How the internet has changed our concept of what home is

The woman who led the course was a thoughtful academic called Gerda Speller. Her technology concerned itself with the human impact of community migrations. She had worked on the Eurotunnel project; consulted on how to help displaced people re-find their networks and themselves; and she'd unpicked why centuries-old neighbourhood bonds fell apart when a Northumberland community was moved to a planned development afterwards they discovered that the mine they'd lived above was spewing noxious gas.

But the web has done more for home than this - it has invaded our domestic space. According to the Office for National Statistics, 77% of households in Great Britain had an internet connection in 2011 and initiatives spearheaded by the government aim to achieve nearly-ubiquitous national connection by at once year. We have no choice nevertheless to welcome it - and everything it brings with it - in. As Michael Arnold explains in The Connected Home: Probing the Effects and Affects of Domesticated ICTs: "Homes were connected electronically to the outside world less than 100 years ago. And now the homes of many connect directly to friends, acquaintances, and million[s of] strangers: to the local community, to work, to social, political and commercial organisations, to entertainment and service providers."

As if there wasn't already enough going on pursuant to this agreement the surface in each home - from age to identity to gender politics - this networked research brings the influences of these other stakeholders to bear on how we engage with the people with whom we share our most intimate lives. And we are now in the process of negotiating new boundaries with our time, our attentions and our domestic hierarchies.

I am constantly connected when I'm at home. It is my companion when watching a movie, it is my entertainment system when listening to the radio, it is my connection to the family and friends I speak with on VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol). Sociologist Kat Jungnickel and anthropologist Genevieve Bell suggest that my over-networked experience isn't unusual in Home is Where the Hub is? Wireless Infrastructures and the Nature of Domestic Culture in Australia: "Some read their emails and Google for news in front of the TV during others breastfeed during surfing the net. In the kitchen, they look for recipes or talk with friends via IM. In bed they write emails or shop on eBay." The rooms once allocated for specific purposes have been co-opted by other tasks.

This isn't always welcome. In one of Jungnickel and Bell's case studies, a participant describes the conflicts that arise from home-multiplicity: "Sal tells of the congestion zone caused by the chameleonic characteristics of the kitchen table," they write. "While the day it is her new computing space, and at night it is the social, cooking washing-up space for both of them." Each online activity has imposed itself on our home-practice. We are experiencing a domestic transition as the web collaborates and competes with old "new" technologies just as the TV, the researchers argue. It "complicates" characteristics of the physical space.

We are adaptable creatures and will work within the confines of our existing homes to integrate this new creature into our lives. We have already made the web part of our domestic ecologies and we continually imbue it with a sense of place. Like as not its malleability is why it has been so successful and why we are willing to bring this interruptive innovation into our most intimate worlds.

How has the most revolutionary research of our time - the internet - transformed our world? What does it mean for the modern family? How has it changed our concepts of privacy? Of celebrity? Of love, sex and hate? The online version of Untangling the Web is the collection of interviews, links, photos, videos and brainstorms that feed into Aleks Krotoski's fortnightly Observer column. Every other Sunday, the then topic will be revealed. Feel free to contribute your ideas on each in the comments of the blog post, by email to aleks.krotoski.freelance@guardian.co.uk or via Twitter, by tagging your tweets with #UTTW or @aleksk.