Evolution in the Adoption and Use of Collaborative Technologies

My goal in this position paper is to take a number of technologies I have been involved with as a starting point for some reflections on evolutionary patterns in the adoption and use of collaborative technologies. I put these two together because I believe that adoption and use must be seen as parts of the same process, and in fact that use can be seen as the continual re-adoption of technology and adaptation of technical systems to working practice. In a previous paper, Steve Harrison and I (1996) used the term “appropriation” to describe the co-adaptation of technologies and practices that characterises successful adoption experiences with collaborative technologies. Appropriation is what happens when a group “makes a technology its own”. This often takes the form of unexpected or unanticipated uses of technology, although it can also mean the development of novel practices organised around the specific opportunities offered by a technology. My goal here is to set out some common features of appropriation as a basis for design.