Change affects everyone. Change in technology is always a scary thing. The more it changes the more we must change. I think that the biggest factor to a fear of technology is not only becoming obsolete, but a change in comfort level.
First let's talk about being obsolete. This is a factor for going with the changes. Everyone fears never being needed anymore. Jobs change as technology changes. People feel like they must change with the job so that they don't become obsolete because they do not know the knew technology.
The new technology is always replaced by the newest trends. New becomes old really fast. It is only when we change that we ourselves do not become obsolete.
However, this change always brings a fear of a change in comfort level. For instance, I heard someone once say that as a loyal Blackberry user, he or she was not fond of the idea (at first) of switching to an iPhone because of the changes that he or she would have to undertake. It takes more time, learning, skill and patience.
People resist change because the technology does not fit within their comfort level.
I think another thing that leads to resistance to change is that there are many jobs that for a long time never used technology. Think about teaching, I recall when the most technology in a room was on overhead projector, and now all classrooms have computers and internet. Or healthcare, where I worked was an older hospital that was never designed to support the IT systems it currently has. I agree, there are people who have been doing their job for a long time and now have a computer (or now a smart phone) thrown in front of them and it has really upset their comfort level.
ReplyDeleteAnother thought is that for all our talk about making technology fit with people, sometimes processes have to be redesigned. People spend decades of their life learning and perfecting a process, only to have someone come in and increase potential productivity by switching everything around. It eliminates many of the benefits of their experience, resets the learning curve if you will. Everyone is back to their first day of work.
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