Ethnotale: Up Close and Personal

For the past several months we have been talking with families to learn more about how different generations communicate and how technology impacts their day-to-day decisions about communicating. Whoa, is this ever a rich, broad and diverse ethnography! We’re talking with kids as young as 6 and working our way across the life span to get the skinny on all things interpersonal. Talk about a sociological minefield! We are starting to uncover oodles about identity and the impact of technology [ahem, facebook anyone?] on identity formation, about voyeurism, narrative and compulsion, about the functional and symbolic nature of electronic devices, about rites of passage, about reference groups, about concentric zones…really we could go on and on about what we’re learning. More on that later!