience an illusion of control and responsibility within tightly constrained set of rules. The ability to access large amounts of information at the click of mouse has been the feature of home computing technology most often represented as socially transformative.
