I'm on the (Diffusion of Innovations) Curve

For some time now, I've found myself oscillating between the identity of an early majority adopter and a late majority adopter of emergent technologies, as defined by Everett Rogers' Diffusion of Innovations theory. I've never been a laggard, perhaps due to my generational status as millennial, but rarely if ever am I an early adopter of new technology. My relationship with each of Rogers' categories bears scrutiny in order for me to explain who I am when faced with emergent technologies.

As a child of the 90s, I grew up during the technological and information boom of the 2000s. I remember my family cycling through computer after computer, from Windows 2000s to XP and then Vista. I was always so excited to see the new operating system roll out, and soaked up every chance I had to familiarize myself with its new features and design improvements.

That said, my family always bought older model computers, or received hand-me-downs from schools or libraries, so I never had the newest tech at the tip of my fingers. My first experience owning a flip phone happened two years after the first iPhone was released. Once I finally acquired my first iPhone in college, it was a hand-me-down iPhone 5C; the next, an iPhone SE (both reskinned versions of older iPhones offered as discounted new 'models').

I relay this timeline to illustrate that I was a child in a late majority household, longing for the early adopter experience. My outlet became adoption of new social media; I looked forward to Facebook interface updates, and was eager to set up profiles on new platforms.

After college, though, the novelty of social media platforms began to fade, and my desire to stay on the cutting edge of technology diminished as well. My current MacBook, Apple Watch, and iPhone are all several years old, but I haven't been interested in updating them since, despite the allure of new features on the most recent models. I still choose Microsoft Word and PowerPoint over Google Docs and Slides; I am no longer eager to download the beta release of Apple's next big iOS or OS launch. 

My shift to a late majority adopter as a young adult came about for a few reasons. For one, despite the desperate and exaggerated advertising campaigns of companies like Apple, the general differences across model years are negligible. Additionally, at this time I can't be bothered to shell out $1k again for a new phone, or endure the cumbersome experience of trading in devices with my mobile carrier in exchange for another contract sentence. Why? Because I don't find my devices lacking. They do what I need, and more, and are still incredible pieces of modern tech. 

An attitude like mine is a problem for tech companies. They must walk a fine line between the profit of planned obsolescence, and the (justified) frustration of customers blocked by superficial paywalls. As a result, many companies have figured out how to keep people like me enticed and engaged: through free updates to purchased tech. Udell and Woodill describe in their 2019 book Shock of the New how new products "are released with the ability to add new capabilities through software and firmware updates even after they launch." Combine this feature with automatic updates and 'what's new' notifications, and I can be hand-fed technological advancements at no cost and with no extra effort on my end. Now that's advertisement!

However, these companies sometimes fly too close to the sun, and their failures can have long term attitudinal effects on consumers. For instance, bungled and failed attempts at new platforms like Google+ and products like Google Glass make me wary of the lofty promises of groundbreaking technology, which often prove too good to be true. I put this wariness into practice in my current position at Eller. 

As an instructional designer, I perceive my late majority adopter mindset as beneficial rather than as a detriment, because it has helped me 'safeguard' our students against overadventuresome instructors who see new tech as a way to enhance their courses. Throughout the M.Ed. program at ASU, we have been taught over and over to design for the content and the learner, not for the shiny new piece of technology; but, the allure of emergent tech can make it easy for instructors to forget this crucial component of online course design. 

A good example, of course, is the emergence of generative AI. We are already having to push back against instructors who want to allow the use of ChatGPT in writing assignments, with the feeble justification that students will have to cite its usage. Designing instruction like this is careless and lazy — it's just enabling the atrophy of basic thinking skills in the name of apathetic course-building. But, there are other ways AI can be taught more carefully and responsibly, and employing a cautionary approach rather than jumping in headfirst does better justice for (and is less insulting to) the students who have paid thousands of dollars to take our courses. 

That said, as I progress through this M.Ed. program, I am finding myself easing back into the early majority mindset. I am eager once more to experiment with new technologies, to throw myself into a new software and play around with it, and to think about ways my personal upskilling can be of benefit for my team. 

For instance, while digging around in Adobe Premiere for the first time, I taught myself how to download a piece of media's auto transcription, clean it, reupload it, convert it to captioning, and then download the captioning as an SRT file — a process that up until this point my team had been outsourcing at a price to another company. Since our team has access to the Adobe suite through the University of Arizona, we can now take care of this process for free. 

Discoveries like this are gratifying for me, and help bolster my confidence both as a productive member of my team and as a budding instructional designer. As I conclude this post, I am realizing that my oscillation between an early and late majority adopter mindset depends on who is benefiting from my use of the technology. When it's backend tech that benefits myself and my team, I am happy to try my hand at deploying tech as an early majority adopter; when it's frontend tech that benefits our learners, I intentionally embrace a cautionary late-majority adopter mindset to ensure our students are provided with a deliberately implemented, content-centered learning experience.

References

Udell, C., & Woodill, G. (2019). Shock of the new: The challenge and promise of emerging technologies. American Society for Training and Development.