A rchive Date
[ 03-04-2004 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Mass Media ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Columnists/London/Nicole_Langlois/2004/04/03/406906.html
Bringing up the rear of the techno-pack
NICOLE LANGLOIS, For the London Free Press
2004-04-03
When it comes to new technologies, I opt for a wait-and-see approach. Rather than spend money on novelty gadgets that carry a hefty price tag, I let time and the techno-geeks filter out the technologies that will be lasting and ultimately necessary to my life.
Sometimes that means I never quite take the plunge into the mainstream.
This week, for instance, I was struck by a friend's remark that with DVD players becoming standard items in North American households, the VHS video format will soon be eclipsed altogether and movies will be released only as DVDs.
A bit of research proved he's right. According to a 2003 Associated Press report, DVD players have set an all-time record for the rate at which they've been adopted by consumers: the pace has been 10 times faster than that of CD players, and four times as fast as VCRs.
Once considered luxury items, many DVD models now sell for less than $100, a tenfold reduction from when they first entered the market just over seven years ago.
It's not hard to see that the VCR is going the way of Beta, the eight-track tape player and the dodo.
Having never purchased a television, let alone a VCR, I admit it felt strange to realize that one of the most ubiquitous technologies of the last 25 or more years had come and gone without my participation.
"So glad I didn't spend the money on that one," I've been crowing inwardly. No television or VCR has ever cluttered my personal living space, and now, unlike most of my friends who've replaced VCRs with DVD players, I don't have the guilt of tossing out a useless box of black plastic and metal.
In the world of sociology, and its capitalistic counterpart known as marketing, there's a name for people like me. I'm a Laggard.
While reading Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point recently, I discovered that sociologists first coined the term "diffusion model" in the 1930s to describe how an idea, product or innovation moves through a population. How people respond to new things determines their place in one of five categories.
Innovators are considered the gatekeepers of any new technology. They're the adventurous ones, people who love technology for its own sake, and will spend hours trying to figure out how something works.
Early Adopters are a slightly larger group, the opinion leaders in the community, who often have close ties with the techie Innovators, and love to match new technologies with strategic opportunities.
The mainstream is divided into the Early Majority and the Late Majority. To varying degrees, both groups are skeptical, risk-averse, fearful of new technologies and prudent.
Then there are the Laggards. We are the naysayers, the refuseniks, the people who are quite satisfied with what already is, thank you, and don't feel any urgent need for devices to help us manage our time (personal digital assistants), allow us to send e-mails while walking down the street (Palm Pilots), or receive calls while dining with friends at a restaurant (yes, I'm a holdout on cellphones too).
The Canadian Oxford Dictionary defines a laggard as "a dawdler; a person who lags behind."
This, to me, presents a beautiful image: far off in the distance, vast hordes rush down a road toward some unknown future, while we Laggards ramble through the daisies as we bring up the rear.
There was a time when scientists promised that technology would make us more productive, more efficient - in other words, we would have to work less. With a shortened work week, what would we do with all that leisure time?
But the promise of technology remains unfulfilled. We are certainly more productive, yet the time we might have freed up goes back into generating more - more, better, faster products and services that will make higher profits for corporations, and higher salaries for individuals.
Those higher salaries are necessary, of course, to pay for the labour-saving and entertaining devices we've come to see as essential.
I'm not sorry that I missed out on the VCR, and I don't see myself rushing off to buy a DVD player any time soon.
It's a bit lonely in the rearguard sometimes, but there's more silence to hear myself think, and the views - of all life's dramas, mysteries, comedies and action - are unbeatable.
Nicole Langlois is a freelance writer based in Embro. Her column appears Saturdays. Home Page]
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