The Impact of Digital Technology on Photo Usage

In section 4.3, the differences between conventional and digital photo usage discovered through the inquiries are described. In this section, key factors about how digital technology influences these photo usages are generalized accordingly as follows.

5.3.1 Digital photos for Sharing and Conventional Photos as Mementos

In previous section, digital photography and conventional photography have both shown their advantage and disadvantage. Because of their different attributes and applications, people differentiate the usage between conventional photos and digital photos. Digital cameras enable people to take digital photos without restraint. Digital photos are immaterial and take no room. Besides, sharing digital photos with distant family and friends is much easier than sharing conventional ones. Therefore, digital photos, which are taken freer and have the advantage of remote sharing, are used as convenient media for daily life experience sharing. On the other hand, being material, conventional photos would not disappear without reasons and are more reliable in keeping. Besides, annotating conventional photos is easier than annotating digital ones. This makes browsing and sharing conventional photos more

interesting and lively than browsing and sharing digital ones. For these reasons, conventional photos, which are more reliable in keeping and often well annotated, are relatively more suitable as mementos that preserve remembrance of people and the good old days.

5.3.2 Differences in Technology Acceptance between Family Members of Different Age There are differences in technology acceptance between family members of different age.

Young people often bring their digital cameras or camera phones with them and capture interesting moments in their daily life. Most of them are willing to try the innovation

functions of digital cameras, such as shooting short films and connecting the digital camera to the television for playing videos on the television screen. Young people rarely print their digital photos and are used to browse their photos on the computer. Most of them are familiar with computer applications. They share and exchange their digital photos with friends through uploading the photos to online file spaces and albums, or by transmitting the photos through MSN. Most of them do not reject to show their photos to the public on the Internet. On the other hand, some middle-aged people are still used to take photos with simple conventional Instamatic. They are unfamiliar with the innumerable functions of digital devices and afraid of causing errors in operation. Middle-aged people are used to browse printed photos. They prefer flipping printed photos to viewing digital ones in front of a computer screen. They share their photos with relatives and friends by flipping photo albums together, passing photos around, or mailing the copies to the recipient. They do not like to share their photos on the Internet for the consideration for personal privacy.

In brief, young people accept new technology better than the middle-aged people. They are more willing to adopt various computer applications. In "Diffusion of Innovations", Rogers, E.

[28] categorized innovation adopters into five segments, according to the adoption period required to an individual, which are innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards. Innovators, early adopters, and early majority are the earlier half adopters, who require a shorter adoption period, while late majority and laggards are the later half adopters, who have a lengthy innovation decision process. The earlier half adopters have more formal education, higher socioeconomic status, more mass media exposure, more social participation,

and more cosmopolite. In addition, they are venturesome, and have the ability to understand and apply complex technical knowledge. On the contrary, the later half adopters are more cautious, more suspicious of innovations; neighbors and friends are their main information sources.

In most families, the young children are more like the earlier half innovation adopters, who adopt innovative technology appliances in a shorter period. Although they do not have a higher socioeconomic status in a family, but they are more venturesome, and more mass media exposed. They also have the ability to understand and apply complex computer and Internet techniques. These make them more willing to try new digital photo technology

appliances. The middle-aged parents are relatively more like the later half innovation adopters, who are more cautious and suspicious of new technologies. Rogers, E. [28] indicated that there is a very important connection between the earlier adopters and the later adopters. The later adopters would consult the earlier adopters about information and suggestions of new products. Therefore, the diffusion of innovative digital photo products at home relies on the recommendation and instruction from the young children to their parents.

5.3.3 Big gulf of Photo Sharing between Generations

As it shows in the previous section, there are differences in technology acceptance between family members of different age. These differences are causing a big gulf of photo sharing between generations. On the one hand, most young people do not print their digital photos but only save them in their computers and CDs. They share and exchange the digital photos through online photo albums and MSN. On the other hand, due to the long-term habit and being unfamiliar with computer use, the middle-aged people prefer viewing and sharing printed photos instead of digital ones. The photo usage is quite different from parents to children. Therefore, as the main stream photo technology shift from conventional to digital, it is getting harder for the middle-aged parents who are unfamiliar with computer operation to share and exchange the latest photos with their young children away from home.

5.3.4 Difficulties for Adopting Computing Technology at Home

As digital technologies make great strides these years, a lot of digital devices, services, and software supporting photo management and photo sharing have entered the market. However, some of these products are facing resistance on gaining acceptance at home because of the complexity of them. Since the domestic atmosphere is slow and calm, fast and heavy information flow at home may sometimes influence the atmosphere and cause people information anxiety. Digital photo devices or online services surely can help people mange and share their photos better, but setting and maintaining these complex products with numerous functions would also take a lot of time and effort. This kind of lousy work departs people from their wish of a leisure life at home. It is somewhat contradictory that people expect information to be systematical and available at home at any time, but do not like to spend much time on maintaining it.