Abstract
Technology is innate to modern society and primarily embodies human intellect. It greatly influences development, societal functioning, and sociotechnical transitions. Rapid technological advancements, made possible with advancement in science, human ingenuity, and competitive markets, provide human society with affordable and unlimited choice. A society can be viewed, with an individual as the fundamental unit, or as a community, or state/nation. In one view, sustainability can be viewed through a matrix of societal, economic, and environmental configurations associated with the three societal levels. Technological advancement and complexity can either remain simple and amenable to the user or, as emerging in recent years, may daunt the user to keep away. While the phenomenon of technology adoption (acceptance) in society has been well appreciated, the increasingly characteristic phenomenon of technology rejection is yet to be understood and studied. Technology rejection is not merely a negation of its acceptance, and hence requires to be discerned carefully. Rejection also does not imply in its totality, but varies in terms of its kind and/or intensiveness. While rejection is discernable at all these three levels of society, this study remains focused at the level of the user (individual). It attempts to discern rejection of technology and discusses its distinctness from technology acceptance through an exhaustive literature study. The article initially discusses the technology–society nexus and provides a preliminary technology–user interface model leading to a detailed discussion into the determinants of technology rejection.
Highlights
Technology fundamentally serves to expand and enhance human capabilities and conveniences, while sociology studies society
The objective of this study is to explore the phenomenon of technology rejection occurring within the relationship between society and technology
While this study looks at the rejection of technology at the users’ scale, it is important to note that technology rejection, though eventually discernable at the individual scale, can be effected or imposed by the state
Summary
Technology fundamentally serves to expand and enhance human capabilities and conveniences, while sociology studies society. An understanding of the complex relationship between user and technology is important, both from sociology and technology points of view Within this branch of research is the investigation into rejection of technology. A fundamental question is whether the field of technology rejection requires investigation at all, considering the wealth of research available in technology adoption. Numerous iterative models (Technology Acceptance Models 1, 2, and 3) have evolved over time to explore how users have accepted IT (Venkatesh & Davis, 2000; Venkatesh, Morris, Davis, & Davis, 2003) These theories focus on factors that support acceptance of technology and innovation (Aversano, 2005). There is a paucity of both theory (Aversano, 2005) and literature (Goode, 2005) on rejection of technology, from the viewpoint of the individual (in society)
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