EMERGENCE AND USAGE, AN OVERVIEW

To reintroduce the notions of user and of niche means to take into full account the relativity of innovation in the field of technologies. It requires a critical point of view on new technologies, a stand point of a less technical-oriented nature expressed by notion of 'emergent technology'. We would hence define the field of emergence of a given technology as the intersection of three area, as represented below. In fact, it is a process that cannot be represented by a two-dimensional drawing and that typically evolves, undergoing the following phases: birth, negotiation, stabilisation of practice, evolution and/or degeneration.

Sketch 2: Emergent technologies

We shall not develop here the aspect pertaining to the first two factors: users and niches. Nevertheless, let us briefly remind the reader that attitudes of refusal or acceptance of a given technology, the degree to which an individual is engaged in the process of adopting it, the procedures for mastering it, all these facets are pretty well-know nowadays. They have been the scope of renewed studies since the introduction of the computer in schools (Huberman, 1992). The adoption of a given innovation, for instance, shows a stratification in different groups according to the speed at which a specific population integrates the transformation. At the beginning of the process, one typically finds a small number of innovators (2.5%); then, a group of advanced modifiers (13.5%) is manifest; after that, an early majority can be found (34%) followed by a late majority (34%), to finally give way to late-comers (16%) (Rogers, 1988). If we investigate more closely the insertion niches of innovative technology, this implies analysing the social, cultural and technical space into which a given practice is born, negotiated and fixed, we find a process that expands according to specific constraints bound to the inertia of established usage - and users[13] . Additionally, cases of hybrid practice, mixing long-standing habits with fresh attitudes, also play their part. Along the same lines, the concept of ecology of communication proposed by Moles (1988) is almost equivalent to the idea of niche proposed by Perriault (1989). Finally, let's recall that, in order to be accepted, an innovation has to offer the user advantages both in conceptual and circumstantial terms. Advantages that could be defined as the association of both economical and practical gains (Punie et al., op. cit.: 230 et seq.), the economic benefits being direct (cheaper service) or indirect (faster service). Our position is that we should go further in the analysis and widen this strictly economic definition to include the notion of generalised cost proposed by Moles: it would include symbolic parameters such as dependability and consistency of communications, security and stability of connections, modifications of the users' image of themselves, etc. (1988).

To come back to usage, we would like to propose this classification, appropriate in the pedagogic field:

AIMS
OBJECTIFS
EXAMPLES
Broadcasting

Browsing
To open the acces to a large extend
To widen the reception zone

Information queries
DB STV
Filmed courses

WWW
Robots and exploration devices (Ways, Veronica, etc.)
Data bases
Communication
Exchange
Tutoring
Debates
E-mail
News
MOO/MUD
Audio conference
Video conference
Pedagogy
According to a taxonomy of pedagogic tasks:
convergent vs divergent
information vs training
Electronic books
Educational software
Groupware, etc.
Professional
Professional and/or training tools
Desk top publishing
Medical image processing
Flight simulators, etc.
Table 5: The usages of technologies

[13]¹³ Chambat (1194:262) cites Le Goff (1974) and says that mankind uses the machines it invents sticking to attitudes and mentalities it had long before inventing them.