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Internet: It's In There
There's a standard progression in technology adoption that's now
beginning to happen with Internet access.
There are four basic phases, look something like this.
The first phase is techies only. Here a technology or other innovation is brand new and
the only people who know about it or can use it are people with highly-developed technical
skills. Those don't have to be high-tech skills. Back around the turn of the century, it
was bicycle makers who were the techies figuring out how to get airplanes and automobiles
to work.
The next phase I call the "get out and get under" phase. That's named after a
popular song earlier in this century which pointed out that when you went for a drive, the
technology wasn't all that reliable and your car could break. That necessitated that you
"get out and get under." In this stage, the folks using a technology or
innovation have to be what I call technologically tolerant.
They don't have to be techies and know all of the inner workings or arcane secrets of the
technology, but they do have to be willing to poke around a bit and learn a little bit
about what goes on inside the black box.
That's the name for the next phase, the "black box" phase. In this phase folks
who use the technology don't have to know the inner workings at all. All they know is that
they push certain buttons in certain sequences, or hit the number four followed by the
pound key or something similar. That's about where we are with the Internet right about
now. The folks who use it don't have to understand the details of how it works, but they
do need to learn a little bit about what keys they need to press to make that puppy hum.
The final phase in a technology adoption is the "it's in there phase." In this
phase, the technology moves to be integrated and supporting part of other technologies.
That's already happened with computers. You've got computer chips in your microwave, your
automobile, even the locks in your hotel room.
That's also what's next for the Net.
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