Apparatgeist

— A few years ago such questions provoked academic controversy. Not everybody agrees with Ms Ito's argument that technology is always socially constructed. James Katz, a professor of communication at Rutgers University in New Jersey, argues that there is an Apparatgeist (German for "spirit of the machine"). For personal communication technologies, he argues, people react in pretty much the same way, a few national variations notwithstanding. "Regardless of culture," he suggests, "when people interact with personal communication technologies, they tend to standardise infrastructure and gravitate towards consistent tastes and universal features."