I quite agree with what David has the mentioned about Technology adoption model.
It reminds me of what I have learned in high school.
Rooted from Marxism’s dialectical materialism theory, Chairman Mao pointed out in the Red Army begin the famous 25,000 kilometers the Long March, that the development of revolution is an combination processs of wave style advancing and spirally rising. In my opinion, there is a cycle preocess which embodies three of the stages of david Liddle’s Technology Aoption Model in three different proportions. What’s more, the circle is just cast shadow of a 3-D curve structure. And the technology adoption model, it is an spiral curve structure around a time axis . It is similar with the spiral stair case, around an axis.
time shaft, every single spot of this curve contains different percentage of people who are enthusiast, who are professional , and consumers respectively. Actually, within a human body, all these three aspects also exist at the same time. Sometime, our passionate simply focus on how the technology artifact looks like, how we feel about it; we are crazy about the technology artifact and even don’t know why; Sometime, we excited about the advance skills we got from it; and sometime we know it is an inseparable part in our everyday lives. I can’t tell which comes first and which comes next, but I know they twist together.
Also , I agree with what David Royer mentioned:”
The teenage girls buy iPhones, not because they are interested in the revolutionary UI or any of the technology itself, but because it’s a status symbol that says something about who they are.
In Maslow’s Need Hierarchy Theory, the needs for esteem and social respect , and technology artifact quite meet human’s requirement about their own status symbol rather than really indulging in the benefit and joy from technology. I don’t know if iPhone is a good mobile phone concerning voice quality, but it do has fantastic interface in both of appearance and operation.
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You know, I have been teaching at the university level for about 10 years, in Comparative Literature and Informatics, and Marxism has come up many times, but this is the first time anyone has ever brought up the writings of Mao!
I think your connecting the historical process of the adoption of technology to Marx’s “dialectical materialism” is very interesting. I am curious what you will think of Manovich’s concept of “digital materialism,” which Christian Briggs will talk about on Thursday. I assure you Manovich is referencing Marxist theory when he uses this term–“digital materialism”–but at the same time he is not exactly a Marxist, either. I would say, rather, that Manovich is informed by Marxism, but develops his theory in different directions. (Actually, I would say Manovich is most closely aligned with the structuralist/post-structuralist tradition.)
Though I think Marxist critique is very important in cultural studies (e.g., Walter Benjamin, early feminism, and Frederic Jameson), I decided not to focus on it in this class to ensure that people had sufficient time to learn and practice phenomenology and structuralism. However, if you are interested in exploring these ideas further, either on this blog or for your paper, I will be happy to talk to you about it.