| Chapter 1: | Converting Consumers: The Conceptual Dependence of Controversial Artifacts |
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Little work has been done to explicate the motivational factors of agency, particularly in cases where an artifact initially deemed ineffective or superfluous becomes an everyday necessity, such as the automobile at the turn of the twentieth century. Farmers saw it as a “devil wagon” but later adopted it for use as an allaround device and power source.1 What makes a social group change its position about a particular artifact? How did the devil wagon overcome its notoriety to become a prosaic mainstream device?
These questions direct the research in this book. While they may have been asked before, my intent is to show a different approach to the problem of newness. Preexisting practices and work routines used as explanatory devices have something interesting to say about diffusion strategies and localization measures.
Artifacts
The general public perception of a new technology as the product of a few geniuses has been questioned by researchers such as George Basalla, who prefers a Darwinian worldview to explain technological change. According to Basalla in The Evolution of Technology, “Novel artifacts can only arise from antecedent artifacts […] new kinds of made things are never pure creations of theory, ingenuity, or fancy.”2 Technological change in this model may be profoundly constrained by the past.