The way you presented those statistics it gives the impression it's for the people who don't have internet access. In fact it's the opposite way round isn't it?

Sorry yes you are absolutely right (Still a big group though )

Well "die-hards" have never slowed down progress before (I have first-hand accounts of elderly people using gas-lighting into the 1970s!) so I see no reason why they should start now. The forces of progress tend to change employees by necessity. The tech-gap widens as age increases because those people don't need the new skills.

Whether it's wise to base an economy on service industries and technology is a related, although seperate issue. An economic model that makes us dependent on inports for essentials (leaving us at the mercy of unstable countries and rising economic powers) could give the neo-luddites the last laugh yet.

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by Byron
Well "die-hards" have never slowed down progress before (I have first-hand accounts of elderly people using gas-lighting into the 1970s!) so I see no reason why they should start now.

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Oh thats flawed logic if I ever heard it You presume that the "die-hards" have never slowed down progress yet the "die-hards" have always slowed progress down. Just because they have always done so the effects they have will be seen as the "normal" amount of resistance within the market it doesn't mean that they have no effect on developments.

As long as the group of die-hards is big enough this is going to have an impact on any business or government that wants to implement change in most likely a negative sense as the "environment" is deemed not to be "ready yet" while the technology is already there. The people that do want the product or services at that time are than normally called early-adopters, but just because the majority is "die-hard" at that time doesn't mean that they aren't die-hards

A very good example of a "die-hard" group stopping / lagging development of something is stem cell research. Although I'm not saying that all applications of stem cell research will be universally positive we should at least do the research and pick afterwards which applications we deem acceptable yet the die-hards seem to have a completely inverse logic and say the outcome could be bad therefor the research shouldn't be done.

If we look at for example internet banking we see similar things happening. There is a group of die-hards that isn't willing to use internet or telephone banking (textphone if you are deaf) this has an impact on all us internet bankers as we effectively pay for it. This additional cost that the banks incur because they have to keep a disproportionate amount of branches open and fully staffed. Because these branches need to be kept open it effectively slows down further digitalization on the customer end as why would I (as a bank) spend a lot of money in developing ways of digitalizing all my services (even the ones that aren't used too frequently) if I need to keep the branches open anyways and therefore cannot really take advantages of these investments.

Wouldn't it be fairer if I would get a higher interest rate if I only did internet / phone banking and if I wanted a particular service from the bank in person that is available online I would incur an additional charge for this service? Also shouldn't I pay less for my train ticket if I bought it from the machine instead of at the ticket office, as I receive a completely different service? If I buy my dvds online they are cheaper yet these type pricing systems aren't very popular is many other places (that deal with many (more or less) die-hards)

I agree that it is indeed questionable if moving an economy fully to an information based economy is a good thing as especially in times of instability this can be catastrophic. The whole putting your eggs in one basket thing but throughout history we have seen that specialization is almost endlessly more lucrative in stable environments, so maybe we are all a little bit die-hard at heart.

(Edited by Chambler 01/11/2006 15:27)

(Edited by Chambler 01/11/2006 15:29)

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by Chambler
(quotes)
Oh thats flawed logic if I ever heard it You presume that the "die-hards" have never slowed down progress yet the "die-hards" have always slowed progress down. Just because they have always done so the effects they have will be seen as the "normal" amount of resistance within the market it doesn't mean that they have no effect on developments.

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Nothing flawed about it. What effect did those gas light Cnuts have? The National Grid was built the moment it was technically feasible to do so and all their neighbours electrified their houses decades before they did. The Cnuts were left sitting in an island of very hot, very oxygen deprived stupidity.

To give a more modern example, DVD has spread in record time, as if the handful of VHS-or-nothing nutters don't exist. (Which, in statistical terms, they don't.)

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As long as the group of die-hards is big enough this is going to have an impact on any business or government ...

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Exactly, if they're big enough. The stats show that, where the economy needs tech-literacy, it's spreading. People learn to use a computer or don't get hired. The overwhelming majority will learn to use a computer.

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A very good example of a "die-hard" group stopping / lagging development of something is stem cell research. Although I'm not saying that all applications of stem cell research will be universally positive we should at least do the research and pick afterwards which applications we deem acceptable yet the die-hards seem to have a completely inverse logic and say the outcome could be bad therefor the research shouldn't be done.

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Now there's flawed logic for you! Stem cell research isn't running into trouble because people are "die-hards", it's running into trouble because a large chunk of the public have ethical objections. Not the same thing at all.

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If we look at for example internet banking we see similar things happening. There is a group of die-hards that isn't willing to use internet or telephone banking (textphone if you are deaf) this has an impact on all us internet bankers as we effectively pay for it. This additional cost that the banks incur because they have to keep a disproportionate amount of branches open and fully staffed. Because these branches need to be kept open it effectively slows down further digitalization on the customer end as why would I (as a bank) spend a lot of money in developing ways of digitalizing all my services (even the ones that aren't used too frequently) if I need to keep the branches open anyways and therefore cannot really take advantages of these investments.

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Yeah but banks will use any excuse. And lots of the people refusing aren't luddites; they have perfectly sound security concerns. You can bet that, when banks want everyone to use net banking, they'll simply make it the only option and those die hards will be forced into it by necessity.

Or put it this way: have the, oh, 2% of people without a TV made the slightest, slightest bit of difference to the technology's influence in society, or slowed its growth in any meaningful way?

(Edited by Byron 02/11/2006 00:40)

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by Byron
To give a more modern example, DVD has spread in record time, as if the handful of VHS-or-nothing nutters don't exist. (Which, in statistical terms, they don't.)

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However if you look at the underlaying players on the recording side up till pretty recently VHS is still king of the hill. Even with stuff like Sky+ TVdrive and all those harddisk recorders the concept hasn't really taken such a big flight as it has in other parts of the world (TiVo anyone?).

So really with dvd the one technology didn't really get swapped out for the other. People just had a toaster and now bought a toasty maker, yet most people keep using their toaster and not many people forked out for the toasty maker with defrost setting to completely get rid of their old toaster.

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Now there's flawed logic for you! Stem cell research isn't running into trouble because people are "die-hards", it's running into trouble because a large chunk of the public have ethical objections. Not the same thing at all.

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Have they got ethical objections to the actual research or to a small part of the possible repercussions of the research? Two completely different things and the first one sound a lot to me as "the human body cannot stand travel over 40mph - so we must not build trains that go faster than 40mph, btw my cows also give bad milk due to those darned trains". Personal I think that only a very (loud but) small group has actual objections to the research itself. Recent research showed that if you explain to people what researchers actually do without using the "taboo" words like cloning / stemcell etc a large majority has a positive attitude towards this research where they had a negative attitude towards it when they were asked if they were against cloning / stemcell research etc.

Okay I'll give you that this could also mean that the large group of interviewed people were morons. But if we just presume they are not thats classic die-hard behavior.

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And lots of the people refusing aren't luddites; they have perfectly sound security concerns.

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Perfectly sound? What makes them perfectly sound? Don't similar concerns apply to cash transactions? These security concerns in many cases are just based in "fear of the unknown". People just seem to prefer physical crime over a digital one. Banks still get robbed, old ladies that pick up their weeky pensions on friday in cash still get mugged these are also perfectly sound security concerns yet people are willing to accept those risks yet you hear nobody complain about those perfectly sound security risks, yet if it's a digital risk, which people are unfamiliar with, it all of a sudden become a major issue - how is that sound? Sounds more like uneducated and irrational to me.

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Or put it this way: have the, oh, 2% of people without a TV made the slightest, slightest bit of difference to the technology's influence in society, or slowed its growth in any meaningful way?

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Nope but the small group of people that have been clinging on to analogue for so long have as it effectively blocked the further development of HDTV and in lesser extent digital services (like VOD etc) as there was no space on the frequency band for those services as a small group of people still had to have the analogue services (which take up way more space). Luckily throughout Europe we are finally phasing out analogue ether broadcasts so we might be able to finally catch up on the rest of the world.