ABSTRACT
Smartphones, tablets, and laptop computers have become ubiquitous pieces of personal technology. Given the pervasiveness of free Wi-Fi and either 4G or 5G, the technological devices are impacting social encounters and increasingly have intrinsic social importance. Based on a study of social life in traditional meeting places (“third places”), such as cafés and pubs, the author employs the concept of “situational domestication” to show not only how technologies are made “at home” in these places, but also how such social situations or occasions are transformed to cater to the personal technologies in use – in other words, how personal technologies impact how actors understand the rules of a social situation. Based on ethnographic studies of individuals’ work on laptops and small groups’ use of smartphones in cafés, the author demonstrates how technologically induced transformation of public spaces, in turn, transforms how publicness is experienced and challenged.
