So, it having been yet another hellacious work week (don’t ask. I doubt I could tell you without turning the air blue and breaking any number of rules about good behavior. Besides, I’ll get them…), I’m sitting browsing idly and wondering what in heck to write about when this shows up on Facebook (thanks to Jeff Faria for posting it. I might have had to ramble aimlessly without this).
“This” being a neat chart showing technology adoption rates from 1920 through 1999. I’d love to see what the curve is like now…
And of course, I want to see a few more technologies listed.
Still, the ones that are covered are pretty interesting. Since the chart stops at 1999, the iPod and its clones don’t make it on. Neither do the smart phones, tablets, PDAs and eBook readers.
But – and the thing that stood out for me – with precious few exceptions every technology that’s going to stick around for a while saturates fast. TV started to take off in 1949. Within 10 years, more than 80% of American households had one. From 1923 to 1933 AM radio got into 70% of households. VCR (remember that?) went from maybe 5% to 0ver 80% between 1983 and 1993. Many of the newer technologies are getting to around 50% of homes within ten years of their first appearance despite there being so much more competition. The tracking starts with only one technology: telephones (phones are, interestingly enough, the big anomaly with a slow adoption curve and never getting saturated the way TV has). AM Radio shows up a couple of years later, then it’s nearly 25 years before the next entrant: TV in 1947. From then until 1980, all of three new major technologies got added: Color TV, FM Radio, and Cable TV. I’m not sure why cassette tapes didn’t make it into the listing, or vinyl records – or home stereo systems. Those all fall into that general time frame (at least I remember them being pretty much ubiquitous before 1980).
Then from 1980 on, the pace of tech exploded. In the next years a ridiculous amount of tech made its first appearance: VCR (now heading for genteel retirement), answering machines, cable TV, cordless phones, CD players, cell phones, camcorders, stereo TVs. It was a ridiculously fertile decade for home entertainment technology. The 90s introduced pagers, the internet (which is a category all to itself), and satellite TV. And of course (this lot is from my memory) the “noughties” saw MP3 players, smart phones, PDAs (introduced in the late 1990s, but never really took hold and now a dying breed), the first tablets, eink ebook readers and a bunch of other things.
What does this mean for writers? With ebook sales more than doubling each year for the past few, it says that ebooks are on the steep side of the adoption curve. They might not have saturated yet (which I figure is somewhere in the 80% range – where most average folks have them and only those in isolated areas and those who fight a new technology until they have no choice don’t use them), but they’re well on the way. The list of devices someone can use to read an ebook has to be getting close to saturation now, too. Where I work, most people have multiple ebook-reading devices: smart phones, tablets, laptops, and dedicated readers. Usually they can they can go online to tweet about whatever they’re doing without blinking – earlier today I was working on a problem with someone who had the latest iPad and was using it to remotely log into his laptop, which he used to go over some configuration things with me.
That’s right. The latest generation tablets will effortlessly handle a remote session on a full PC. Or Mac. Or whatever. Add that to cloud storage (for the not-geeky, that’s keeping a copy somewhere in the internet at large, which you synchronize across all your gadgets), and the writer need never be away from the current work in progress – or the research. Or the fancy mapmaking tool that lives on your home PC (although you might need to make a call to your nearest and dearest to turn it on if there’s been a power outage while you’ve been off gallivanting around). We are in the middle of the world’s largest and most comprehensive library all the time. (Of course, there’s always those who’ll vandalize the books or “edit” them to fit some hobby horse or other, but a smart person knows how to cross-reference and figure out what someone is trying to prove).
Of course, we’re also in the middle of the world’s largest distraction, as anyone who’s spent hours fiddling around on the internet knows very well. Managing that is possibly the biggest challenge writers face, not least because it includes pushy *ahem* eager fans who often don’t get that writing is work. After all, it’s kind of difficult to do the publicizing and marketing thing if you don’t ever get to writing anything. Not impossible: just look at politics. But difficult.
As for the future, well, barring disaster I think we’re going to see a lot more rapid technological changes. 3D printers (known to the SF world as fabricators or replicators – although the current versions aren’t quite that sophisticated) are rapidly approaching the point where they’ll be everyday items complete with the massive disruption that will come when anyone with one can make basic everyday equipment like plates, bowls, replacement parts, glasses and the like). Handheld computing devices are getting smarter and more powerful all the time, and always-available high speed connections are becoming the norm. I suspect that at least some of today’s ‘standards’ won’t last: cable TV mega-chains are fading in the face of internet TV and their on-demand services. Many people (me included) are avoiding broadcast and paper news in favor of a selection of sites that I browse daily. The only reason I’m not having my preferred items delivered to my inbox is I don’t like the interfaces available so far.
Landlines are going away. When everyone has a cell, why have a landline for telemarketers to harass you? We haven’t had a landline in… 8 years now, and we don’t miss it. When we initially dropped the landline hardly anyone went all cell. Now it’s the norm.
GPS-enabled everything is another change that’s if not on the way, already here. Heck you can buy watch-sized GPS systems optimized for city walking – or optimized for hiking. It won’t be long before a basic GPS system comes with practically everything, possibly with a discreet panic button that will ping the emergency systems with your location. Which of course brings some interesting questions about privacy into the mix.
Regardless, it’s going to be an interesting ride, and to judge by all those adoption curves, whatever happens is going to happen pretty bloody quickly. Me, I’ll be trying to surf the tsunami of change.
Mad Genius Club 
17 responses to “The Adoption Curve”
I spent part of my childhood living with no electricity, and I’d never touched a computer before 1994. Since then, my household has adopted to the point where we now have desktop computers, laptops, e-readers, and even my Dad just upgraded to a smartphone. I don’t know where we’re going, but I’m highly entertained by the ride. This morning I dissected a keyboard, prompted partly by a discussion on facebook last night about a washable keyboard (WANT!) I’m teaching my kids, by action and example, to not be afraid to push buttons and take stuff apart. I hope they will be able to surf the curve as it grows steeper, as I’m fairly sure at some point I’m going to fall down, unable to keep up with it all.
I never lived without electricity, but my first computer happened somewhere in the 1990s, too. I’m still working with an antique cell phone (mid 2000s vintage), and an early 2000s PDA. They work, I”ll get the next stage up when the current tech dies.
I vividly remember my father swearing up and down he wasn’t having anything to do with those newfangled ATM machines. Now he uses them all the time.
I think eventually most people end up using the core technologies, even if they hate it. Some just take longer to get there than others
I’ve only had a cellphone for maybe four years, and I still hate it, but I’m being forced to go all cell. Landlines are just too expensive now. I’ll adopt early if it’s a good and useful and cheap technology. (I wanted a home computer instantly, and I loved the Internet on first hearing about it.) I still don’t think cells are any of that, but they are now cheaper by default. Bah. More ways for drunk people to call me when the bars close, under the impression that my phone number is that of the girl they met that night.
The thing is, I find myself several generations behind everyone else. Texting (and IRC/IM chat, which I’ve always despised as being neither fast nor slow enough for comfortable conversation) are now obligatory for doing many things (or it’s the default way a corporation will communicate with you). Nobody will sit down and explain to you how to make your 10-number keyboard do text, or how to take pictures with your phone. They not only assume you know how, but that it’s intuitive. But it’s not. There are generations worth of assumptions.
But I have to learn this stuff for my new job, so I will. I’ve done weirder things for a paycheck, I guess.
I haven’t had a landline since I moved out when I graduated high school, of course at that time handheld cellphones weren’t available yet, and bag phones were uncommon with limited service. But a few years later as service became more widespread I did get one.
I don’t know that PDA’s didn’t take hold, they just got crossbred with cell phones and the resulting hybrid (smartphones like the Blackberry and iphone) became much more popular than either parent.
Interesting point – although I’ve never seen the smartphone setup that’s as convenient as my PDA. Maybe I just got a good PDA 🙂
I hate cell phones. I hate smart phones with a passion. I will charge my android before taking a long drive. Otherwise it can just sit in the desk drawer. Dead. Dead. Dead!
Yes, I am a late adapter of tech. How did you figure that out?
Heh. I’d be an early adopter for everything if I had the budget for it. As is, I pick and choose.
Landlines will survive as emergency back ups. I’ve been in situations where landline was the only phone line working because of very, very large and long-lasting power outages (four days at best and in some cases six weeks) and tower destruction (ice). Granted, landline phones will be less common, but they will not completely vanish.
There is an iPhone that is a touch-screen PDA with no phone component. My Mom got one, since her old PDA is about to die the death of battery failure.
Good point about the landlines – although there are interesting recharge options, and I can see satellite options getting added on to cell phones sooner or later. (At which point, even if you’re on top of Everest, your boss can still call to ask about some critical project or other. Um. Maybe not such a good idea).
I got a replacement battery for my PDA on ebay – it’s been fantastic. I think the entire device is on its way out, as is my poor, elderly cell phone (old enough that it looks chunky beside the smart phones).
I’ve got most of my essentials synched to my Kindle Fire now, so hopefully the final changeover won’t be too painful when it happens. I’ll still miss the PDA, though. The old Sony Clie was a sweet device.
Just a minor quibble, but why the heck is called an iphone, if it isn’t a phone?
It is part of the iThing series, and apparently no one felt the need to give it a special designation. iPad is taken, iNotebook doesn’t really work, iGizmo? iNotphone?
Are we talking about the iPod Touch? I have one, and people are constantly telling me I should get an iPhone, but I don’t really want the phone features, I already have a cell phone.
I have to admit, I like iThing.
Ooh, iThing! But how do you see the screen through all that hair? No, that would be iCousin It, or maybe just iIt? iThing, uThing, we all Thing…
Be interesting to see a version of that adoption curve comparing different bestselling books. Be interesting to see if they all started fast or whether some had a slow burn first.
It would, yes. I suspect the ones with staying power had the slower build where the manufactured flash-in-the-pan bestsellers would be quick fuse followed by a slow and painful death.
I grew up in the computer age, so I’ve been involved with them since I was probably 10 years old. My first computer was a Texas Instruments TI-994A and I learned to program in BASIC language on it. And played a lot of games on it too. My best friend’s family had a Commodore 64 and we played around with that a lot too. Later, my paents bought an Apple Macintosh and it really revolutionized the home computer experience with pull down and pop up menus instead of DOS commands. While I do love all the things you can do with the technlogy, I feel that they should be a means to make our lives easier, and more organized, not more distracted. However, i am as much to blame as anyone for spending inordinate amounts of time online looking at the endless stream of information and not getting anything productive done. Technology has increased our ability to connect and socialize with each other in ways that we could never have imagined 20 years ago.