In “Accepting or Rejecting Innovation”, Jared Diamond explains three reasons why people adopt technological innovations. The first factor is the comparison of the economic advantage with existing technology. Wheels are known to be useful in modern industrial societies, but in other societies, they may not have been. Native Americans in ancient Mexico used wheeled vehicles as toys instead of using them for transportation because of the lack of domestic animals at the time, which did not offer any benefits over human transporters. The second factor is if the innovation has social value and prestige to the culture. Millions of people purchase more expensive designer priced jeans that are equally durable as generic jeans because of the stature of designer brands.
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The last factor is compatibility with vested interests. In 1873, the QWERTY keyboard was created to force typists to type as slowly as possible because the typewriters would jam if adjacent keys were stuck in quick succession. When improvements in typewriters eliminated the problem, people created an efficient keyboard that would double the typing speed and reduce typing efforts by 95 percent. However, people did not want a new, efficient keyboard because they were used to the QWERTY keyboards. Similarly, Japan dominates the world market for electric consumer products to the point that it is damaging to the United States’ economy because the Japanese company, Sony, bought transistor licensing rights from the American company, Western Electric. It was at the time when the American electronics consumer industry couldn’t compete with its own
The last factor is compatibility with vested interests. In 1873, the QWERTY keyboard was created to force typists to type as slowly as possible because the typewriters would jam if adjacent keys were stuck in quick succession. When improvements in typewriters eliminated the problem, people created an efficient keyboard that would double the typing speed and reduce typing efforts by 95 percent. However, people did not want a new, efficient keyboard because they were used to the QWERTY keyboards. Similarly, Japan dominates the world market for electric consumer products to the point that it is damaging to the United States’ economy because the Japanese company, Sony, bought transistor licensing rights from the American company, Western Electric. It was at the time when the American electronics consumer industry couldn’t compete with its own