What is Adoption Process of New Technologies

This chapter deals with the adoption of mobile technology. The case illustrated here is the implementation of mobile and wireless technology – MIT and smartphones – at an energy utility. The objective was to understand the human and social aspects of the adoption of this technology. This paper makes use of the metaphor of hospitality proposed by Ciborra in the late 1990s. The hospitality metaphor was a useful alternative for describing the process of adopting a new technology. It touches on technical aspects and notes human reactions that become evident when a technician comes across an unknown ‘guest’, the new technology: the doubtful character of the guest, the reinterpretation of the identities of guest and host during the process, learning through trial and error, the technology’s ‘drift’, the participants’ emotions and state of mind, and the appropriation of, and the care for, the new technology.