 The most common view of information technology is that it is an artifact or tool simply available, to use of not to use, in order for humans to achieve their objectives and outcomes. Some of these tools might be very useful and others not. When users (and the term ‘user’ here is important) take up a tool or artifact (word processor, mobile phone, etc) it will tend to have an impact on the way they do things. For example if I write with a word processor I would tend to have different writing practices than I would with pen and paper—for example, with the ‘cutting and pasting’function of a word processor I can simply type out my ideas and then reorder them later without being preoccupied with the composition of the whole from the start. Thus, tools function as extensions of human capabilities, allowing us to achieve what we can not achieve with the body alone—and one might add that some tools are more ‘extensive’ than others as our pen vs. word processor suggest. According to this view, we need to understand the impact that the use of the tools (information technology in this case) has on human society as they are taken up and used in everyday practices. For example, how will communication with mobile phones change our social interaction and social relationships? In asking such a question this view does not primarily concern itself with the development of the technology—why and how did it come about in the first instance. It mostly assumes that the design of a particular technology is rational and objective; one might call it an engineering or scientific solution to a particular problem. It also mostly assumes that the particular technology—mobile phones in this case—operates in a more or less uniform manner in different social practices and settings. In other words, it assumes that a particular technology has certain determinate effects on, or in, the context of its use. This way of conceptualizing information technology leads to questions such as “what is the impact of the mobile phone on communication patterns” or “what is the impact of mobile phones on privacy/privacy expectations”. This view of technology is often criticized for a greater or lesser degree of technological determinism. Technological determinism is the view that technology more or less causes certain ways of doing or ways of organizing to come about. For example, a technological determinist may argue that the Internet’s open and non-hierarchical architecture can more or less cause a society that uses it to become more open and less hierarchical. The work of Postman (1993) is an example of this type of critical evaluation of the impact of technology on society.