http://penn2012.thatcamp.org/03/20/how-individuals-react-towards-technology/ The Humanities and Technology Camp Thu, 25 Oct 2012 00:53:35 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.12 http://penn2012.thatcamp.org/03/20/how-individuals-react-towards-technology/#comment-557 Tue, 24 Apr 2012 17:22:13 +0000 http://penn2012.thatcamp.org/?p=387#comment-557 There’s some literature in science and technology studies on non-users of technologies, particularly in the book How Users Matter. You might also want to look at Nathan Ensmenger’s chapter “Resistance is Futile? Reluctant and Selective Users of the Internet” in The Commercialization of the Internet and Its Impact on American Business. And David Edgerton’s Shock of the Old is a wonderful study of the continued use of old technologies that challenges the assumption that not using new technologies is necessarily an act of resistance; often, there are existing tools that are good enough. Indeed, I think histories of marketing suggest that demand for new inventions generally has to be created. All of which is to say that people’s decision not to adopt a new technology is often not a decision at all, while the decision to adopt technology generally does require an explanation.

]]>