The Communication of Innovation

The need for Internet access multiplies along with obstacles

By Everett M. Rogers
Special to CNN Interactive


Cybercafes, like this one in Beijing, allow people who don't own a computer to access the internet

(CNN) -- Interactive communication technologies like the Internet were developed in the United States and other industrialized nations and spread rapidly during the 1990s in North America and Europe.

The rate of adoption of the Internet and the World Wide Web in these settings, in fact, may represent the fastest rate of adoption of any innovation in the history of humankind. Why did such a rapid rate of diffusion occur?

The perceived attributes of the innovation are that it has considerable relative advantage over the communication channels that it replaces. The Internet is cheaper (often free to the user) and faster and better, compared to the telephone, postal letters, or telegrams.

The Internet is also compatible with most people's previous experience with writing letters or telegrams or fax letters. Using the Internet is not particularly complex, if a person already has access to a computer, modem and telephone line.

Critical mass

Over time, the rate of adoption formed the familiar S-shaped curve that characterizes the diffusion of most innovations.


Project leader Frank Heart and team members in front of one of the minicomputers that made up ARPANET, the precursor to the internet

It started with a small number of new users each year in the 1970s and 1980s (the first computer networking system, ARPANET, began in 1969 and evolved into today's Internet). Then, about 1989, the rate of adoption of the Internet began to accelerate and to pass the "critical mass."

This means there were an adequate number of adopters for further diffusion to become self-sustaining, as an increasing number of millions of new users adopted the Internet each month and year.

With each new adopter, the Internet became more useful to every other individual (because the Internet is an interactive innovation, a means to connect individuals who want to communicate).

Once a minimum number of adopters had occurred, say some 15 or 20 percent of your friends and acquaintances, you decided that "everybody's doing it," and you decided to adopt too.

Why was there a 20-year delay before the critical mass occurred for the Internet? By that time (1989), in nations such as the United States, some 35 percent of households had personal computers, and many others had access to computers at work.

The World Wide Web greatly accelerated the rate of adoption. Once an increasing number of pages of information on almost any topic became available on the WWW, many people obtained an Internet account so that they could access this rich storehouse of information. In the late 1990s the Internet became used increasingly for business purposes, further speeding up the rate of adoption.

Digital divide


In India, a software company built this internet kiosk to see how fast children could learn to use the internet. Within minutes they were surfing the web

The diffusion process for the Internet in many developing nations in Latin America, Africa and Asia may today be similar to that in the United States in 1989. But the prospects for rapid diffusion in the decade ahead may be quite different from what occurred in the United States in the 1990s, because the socioeconomic conditions are so different.

Much of the infrastructure for the rapid diffusion of the Internet in the United States is not found in a village in India, for example. A village may not have central station electricity or telephone service, and no one in the village is wealthy enough to own a computer.

Given these conditions, the Internet has mainly diffused in urban areas among relatively wealthy, educated people. They may not be small in numbers in a huge nation such as India and China, where more than 2 billion of the world's 6 billion people reside.

For example, some 100 million Indians are urban, middle class people who are today adopting the Internet, watching television, and living a communication lifestyle not unlike the ones North Americans and Europeans enjoy. But the digital divide between the elite and the mass of population, who may constitute some 70 percent of India's 1 billion people, is widening.

Villagers and urban poor in countries such as India have the gravest problems of poor health, low education, and limited economic conditions, and most need the information resources that can be provided by the WWW and the Internet.

Pent-up need


A man dictates an email for his son to a telecenter operator in Bangladesh

In very recent years, in countries such as Bangladesh, India and others of the developing world, a variety of government programs and private enterprises have begun to provide Internet access to villagers and urban poor through community-access computers.

The access sites may be a village telecenter -- a small room equipped with a long distance telephone or a wireless telephone and a computer with modem.

One person staffs the telecenter and charges a small fee per hour of use for the computer, fax, and long distance telephone service. A state or national government may provide the equipment, and a discounted use rate to the operator, who earns enough per year to support his/her family.

Sometimes the computer and other electronic equipment are privately owned. These enterprises often are called "cyber cafes," and they may sell coffee, tea and snacks, along with Internet access. Such cyber cafes are everywhere in urban India today, having diffused in the past several years.

The rate of use of the telecenters and the cyber cafes is surprising. Many people use them for business. The experience to date with telecenters and cyber cafes suggests that a considerable pent-up need exists for Internet access among the rural and urban poor in developing nations.

Everett M. Rogers, Ph.D., is regents professor of communication and journalism at the University of New Mexico. He is an authority on health communication and is published extensively. He has served as a consultant to several national and international organizations, among them the World Bank and the National Dairy Development Board of India. From 1985 to 1993 he was Walter H. Annenberg professor of communication at the University of Southern California. From 1975 to 1985 he was the Janet M. Peck professor of international communication at Stanford University, where he was also the co-principal investigator in the Institute for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Research. He also has taught at the University of Michigan, Michigan State University, the University of Colombia and Ohio State University.

The Communication of Innovation

The need for Internet access multiplies along with obstacles

Critical mass

Digital divide

Pent-up need

Further reading