Abstract
Computers may affect the work of ethnographers by transforming the organization of working. The concept of fritter captures a distinction between working and working at doing ethnography. A computer fritter, then, is a way of working at doing work that functions to organize and impart meaning to using computers in research and writing. Several types of computer fritters are identified and described, and these are depicted as a logic-in-action for ethnography on the computer. Since the computer fritter embodies the character of work on the computer, understanding its many forms and uses may further an understanding of the developing tension between new meanings of doing work and old ways of accounting for when work has been done.
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