Technological utopianism is particularly influential in North America and often influences writing about new technologies. Authors craft utopian and anti-utopian writings within a set of conventions that limit what they say. Even though these writings describe possible future events and social forms, their conventions prevent the authors from discussing important social relationships that are also likely. These utopian and anti-utopian writings about computerization form a genre of discourse. But many descriptions of the use of current technologies in existing settings are also framed with specific genre conventions.
Conventions make works more easily intelligible to their primary audiences.
And social analyses of computing are written with genre conventions that limit the kinds of ideas that can be readily examined. Many professionals and scholars who read these social analyses are often unaware of the ways that works are crafted within the conventions of specific genres, and the ways in which these conventions limit as well as facilitate analysis and debate.