Digital Myths, Identities and Moral Economies

• In Event: Mobilizing Identities, Digital and Otherwise

Abstract

The diffusion of major new technologies in society is often accompanied by a set of myths that tell us how these technologies will change, clearly for the better, the social and economic fabric of a community (Adas 1990; Headrick 1981; Nye 1992, 1996; Standage 1999). Digital technologies too are associated with certain myths, including the death of distance and of mediators, the end of history and of politics (Brown and Duguid 2000; Mosco 2004). How are these myths created and who contributes to their circulation? To what extent do these myths shape the moral economy—that is, traditional views of social norms—where digital technologies are deployed? Drawing from our ethnographic fieldwork in India and Myanmar, we address these questions in the context of the deployment of ID systems and of mobile phones (including mobile money platforms) in the Global South. We build on Mosco’s idea of myth as a force shaping discourses around the introduction of new technologies (Mosco 2004), but depart from his argument that myths disappear once technology enters the “prosaic world of banality.” On the contrary, using the design and deployment of ID systems and mobile phone as examples, we show that myths persist long after technologies are in common use, because myths and myth-making influence the 'moral economy' within which technologies are wielded everyday. We focus on three aspects of the myth that surrounds these technology systems: disintermediation, death of distance, dematerialization. Together, these mythical qualities associated with the technological systems in question shape the everyday practices of people, including how they are able to leverage their identities in the worlds they inhabit.

Authors

• Janaki Srinivasan, International Institute of Information Technology - Bangalore

• e oreglia