Technology: Telephone
Relevant Social Group: While many technologies are limited to relevant social groups of producers and users, the telephone involves many subgroups. First, there are telephone providers who lay telecommunication lines and benefit from providing paid services to users. Next, there are phone manufacturers who produce electronic devices for different user purposes. The users’ segment could be divided into several categories, including people who use telephones for personal communication organizations that use telephone communication for business purposes. There also are people and organizations who use telephone communication as part of work.
Interpretive Flexibility: Telephone communication is used for different purposes depending on the caller’s intentions. Some people use telephones to connect with remote close ones, while others use them for business purposes. On the other hand, the design of technology favored the development of phone blackmailing and terrorism.
Closure & Stabilization: Mobile phones and later smartphones developed from telephones to fulfill the demands of social groups. The general design for the landline telephones remained the same even after the introduction of mobile phones.
Wider Context: Many people nowadays use mobile phone communication; therefore, telephones are now primarily used by the older population or for business purposes. Printed phone books that used to have social value and indicated different societal changes lost their relevance.
The actor-network theory (ANT) perceives all events as outcomes of actors’ relationships (Quan-Haase, 2021). The telephone technology features several actors: the users, the businesses, the concept of communication being a paid service, landlines, and the telephone providers. The relationships are constructed and practiced in a continuous chain: telephone communication should have many users to remain relevant. Thus, telephone providers should maintain the technical equipment and attract customers with adequate service fees to have many users.
References
Quan-Haase, A. (2021). Technology and Society (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press.