Beyond Safety Concerns

The practical use of information technology devices in domestic and residential contexts often results in radical changes from their envisioned raison d’etre. This study focuses on the context of household safety and security, and presents results from the analysis of the usage of video cameras in the public areas of an urban neighbourhood in Tecamac, Mexico. Moving beyond the original envisioned purpose of safety, residents of the community engaged in a process of technology appropriation, finding novel applications for the security cameras. These uses included supporting coordination among family members, providing enhanced communication with distant friends and family, looking after minors while playing outside, and showing the household to friends and colleagues. Our results illustrate that success in information technologies is a dynamic phenomenon and that technology appropriation has to be understood as a phenomenon that occurs at the level of the application of the device, rather than at the level of the device itself.