ABSTRACT
Once I learned how to put a plug on, now there’s nobody else puts a plug on in this house but me.
(Edna) It was obvious from the interview material that these women had an incomplete knowledge of the workings of the video recorder. The similarity of the women’s reported experience in relation to technology was striking and I have therefore chosen to discuss this aspect of the VCR generally across the sample, aiming to provide an account of the range of attitudes and approaches they have in relation to entertainment technology. It is important to point out that technologies such as the VCR have a life even before they enter the household, for example, in discussions about the appropriateness, or otherwise, of its purchase, and also that technologies have a developing biography within households after they have been acquired. The contours of the biography are determined by, amongst other things, different and changing patterns of use and their relation to other forms of technology. Therefore, these aspects of the VCR will be explored throughout this section. I will begin by exploring the processes whereby the women actually gained the knowledge and skill required to use the recorders. Very few of the women learnt how to operate the video recorders on their own; this generally means that whatever knowledge they have has been mediated mainly through their male partners. This in many cases relates back to decisions about the purchase or rental of the VCR. We got an instruction book but he had a rough idea anyway; he was probably more familiar with it anyway because until we’d started looking he’d been the one who was up on them, as it were. (Lynne) The decision-making process is referred to later in this chapter, but it is important to note here that the five women who were most at ease with the operation of the video recorder were either instigators of the acquisition or, in one case, already familiar with the machine before the current domestic arrangement began.
