The case of the e-tuktuk

This paper presents the 'e-tuktuk'. as an instance of innovative use of new mobile technology in the historical, social, political and cultural context of the Kothmale region of Sri Lanka. We argue that it is this particular context that allows the e-tuktuk to exist as a meaningful set of social behaviours in this place, and that the culturally significant and symbolic notion of reaching out to villages is of particular importance in this mobile example of technological diffusion. In doing so we will necessarily be simplifying the 'almost unbelievable complexity that is involved in virtually any link between human technological forms and human culture'. (Pfaffenberger 1988:244). The main aim of this paper is to indicate some of that complexity in the case of the e-tuktuk, and the necessity of considering this involvedness in any scholarly exercise that attempts to understand a new (or old for that matter) technology as it is used and thus made meaningful.