Dissertation Research: Home on the Road: Domesticity, Technology, and the Meanings of Mobile Space

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The project draws on a range of resources from archival materials to material culture in order to raise larger social questions about the relationship of consumers to technology. It argues that travelers need to understand the historical development of transportation space in order to more effectively intervene in the design and use of contemporary technologies. More specifically, this project examines the cultural construction of transportation space, focusing on auto touring and the creation of mobile space. The thesis argues that tourists and tinkers (non-professional inventors) re-designed the automobile to fit their own needs rather than accepting the ideologies of mobility, technology, and gender sold by designers, manufacturers, and advertisers. The work presents users/travelers as active participants in industrial and mechanical design and examines modification of the car by travelers as a form of opposition to technological authority.