[Air-l] re: new technologies

[Bernie Hogan]

Its also important to remember that the levelling of the diffusion curve is
the best way to predict saturation. It is not 100% of the population (that's
a limit, like that ol' calculus stuff I once did).

And the fact that it started in 1991 regardless of us *nix geeks reminds me
of a cheeky comment by Paul DiMaggio at Webshop (http://www.webuse.umd.edu )
this summer. "Nobody used the Internet until 1994, cuase that's when *we*
started measuring it". Cracks me up every time.

In any case, recent reports like PEW
(http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=88 )
from May 2003 suggest that some 'laggards' are in fact rejected adopters,
while others live in the house with adopters and do indeed have 'access if
they want it' but don't see the need in adopting the Internet. In a sense,
imposing the discourse of "Internet is great, get on board" on them might be
a sort of technological imperialism. I think of my former employer, smart as
a whip and owner of one of the finest collections of Newfoundland historical
literature in the world, who really did not see herself as benefitting from
internet adoption, and she might actually be right! If anyone wants to take
this thread off the list feel free to email me.

oh and:
PLEASE DO NOT SEND HTML POSTS TO AIR-L!!!!
I get a daily digest which does not parse the html, so I have to read
through a lot of xml and html crap to get at the goods (your thoughtful
posting). Be kind to you ascii feathered friends.

BERNiE
Bernie Hogan
Ph.D. Student
Department of Sociology
NetLab, Knowledge Media Design Institute
University of Toronto
bernie.hogan at utoronto.ca