ABSTRACT
The notion of objectification encompasses the socially constructed nature of artefacts but because of the materiality of such objects and the momentum of institutionalized social practices, they escape social control in any simple sense. The home computer is portrayed as a novel kind of domestic appliance—an ‘information appliance’—which, it is implied, will soon become indispensable to the contemporary home. The computer pictured is peripheral to the activity that the father and daughter are engaged in, able in fact to enhance rather than threaten family solidarity. It is portrayed as a passive assistant: the role invoked for information technology is that of servant to the human master, implicitly defusing cultural anxieties about a loss of human control over technology. Finally, there is the gendering of this information appliance: many contemporary computer advertisements, including this one, portray girls using the computer in a positive light, contradicting the possible assertion that they are just ‘toys for the boys’.
