Rogers' Diffusion of Innovations

Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovation skills is remarkably interesting to me, I have never seen anything like it before. At first it can look very confusing, but once you learn the terminology and understand the method it will completely make sense. It is a smart way to think of ideas and inventions and can be used on anything to help the human brain understand further in an easier way.

The Email was created in Newark, NJ in 1978. There can be a lot to talk about when you look at the invention of email through the lens of diffusion theory. The diffusion theory has many distinct levels to them. There are the Pioneers, early adopters, early/late majority, laggards, and long tails. So, while thinking about this for the invention of the email it can be looked at in many ways.  

The pioneer(s) would be Shiva Ayyadurai because he was the first person to invent the technology and had the first patent for the “Email”. The early adapters would be the first people to have tried it and who really enjoyed it, the ones who understood the point behind it. The early majority would be younger people and people who needed to communicate more easily. The late majority are older people who were not used to this form of communication and who prefer the method they have known while they were growing up for years. The laggards, these are the last people who will get on the train for whatever the invention it is. In this scenario the laggards would be much older people who never wanted to join but were forced through families' members or the technology being so strong that they needed it for some reason. The last category to this is the long tails, while rare these are the people who never end up starting to use email. These will be the people who are totally against it and feel that it is not needed in their lives. In the article I read it states that 15-16% of doctors still do not use email. This is crazy to me because emailing just seems so easy and a fast way to get news sent out, but these people just think differently. 

Email has because such a huge thing because it is cheap, fast, and easier way to communicate. People have become early adopters when the invention of email came out because it was an innovative idea that struck society, it was the “cool new thing”. Although there are some downsides like the carbon footprint it leaves behind, the miscommunication, and life/work balance I think the positives can outweigh the negatives. I think that these positives outweigh the negatives because this form of communication has changed the world over the past four decades. Emailing has because a consistent and necessary form of communication in places of work. In the article about email statistics, it states that there are 4.258 billion active email users today and there are about 7.9 billion email accounts worldwide. With this it is 89.45% of Americans over the age of 15 use email, this can really put into perspective how many people use email and how useful it is.   

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