| Chapter 1: | Converting Consumers: The Conceptual Dependence of Controversial Artifacts |
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Basalla does not explore why old components become incorporated into new artifacts, but he does attribute selection decisions to “selecting agents,” those “productive individuals capable of making the choices and changes needed to shape the material world as they see fit.”12 For instance, he attributes the diffusion of the gasoline automobile to a group of U.S. Midwesterners who saw an opportunity to exploit their region’s natural and industrial resources. The Midwest was rich in hardwood. It was the nation’s center for carriage and wagon production, with an infrastructure ready to build the body of the motorcar. It was also home to companies with experience manufacturing stationary gasoline engines. These resources put the Midwest at a competitive advantage for gasoline car production.
Thus selectors, such as these Midwestern businessmen, are an enterprising group with the independence to choose which artifacts are to be mass-produced. Basalla suggests that any artifact could be widely distributed through the sponsorship of this select group:
While Basalla touches on how decisions are made by a select few, it is not clear how or why others would follow their lead. Why would the rest of society accept and even purchase an artifact that a select few have decided to replicate and diffuse?