Any social history of the telephone, must examine it in conjunction with the following areas:
Uses
Which groups use it; how is the telephone integrated into their lives; what adjustments do they have to make to accommodate it?
Work
Do working practices change? Are existing hierarchies within a business changed/reinforced/subverted? This has to do with power relations - what happens to those power relations when a new technology is introduced?
Culture
Perhaps it is too deterministic to ask 'how technology affects culture' (and too simplistic and naive), because culture is too vast and complicated to be affected by just one concept. Perhaps it would be more productive follow the traces technology leaves in its wake when the two spheres (culture and technology) overlap. How pervasive is technology in our beliefs, our metaphors, our hopes for the future, our nightmares, our art? As a medium, do we still talk about it, or has it become transparent (invisible) through overuse?
Class, gender
Once more, beware of transferring definitions between eras. But having said this, has technology reinforced or subverted existing structures? Did it force to re-evaluate our preconceptions of these terms?
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