Internet Enabled Personal Choice - The Culmination of Domesticated Information and Communication Technologies

This report seeks to extend and apply the conceptual framework about the domestication of information and communication technologies. The domestication framework understands the adoption of technologies as a feedback process that converts technology artifacts from cold, lifeless tools to comfortable and useful consumer goods. This framework has been successful in helping us understand the adoption of past information and communication technologies, represented by physical and shared household appliances. We will illustrate how changing technology and business trends have posed challenges to the existing domestication framework and require a change in focus. At the same time, key aspects of the domestication framework remain helpful in understanding the adoption or rejection of technologies. We will extend the domestication framework to allow it to transcend the changing nature of technologies and consumers. We will then demonstrate the value of the extended framework by using it to project future technology-consumer trends and to identify innovation opportunities. The key result from our analysis is that the predominant technology-consumer relationship in the foreseeable future would involve Internet and other multi-directional networked technologies interacting with individual consumers. This interaction enables an ecosystem of technologies and allows consumers to directly participate in technology creation. Domesticated technologies would become more than just meaningful; they also become a part of who we are.