Relationships: Relating to Others around Technology

Musgrave’s and Springer’s narratives describing computer literacy in the context of family relationships couch computer use as a means of “participation with others, shared experience […] in the context of family life,” seeming to anecdotally reflect Rose’s observations about understandings of literacy which are gendered female (250). Musgrave’s and Springer’s stories describe using computers with others, emphasizing time spent together with family members rather than focusing on skills gained or comparing the ability or performance of different characters within the narrative. The emphasis on socialization and bonding around the computer is especially apparent in the fact that both Musgrave and Springer highlight the “basic” nature of the kinds of computer tasks they remember doing with these family members, referring to them as “just playing solitaire” (emphasis added): it is the experience of engaging in these computer activities with family members that makes the narrators remember the events, rather than the focus on specific activities that dominates other parts of their narratives (for example, the places where they list computer games). The home computer context Musgrave and Springer describe also suggests a different spatial dynamic than the computer lab Lanning describes: Musgrave and Springer depict a group clustered around a single computer, paralleling the multiple advisors for a single videogame controller that Chandler, Burnett, and Lopez describe. In contrast, Lanning describes a context in which individuals are paired with a machine as they undertake competitive play in the school computer lab.