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3. Using QWERTY as an example, discuss the concept of nondiffusion. What are the types of socio-economic or cultural variables that can underpin nondiffusion? nner. NE O ribes nol ran veen pat- sky sive hey it. elp the 71. TO 25 19 0 C Afra new idea will be will therefore diffuse rapidly. Unfortunately, this is very seldom the case. Most innovations, in fact, diffuse at a surprisingly slow rate" (p. 7), as is illustrated in Box 6.1 with the example of the nondiffusion of the Dvorak keyboard. and that the innovation Box 6.1 Diffusion and Adoption of the QWERTY Keyboard Early theories of the diffusion and adoption of technologies focused on the charac- teristics of the technology itself as a means for understanding individuals willing- ness to embrace a tool. Many examples, however, have shown that the adoption process is neither linear nor unidirectional; instead, many social factors play a role in how technologies are diffused in society. An example of nondiffusion is the Dvorak keyboard. The standard keyboard, which most of us use several times daily. as the QWERTY keyboard, which was invented in 1873 and is named after the let- ters formed on the keyboard's upper left row. The main reason for introducing the QWERTY keyboard was to slow down typists. In the late eighteenth century, typewrit- es consisted of type bars that had to be stroked. When typists stroked two letters quickly, they would often get caught and the machine would require repair. To avoid the rapid typing and entangling of type bars, Christopher Latham Sholes designed a keyboard that positioned the letters in such a way that it was awkward to type the most frequently used sequences, thereby slowing down typists considerably while not diminishing the machine's performance. In 1932, August Dvorak, at the University of Washington, designed a keyboard that would speed up typing again. He created an arrangement in which the most frequently used letters-A, O, E, U, I, D, H, T, N, and S-were located across the top row of the typewriter. Moreover, the letters were arranged in such a way that the right hand, the stronger hand, would be performing more of the work, instead of the left hand which does most of the work on the QWERTY keyboard. The QWERTY keyboard also has a number of inefficiencies in addition to its slow speed, namely fatigue, higher error rate, and disorientation on the keyboard. Despite the many advantages of the Dvorak keyboard over the standard keyboard, however, it failed to diffuse in society, even though the American National Standards Institute and the Computer and Business Equipment Manufacturers Association approved it. The main reasons for the lack of diffusion seem to be associated with existing interests on the part of the manufacturers and the sales industry, as well as the habits of typists themselves of factors of "technical interrelatedness, economics of scale, and quasi-irreversibility (Diamond, 1997). As Paul David (1985) has noted, Dvorak lost out to QWERTY because of investment, which enabled QWERTY to become "locked-in" (p. 334). Source Reprinted with the permission of Free Press, a Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., from Diffusion of Innovations Seby Everett M. Rogers. Copyright 1995, 2003 by Everett M. Rogers. Copyright 1962, 1971, 1983, by Free Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved. Tab Pr