Technophobes vs. technophiles: What are the real
differences between early adopters and late adopters?
by Jesse Fox Mayshark
Back in the early 1980s, my father made some interesting choices about new technology. We were never a particularly with-it family when it came to gizmos and gadgets. We didn't even have a color TV until we inherited my grandparents' set in 1978. It had one of those early-generation remote controls, a thick metal console with three big buttons that made tremendous (and, for a child, very satisfying) clicking noises. We heated our house primarily with two wood stoves. We had rotary phones until I was well into my teens. For years, my mother shunned microwave ovens for fear of letting all that radiation into her kitchen.
But for a little while there, in those early days of the Reagan administration, my father got caught up in the excitement of the expanding field of home entertainment options. Something of a videophile (he loves Super 8 film, 3-D photography and old Stereopticon slides), he always researched his purchases carefully and chose the machines that promised the best in picture quality. So it was that we, in short order, ended up the proud owners of both a Betamax VCR and a videodisc player. The research was right—the picture quality in both cases was pretty impressive. But, for reasons that have been well documented by the type of market apologists whose job it is to explain why the immense wisdom of the "invisible hand" does not always choose the best possible product, both appliances were quickly outmoded. The Beta was joined by a VHS player and eventually retired completely. We didn't even bother replacing the videodisc player with a later-model laserdisc.
I also remember the night my dad came home toting the first and only video-game console he ever bought. It was called Intellivision. He bought it because he liked its baseball game better than those available on competing Atari and Coleco systems. I don't remember exactly, but I think it cost in the vicinity of $200. A few years later, I saw a pile of the exact same system in a remainder bin at a mall toy store, their battered cardboard boxes marked with a descending series of prices scratched out with a red pen. They were selling for $29.
Ever since, I've been cautious about new technology. In the past decade, we've all seen prices fall and fall again on computers, cellular phones, CD players, DVD players, convection ovens, bread machines, GPS devices, and so on and so forth. We've also seen many heralded "innovations" turn out to be dead-ends, superseded within six months by something newer and cooler and better. How's a person to know when it's safe to buy without looking like a sucker? What makes some people jump at every new chance for better living through technology and others run and hide from it?
For help with those questions, I turned to three of my friends, whom I will call "Joe," "Brent" and "Zak." They are demographically similar, middle-class professional white males in their 30s, but they exemplify a range of attitudes from technophilia to technophobia.
Joe: "What Am I Connecting To?"
Joe is something of a worrier by nature, a lapsed Catholic given to moody contemplation of the human condition. So it's no surprise that his thoughts on technology are fraught with concerns about its psychological, social and cultural effects. He doesn't have a cell phone or a microwave oven. He owns a car, but he walks to work most days. He does have a laptop computer, but he stopped bringing it home with him because he thought he was spending too much time online. Out of a similar concern, he got rid of his TV set 10 years ago.
"That was largely practical reasons," he says. "I know I'm a very passive person, and lazy, so I got rid of the TV in...I guess it was '92...because I wanted to read a lot and write and do other things on the side. And I knew I wouldn't do it if I had a TV."
Joe is what's referred to as a "late adopter" in technospeak. He doesn't make much effort to keep up with new technologies and tends to view them with some mixture of indifference and suspicion. Which doesn't mean he's immune to techno envy.
"I think part of it is on a level of paranoia," he says. "I mean, I like lots of technology—CD burners, DVD players, I was really into the Internet when I first got a computer. But there's also this kind of fear of, what am I connecting to?"
There's almost a survivalist aspect to some of Joe's reasoning. He likes the fact that if all the power in Fort Sanders goes out and snow or ice makes the roads impassable, he can still go about most of his daily business. "I don't like being reliant on things," he says with a shrug.
At the same time, he acknowledges his willingness to use other people's gadgets. "It's sort of hypocritical, because I like to be able to tap into it when I want to, but to keep it at arm's length. I love when my friends have cell phones, because I can get in touch with them if I want to. If I need to watch TV, I can get to a TV. Everybody I know has one."
He worries that if he had a cell phone, he would lose some of his "down time," some of his valued isolation and independence.
Not coincidentally, Joe has something of a fetish for obsolete technology. He has a manual typewriter that he still uses for writing letters. He recently started carrying a stainless steel pocket watch he inherited from his grandfather. He marvels at the watch's durability, in contrast to modern disposable technology. "It sat in a box for 30 years, and I pulled it out and wound it up, and it works fine."
"I think it's a myth that technology makes life easier," Joe says. "You can see that with cars. When cars were being built and developed, there was this idea that it was quicker and easier transportation. And now, it's nothing for people to spend an hour commuting to work. There's this myth that technology makes life easier, but technology tends to consume things."
Brent: "I Should Have a Yard Sale"
When I first tried to contact Brent for this story, I realized I had never called him at home. I had only ever reached him via cell phone or email. I dialed the number listed in the Knoxville phone book and was greeted by the eardrum-piercing screech of a hungry fax machine. When I finally got hold of Brent (by email, which he downloaded on his houseboat using a wireless Internet connection), he explained he has three phone lines at home: a computer line, a regular phone and a fax.
Brent is Joe's opposite number, the early adopter. Where Joe learns about technology mostly from friends (if at all), Brent keeps abreast of new developments on websites like Slashdot.org and various techno newsletters. He's on his fifth handheld PDA, a snazzy Ipaq with a ridiculous amount of memory—besides the normal things like his calendar and address book, the tiny machine holds more than a dozen books (he's currently reading a collection of Jack London sea tales) and recent issues of magazines and newspapers downloaded off the web.
He has four computers, "running three different versions of Windows OS and one of them running Linux." One of them he keeps just because he has his early-edition CD burner hooked up to it. All of this is clearly not just a matter of impressing the neighbors—Brent evinces a genuine joy in the endless discovery of new things, faster things, better things. His enthusiasm seems as heartfelt as Joe's skepticism.
But there are downsides to being on what Brent calls "the bleeding edge." "Several big drawers full of things that aren't that interesting anymore," he says, grimacing. "I should have a yard sale. I have the 3-D Nintendo, which I've never seen another one of. The pinball game was actually pretty cool..."
Another example: "I had a built-in car phone for years after everyone else had handhelds, because I had $1,600 [invested] in that thing."
His most recent enthusiasm is for TiVo, which allows him to digitally record up to 30 hours of TV programming and watch it as his leisure (it also has nifty features like an 8-second replay button in case you miss a key part of a scene). "It's shocking to me that they've sold under 300,000 machines," Brent says. "If you took away my TiVo, I wouldn't watch TV at all. I just can't stand to watch television on somebody else's schedule now."
However, he allows that he's slowed his acquisition pace a little. "I'm trying not to increase the junk drawer any," he says. He does have one current lust object: "a high-speed satellite Internet connection for my boat. It's about $3,000 for the KVH automatic aiming dish and another $1,000 or so for the rest of the hardware. The main problem is that the only approved mobile application charges by the minute while a land-based connection to the same satellite is unlimited usage! The main issue is, can I make it work anyway?
"Those are big dice to roll," he concludes. "This is one where I'd like to be the second person to do it."
Zak: "I Have No Bone to Pick With Technology"
Then there's Zak. He's probably most like the average American. He's what I'd call a pragmatic adopter—he pays attention to emerging technologies, but he only puts money down when something compels him to.
"Here's the thing," he says. "What I like to do is hang around people who have a lot of technology."
When a friend brought an iPod digital music recorder and player to a poker game recently, Zak was suitably impressed. But not enough to actually buy one. For years, he had neither a stereo nor a VCR, because he always lived with roommates who owned them. "I'm a parasitic technologist," he says.
On the other hand, when he and his wife combined their household goods and realized neither of them had much by way of home entertainment equipment, they went out and bought the best thing they could find: a DVD player with surround-sound speakers. They're also digital cable subscribers.
He carries a cell phone because his boss wants to be able to track him down. He used to have just a digital pager, but "as my errands have advanced, my technology has advanced." (He's a partner in a local production company.)
"I think some things that come out are better," Zak says. "So I usually wait for a while to let the market determine which things those are. Or my friends. But I have no bone to pick with technology. DVD is a classic example of something that's just better."
On the other hand, he notes with some bemusement that his cousin just got an XM satellite radio receiver for his car. "That's a perfect example of something that doesn't disturb me nor do I have any particular desire for it," Zak says. "Eventually, the market will want so badly for me to have it that I will have it."
When will that be?
"When I buy my cousin's car."
February 21, 2002 * Vol. 12, No. 8
© 2002 Metro Pulse
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