ABSTRACT
Rhys, an English boy in his mid-teens, sits with his parents in a hotel lounge in Berlin. Each evening of my summer holiday, I see him use his laptop computer while his parents relax with a glass of wine; there is a sense of the habitual about this arrangement, the parents talking together and the son inhabiting a virtual space with his friends. Rhys begins each evening ritually opening several windows at once, swiftly moving through them— clicking, sliding and tapping on pads and keys. He looks only at the screen as he accesses ‘MySpace’, e-mail, Instant Messaging, YouTube and other sites as suggested to him by friends during his online interactions. ‘Pop up’ ads sporadically shoot into view, and zapping them like an automaton, he expertly clicks them away as suddenly as they appear. He is happy to chat to me at the same time and explains he is ‘with’ school friends, just as he is most nights at home. He passes on jokes and makes them; they collaborate in commenting on digital photographs he has taken in Berlin and make up titles for them; he tells me that when you are online you can ‘do stuff with your mates’ and just ‘hang out’. His face seems animated as he takes part in a range of interactions (two of his friends are on holiday and one connects (albeit intermittently) through a mobile phone, while another uses her home pc) and it is as if Rhys occupies more than one space, keeping up a kind of polysemic identity, so that while remaining in the familial holiday context he maintains an online presence which blends his holiday, school and home selves.
