Internet as culture and cultural artifact

Christine Hine (2000) stresses that the Internet is both culture and a cultural artifact.

”The meaningfulness of the technology does not exist before the uses themselves, but is worked out at the time of use. At the same time, making the use of the Internet meaningful involves representing it to others as valuable in recognizable ways.” (Hine, 2000, p.29)

Hine’s approach means taking a turn away from looking at technologies as such – as mere static tools with certain predescribable meaning and purpose. Instead it becomes as important to look at how technologies become enacted in practice as how practices are performed with technologies.  

Hine, Christine (2000):  Virtual ethnography. Sage Publications.