Technology Metaphors at the Base of the Pyramid

Much of the technology consumption literature is predominantly situated in the context of the relatively free individual. It also assumes that the adopted technology is owned, or easily accessible by the consumer. This dissertation foregrounds the overlooked invisible world of technologies (Edgerton 2007. p xi), heeding the call to shift attention from the the spectacular to the mundane, the masculine to the feminine, the rich to the poor" (ibid. p. xiv). It highlights technology consumption under the unfreedom of resource constraints and that of entanglements created by desire. The dissertation uses a metaphorical approach in examining technology experiences among the poor in India. Metaphors are known to shape perceptions and understandings of consumption objects. They also inform and guide consumption. Specifically, technology metaphors have implications for how human beings (e.g., technology service providers or power brokers of other sorts) are perceived, and thereby, what expectations (realistic or unrealistic) we might have of these human beings. A year-long phenomenological investigation of the technology metaphors explicitly or implicitly held by the under-represented poor, surfaced commonly overlooked non-dominant metaphors The study reveals that among the involuntarily poor, technology is perceived according to the varying inflections of its effects through the forbiddances set by those controlling allocative resources that affect poor consumers access to or consumption of technology. Contrastingly, technology perceptions among those who are voluntarily poor, mostly stem from how strongly the tug of desire is perceived to exist in the particular consumption object versus in the need for self-realization. These findings augment and challenge existing theories of technology perceptions by widening the scope of the theorizing lens that has so far focussed on the affluent First World consumer and product attributes microcosm. This broadened view introduces the overlooked role of class-based societal domination in considering involuntarily poor consumers technology perceptions (and thereby their adoption and consumption decisions). In contrast to the involuntarily poor, where objects and dominant others have primary agency over the self, the findings among the voluntarily poor extend our understandings of human entanglement with objects by revealing methods of humans gaining primary agency over objects.