Metaphors, Robots, and the Transfer of Computers to Civilian Life

"Diffusion is a kind of social change, defined as the process by which alteration occurs in the structure and function of a social system. When new ideas are invented, diffused, and are adopted or rejected, leading to certain consequences, social change occurs."

—Everett M. Rogers, Diffusion of Innovations

In Diffusion of Innovations, Everett Rogers defines diffusion as "the process by which an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time among the members of a social system" (Rogers, 1995, p. 10). This essay will explore the idea of a "communication channel" and examine, in particular, how metaphor serves as a language tool to help people understand a new technology in terms of something that is already known.

In the preface to the fourth edition of his book, Rogers discussed the proper application of a linear model of communication versus a convergence model. He described the linear model as a "one-way . . . process by which messages are transferred from a source to a receiver" and argued that this model was apt for "certain types of communication: many kinds of diffusion do indeed consist of one individual, such as a change agent, informing a potential adopter about a new idea." He contrasted that linear model to the convergence model, "a process in which the participants create and share information with one another to reach a mutual understanding." Rogers stated his intention in this fourth edition of showing how "improved understanding . . . can be achieved by conceptualizing certain kinds of diffusion in light of this convergence model" (1995, p. xvi). Since Rogers revised his views on communication and the diffusion of innovation, other researchers have extended their claims about the impacts of social forces on the development of technologies and technological systems. Pinch and Bijker (2001) argued, for example, that researchers can apply a social constructivist approach to study the development of innovations and technologies. Using this perspective, researchers can study how technologies and technological systems are shaped by their users, as well as their designers, through a series of decisions made to solve perceived problems and meet perceived needs.

Stephen Doheny-Farina looked specifically at the role of technical communicators as mediators in this social process through which innovators and users negotiate how a technology will be adopted—or whether it will not be adopted. He argued that technical communication was not so much a transfer of information as it was "a series of personal constructions and reconstructions of knowledge, expertise, and technologies by the participants attempting to adapt technological innovations for social uses" (Doheny-Farina, 1992, p. ix). This social-constructionist approach does introduce more complexity into situations in which information about new technologies is communicated from innovators to users. Instead of the one-way model of language as the (ideally) neutral conduit for transmitting information from a sender to a receiver, the social-constructionist model builds in a cybernetic feedback loop through which receivers can respond to the sender and the technological system can be adapted. In this model, too, language is ideally a neutral conduit for exchanging information between senders and receivers, in the positivist tradition of conceptualizing language as an inert medium for moving ideas from one place to another (Miller, 1979).

Language, however, can be seen as more than a neutral conduit for information that ideally does not alter the information as it moves from sender to receiver. Instead, language can be seen as an agent that impacts how people make meaning from a message within the social context surrounding the crafting of the message, its conveyance, and its receipt. When language is seen as a cultural agent in a communication situation, the words that a person chooses for the message, the medium through which it is delivered, and the social context in which it is sent by one person and received by another all combine to shape the meaning(s) made from the message (Longo, 1998, 2000). For example, social conventions and prior events will shape how an innovator chooses to "talk about" a new technology, and who is the first to learn about the technology. The people...