Diffusion of Innovations

       

    When I was young, my parents owned flip phones, and I always used the landline to call my friends from school. I always thought phones were a neat invention and an efficient way to relay information quickly. What ended the era of flip phones was the invention of smart phones. Now this really piqued my interest - not only can we now use facetime and social media, but we can use the internet on our phones, as well. So many people bought into this idea because everything was conveniently accessible. 

    Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple, originally had the intention to make a "super slick" phone that was comfortable to hold and was reliable for calls. 

    For the smart phone, I was technically in the late majority group of this invention because one, I was very young and I was not allowed to get a phone until I was 13, and two, they were quite expensive compared to the normal phone. I really wanted one because I believed they were super cool and could do many things that would be useful for people, such as GPS, and looking up things quickly. Mentally, I was an early adopter, but I just was not able to to act on it. 

    The smartphone became so popular once people saw other people have it who loved the convenience of everything it offered. To put it simply, smart phones simply were too good not to have. If you did not have one, you were considered "not cool" or "stuck in the past", so people wanted to feel included and not miss out on the fun, plus have the benefit of all the cool perks that smart phones offered. This is why many early adopters took advantage of the smart phone early on, which opened the door for late adopters. 

    When the smart phone craze started, my parents were skeptical and kind of like "old heads" when it came to them; they held off on getting them for quite a while. My parents were late adopters because there is a huge risk of invasion of privacy, such as data and information about you being sold to companies all over the world, not to mention the many hackings that take place that take advantage of you through your personal information. These are serious risks that people take in order to have life be more convenient. Many people are not willing to gambit that freedom in exchange for the benefits of smart phones, which is why laggards exist. 

    Overall, I think the positives outweigh the negatives. The world is developing online at an exponentially fast rate, and to get a head start on success in my young age, I would be stupid to lag behind just for a little privacy. While the risk is always there, there are many ways to minimize that risk, such as only working on secure Wi-Fi networks, and using VPNs to encrypt your personal information. By having a smart phone, the world opens up way wider than it would by not having one.