RECOMENDACIONES PARA LA INTERFAZ HUMANO MÁQUINA

Before the introduction of IT and the internet, it was possible to share extremely rich information with a very small number of people or less rich information with a large number, but it was impossible to share simultaneously as much richness and reach as one would like. Evans and Wurster (2000) depicted this trade-off at the heart of the old economics of information in Figure 2.3 below.

Figure 2.3 Traditional trade-off between richness and reach

Richness

Traditional trade-off

Reach

Source: Evans and Wurster (2000)

The definitions of richness and reach are presented in the following Box 2.1.

Box 2.1 Definitions of richness and reach

Reach is easy to understand. It simply refers to the number of people – at home or at-work – exchanging information.

Richness of information is a bit more complex to define. It concerns six aspects of information:

• Bandwidth or the amount of information that can be moved from sender to receiver within a given time. Stock quotes are narrowband, a feature film is broadband.

• The degree to which the information can be customized. Advertisement on television is far less customized than a personal sales pitch, but reaches many more people.

• Interactivity. Dialogue is possible for a small group but to reach millions the message must be a monologue.

• Reliability. Information may be more reliable when exchanged among a small group of trusted individuals, but less so when it circulates among a large group of strangers.

• Security. Managers share highly sensitive business information only in closed-door meetings but they will disseminate less sensitive information to a wider audience.

• Currency. On Wall Street, where seconds count, a few market makers have instantaneous quotes, a larger group of financial institutions receives quotes with a three to fifteen minute delay and most retail investors receive quotes with at least a 15 minutes delay.

Source: Evans and Wurster (2000).

After the introduction of IT and the internet, it has become possible to shift the traditional trade-off between richness and reach as upward, depicted in Figure 2.4.

Figure 2.4 Modern trade-off between richness and reach

Richness

Modern trade-off Effect of

IT and the internet

Reach

According to Evans and Wurster (2000) communicating rich information has required proximity or dedicated channels, and only a limited number of people can access the information. Conversely, communicating information to a large audience has required compromises in the quality and/or richness of that information. However, IT and the internet enable greater richness and reach simultaneously.

According to Rogers (1995) the S-shaped diffusion curve (see Section 2.3.2) can be enlarged to include a third dimension (in addition to percentage of adopters and time), namely richness of the material diffused with time as shown in Figure 2.5. Figure 2.5 is an amended version of Roger’s S-shaped diffusion curve.

With respect to the concept of richness and reach (see Section 2.4), there is an increasing trend of richness of information over time. Therefore according to Figure 2.5, we can see an increasing trend in the percentage of adopters and richness of information, simultaneously over time. As a result, a larger number of adopters can get rich information of innovations without compromising quality using IT as a diffusion tool. The relationship of the percentage of adopters, richness of material and time is illustrated in Figure 2.5 below.

Figure 2.5 S-shaped diffusion curve and richness as a third dimension

Richness % of adopters

Time

In agriculture, adoption of innovation is a mental as well as physical process, which according to Rogers (1995) occurs in five stages namely: (1) awareness; (2) interest; (3) evaluation; (4) trial; and (5) repeated use or rejection. To follow these five steps takes some time. How long depends on the nature of the innovation and for instance how difficult it is to get important information regarding the innovation. If we can shorten the time involved in each step we can accelerate adoption. For example, IT can help to make the awareness and interest stages more accessible to a larger number of potential adopters, supplying rich information in a relatively short period of time.

In reality, innovation diffusion in agriculture is a social process, in which interaction between farmers and researchers involves social links. Therefore, the transfer of knowledge is not just a matter of wires, computers and the internet, but occurs in a much broader social context with numerous players. Those players can be categorised as system players (see Chapter 3) and social players (i.e. community leaders, opinion leaders, religious leaders, innovative farmers, etc.). These social players have a remarkable influence on innovation diffusion and their attitudes may hinder the diffusion in some instances. For instance, during training sessions or demonstrations they exchange concerns as well as ideas.

Players in the agricultural innovation system and traditional farmers have tacit (non- codified) knowledge which also plays a vital role in adoption. When selecting the proper diffusion channel, diffusion partners should consider the potential importance of this tacit knowledge and what role it plays. It is easy to diffuse information in the form of codified knowledge via the internet, but there are limitations to the diffusion of tacit

knowledge because of the social factors involved, and IT and the internet alone are unable to diffuse innovation in agriculture. IT may well be a complementary tool rather than a stand-alone substitute.

Local networks play an important role in diffusion, acting as contacts and linkages in the innovation diffusion process, reflecting both the systematic and social nature of innovation. For instance, in Sri Lanka, paddy farmers grow rice as a group activity. They initiate ploughing and seeding together, sharing irrigation water. Finally, they harvest together. So if we want to successfully introduce a new paddy variety, all farmers in that field should trial the new variety. Hence, the extension worker has to travel to the local area before the start of ploughing to meet with local leaders, including opinion leaders and innovative farmers, and encourage them to adopt the new variety on a small scale, reducing the risk of large scale failure, and building up trust in the adoption of the innovation.

The diffusion process is embedded in a broader (national and international) innovation system, so rather than being just local or regional, is influenced by the various players in the system and by the effectiveness of the system as a whole. IT and the internet, may provide a vehicle to reach beyond the local/regional level to the national and international level. As they have the ability to overcome the barriers of time and distance in innovation diffusion. Feedback facilities, particularly those which are interactive such as email and video-conferencing together with other facilities, including DVDs, CD-ROMs and the ability to connect to media like TV, have been and can be valuable to mechanisms of diffusion.