Interesting article on social barriers to technology adoption via Why the First Laptop Had Such a Hard Time Catching On (Hint: Sexism) – Technology – The Atlantic.

The GRiD computer, one of the first laptop designs, did not have a good adoption cycle. Initially it was thought to be due to the price (over $8000 in 1982 prices) and weight (over 11 pounds). This is probably at least partially true. But the real reason, according to Jeff Hawkins, founder of Palm and Handspring, was sociological:

This is an amazing fact. We had this product. It was designed for business executives. And the biggest obstacle, one of the biggest obstacles, we had for selling the product was the fact — believe it or not — that it had a keyboard. I was in sales and marketing. I saw this first-hand. At that time, 1982, business people, who were in their 40s and 50s, did not have any computer or keyboard in their offices. And it was associated with being part of the secretarial pool or the word processing (remember that industry?) department. And so you’d put this thing in their office and they’d say, "Get that out of here." It was like getting a demotion. They really were uncomfortable with it.

This was definitely something I saw at the time as well, not just for the GRiD, but for anything with a keyboard; terminals, desktop computers, etc. Many managers were simply not going to get on the computer to type things. I know several that had their admins print out their e-mail so they could read it, hand write a reply to give back to their admins to type up.

Hawkins is candid in the problem:

“We couldn’t solve this problem. It took a generational change, for the next younger group who had been exposed to terminals and computers to grow up,” he continued. “That was an amazing technology adoption problem you would have never thought about.”