Manifesto of a Second Wave Adopter
May 11th, 2005
People who habitually are among the first to try new software and gadgets are often called “early adopters.” Installing Linux today–which I think of as a kind of geek chic thing to do–has prompted me to think about where I fit on the curve of new technology adopters.
By some measures (or from some perspectives), I may seem like an early adopter. I’ve actually kept a blog for about two years now, making me one of only a tiny handful of bloggers on Maryland’s campus (the only one among my business school colleagues, I think). Thus I was keeping a blog a good while before bloggers helped bring down Dan Rather, before MSN created its blogging features and before Business Week ran its cover story on blogging.
In addition to blogging, I often try devices that are somewhat out of the mainstream. Years ago I had a Newton personal digital assistant. More recently I’ve tried a Pocket PC, Tablet PC and Sony U ultra-portable PC. And now my main office computer is running Linux.
But for all that, I really don’t think of myself as an early adopter. I recoil from command lines and have never studied programming. I know how to use a few basic HTML tags, but the only thing I know about CSS is what it stands for. I haven’t gotten around to trying Skype yet (though I plan to soon). I know PHP and SQL are important to WordPress, but if they passed me on the street I wouldn’t recognize them. My poor blog doesn’t even have an RSS feed (does it?).
Thus I think it’s fair to say I live near the early adopter neighborhood, but not in it. I didn’t start my blog until Google had acquired Blogger. I may never have even seen a computer running Linux before today. Certainly I had never tried it. Yet Linux has been around for more than a decade.
Thus I’d call myself a “second wave adopter.” As a second wave adopter, I follow the vanguard at a safe, comfortable distance–I am not right on their heels, but I do keep them in sight. I’m ahead of the masses, but not by leagues.
People like me can be a transmission belt between the true early adopters (who follow closely behind the discoverers) and the teeming masses who may follow. There needs to be a little, a maybe a lot, of public validation of a concept before I try it, but frequently I will try it earlier than most folks. And when I like something, I tend to evangelize others about it. So, brother, have you heard about Linux?