ABSTRACT
In an essay titled ‘Thinking the Internet: Cultural studies vs the Millennium’, Jonathan Sterne (1999) notes that a central issue for cultural studies approaches to ‘thinking the Internet’ is quite literally how to think about it beyond traditional dichotomous perspectives. Instead of asking whether the Internet leads us to utopia, or whether it will destroy the fabric of society, how might we examine the Internet as another media technology situated in routine social practice and everyday life? Scholars must pay attention to the routines undergoing transformation because of networking, for it is in the realm of the mundane that we most clearly see the consequences of the Internet in culture and society. Sterne asks us to imagine a day in the life of one of his students, and to note the ways in which the Internet, or more appropriately perhaps Internetworking, is embedded in mundane routines and practices. Stopping in a computer lab between classes to check email, for instance, or sending a note to a professor while doing homework, are examples he cites of common practices altered by Internetworking.
