At today’s ACC DIY speaker series, Laura Robinson and François Bar presented research on the ways people integrate technologies with their lives, negotiating power and cultural dynamics in the process. Laura’s paper, “Parallel Systems and Cultural Difference in Art Auctions,” underlined the way cultural characteristics (or stereotypes) manifest in French and American approaches to eBay. Americans, for example, when compared to French eBay users, appear free flowing and effusive in their praise for fellow eBay transacters. The French seem miserly with praise by comparison. Americans also appear to spend lots of money and don’t mind trading with foreigners. The French trade in cheaper reproductions and steer clear of les etrangers.

You can read the rest of Laura’s findings here.

What does this suggest about DIY culture? To me it’s a reminder of the strength of offline dominant cultures and power dynamics. Although the opportunities to re-appropriate media tools and products and to invent our own relationships to technology and to one another can seem limitless in the world of the digital network, the heavy realities of national cultural identity, of the socio-economic, historical and political facts of our lives are at this point still doing a lot of the stage directing that matters.

Check back soon for Howard’s comments on François’s talk on re-appropriation and mobile phone use in Latin America.