1
ON RULES, ROUTINES AND THE ADOPTION OF TECHNOLOGICAL
PRODUCT INNOVATIONS: THE CASE OF THE TRANSITION FROM
CHEMICAL PHOTOGRAPHY TO DIGITAL IMAGING1
Jochen Runde, Kamal Munir, Matthew Jones, Wanda Orlikowski* and Lynne
Nikolychuck
Judge Institute of Management, Cambridge and *Sloan School of Management, MIT
j.runde@jims.cam.ac.uk
This draft represents work in progress. Please do not quote or cite.
1
This research was funded by the Cambridge-MIT Institute (project 074).
2
ABSTRACT
This paper examines aspects of the transition from chemical photography to digital
imaging in the domain of home photography, drawing on a model of the relationship
between human agency and social structure that has emerged in recent contributions
to realist social theory. In contrast to the emphasis on conscious deliberation and
intentional causation of the standard model of economic agency, the emphasis in the
present paper is on routine behaviour and non-intentional mental phenomena.
Various illustrations are presented, drawn from a wider empirical study of the
development and commercialisation of digital technologies.
3
INTRODUCTION
The emergence of digital imaging in the home photography market is widely and justifiably regarded
as a paradigm case of a disruptive technology. The speed of the transition from traditional chemical
photography has been even more rapid than many commentators and industry experts had anticipated 2
and many incumbent companies, including industry icons like Kodak and Polaroid, have struggled to
adjust and maintain revenues in turbulent market conditions. Sales of digital still cameras now exceed
sales of traditional cameras in most markets, and sales of film, although still a major source of revenue
for long-established producers like Kodak and Fuji, have been falling sharply over recent years. Less
than two decades since the first digital camera became commercially available, the writing appears to
be on the wall for traditional photography.
Nevertheless, and while talk of disruptive technologies, and related ideas such as the notion
of punctuated equilibria, structural breaks and so on, may accurately describe aspects of the current
episode, this should not be allowed to obscure that fact that even periods of dramatic technological
change tend to be characterised by remarkable continuities in the practices of the market participants
involved. Overlooking such continuities can lead to a one-sided view of the adoption of technological
product innovations, and our purpose here is therefore to identify and to attempt to illuminate some of
those that have come to the fore in the transition from chemical photography to digital imaging. We
shall focus particularly on the practices of camera users.
We begin with a brief overview of the current state of play in the US home photography
market and the inroads that have been made by digital imaging. This is followed by an outline of the
model of human agency that we shall be adopting. The theme we develop here concerns the extent to
which peoples’ day-to-day activities consist, not primarily in actions guided by conscious and wellinformed rational deliberation aimed at maximising (expected) utility subject to some budget
constraint, but in the ongoing and often subconscious enactment of routines in a highly structured
social world. This is followed by an account of how technological artefacts become recognisable
entities with generally accepted functions in the social world. Finally, we illustrate the theoretical parts
of the paper with empirical material drawn from an extensive recent study of consumers in the home
photography market.3 The discussion is organised as a commentary on six generalisations about the
nature of routines and their pervasiveness in day-to-day life. The hope is that this will not only throw
some light on the episode in question, but will also yield some general insights for those interested in
the sociology and management of technological transitions.
2
For example, as late as 1997 Andersen Consulting successfully advised Hassleblad, producer of what many purists regard as the
Rolls Royce of cameras, to sell off its subsidiary Hasselblad Electronic Imaging on the grounds that good cheap digital
photography was further off than the company had previously thought (The Economist, Oct 9 1997).
3
Although this is not a strictly empirical paper, it draws on data from multiple sources. Primary data was gathered via interviews
with several senior executives of manufacturing firms and photo-finishing companies, both in the US and Europe; an analysis of
1006 UK and US consumer press advertisements published between 1980 and 2003; a web-based user survey; and interviews
with users. Secondary sources included company documents such as annual reports; industry reports; trade journals; business
magazines and newspapers; electronic sources such as Standard and Poor’s online database, Dow Jones online and Insite; and
articles and industry trends reports published by the Photo Marketing Association International (PMAI).
4
FROM CHEMICAL PHOTOGRAPHY TO DIGITAL IMAGING: A SNAPSHOT
Although advanced electronics had already been seeping into traditional camera design before then, it
was not until 1981 that the world first saw an entirely electronic camera called the MAVICA (Magnetic
Video Camera) manufactured by Sony. The innovation introduced by the MAVICA was to replace
film with a sensor called a charge-coupled device (CCD), which captured the image in a digital form
that was stored on a floppy disk. 4 Although the image was of poor quality reminiscent of photocopies
of 35mm colour prints, the camera could be linked to a TV, colour printer or even a computer. Since
colour printers were rare in those days, Sony introduced a special Mavigraph printer to print
electronically captured images.
Sony was followed by Canon, who brought the first all-electronic camera to the market in
1986. Soon other electronics companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Toshiba, Sharp and Hitachi, not
traditionally associated with the photography industry, were committing resources to the development
of digital imaging technologies. Linked to developments in the IT industry generally, the quality and
cost of digital imaging improved rapidly over the ensuing decade, so much so that by the mid-1990s
digital cameras—capable of producing images of a quality equivalent to all but the best conventional
film cameras—were available at affordable, albeit still premium prices. Interest in digital imaging was
spurred by the rapid growth of the Internet in the late 1990s, both as a medium for displaying digital
images, but also as a means of sharing those images through the use of email. As shown in Fig. 1, the
pivotal year for digital photography in the US was 2003, when digital still camera sales overtook
traditional camera sales for the first time. 5 The dramatic decline of sales of traditional cameras since
2000 is expected to continue with only about 10 million traditional cameras expected to be sold in the
US in 2004, 50% down in the 2000 figure.
US Camera Sales (millions)
30
25
20
Total Cameras
Traditional Cameras
Digital Still Cameras
15
10
5
19
90
19
91
19
92
19
93
19
94
19
95
19
96
19
97
19
98
19
99
20
00
20
01
20
02
20
03
0
Source: PMA Review and Forecast for the Photo Industry 2004
Fig. 1 US Camera Sales (millions)
4
The first CCD was invented at Bell Labs in 1969. A CCD is an electronic memory that can hold a charge corresponding to
variable shades of light, which makes it useful as imaging devices for cameras, scanners, and fax machines.
5
Of course it is the mass populations of China, India and the Third world that will determine the ultimate fate of traditional
photography.
5
As a consequence of the rising proportion of sales of digital cameras, the household penetration of
digital cameras has accordingly been rising rapidly since the late 1990. By the end of 2003, 31% of US
households owned a digital camera, and the PMA projects that this figure will to the level of around
40% in 2004. At the same time, the household penetration of traditional cameras has been declining
steadily since its peak of more than 90%, although the pre-existing stock of traditional cameras ensures
that this still lies above that of digital cameras (Fig. 2).
100
80
60
Traditional Cameras
(h.hold peneration)
40
Digital Still Cameras
(h.hold peneration)
20
20
04
20
02
20
00
19
98
19
96
19
94
19
92
0
19
90
Household Penetration
Household Penetration of Traditional and Digital-Still
Cameras (US Data)
Source: PMA Review and Forecast for the Photo Industry 2004
Fig. 2 Household Penetration of Traditional and Digital-Still Cameras (US Data)
Of principal concern to the companies that have traditionally dominated the market for home
photography is the impact of digital on the consumption of film, darkroom agents and light-sensitive
paper. Whereas the stock of traditional cameras ensures that there is still a very large market for
traditional film (just short of $8billion in the US in 2003), this market has also been in significant
Amateur Film Sales
(US data)
1000
800
600
400
200
0
20
04
20
02
20
00
19
98
19
96
19
94
Film Rolls
19
92
19
90
Film Rolls (in millions)
decline since its peak in 2000 (Fig. 3).
Source: PMA Review and Forecast for the Photo Industry 2004
Fig. 3 Amateur Film Sales (US Data)
6
A further central concern for incumbent film suppliers and photofinishers is the decline in print
volumes, which have been declining since 2000, with the decline in traditional printing more than
offsetting the increase in digital printing. However, current PMA projections indicate that the volume
of total printing will rise again.
Print Volumes (billions)
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
Traditional prints
Digital prints
2006
Total Prints
Traditional prints
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001
2000
Total Prints
Source: PMA Review and Forecast for the Photo Industry 2004
Fig. 4 Print Volumes
The key issue for the industry is whether the increasing volumes of digital printing will be conducted at
home or in retail outlets. Up to this point, the amount of digital images printed at home has dwarfed
that printed in retail outlets. According to the PMA the proportion of digital printing conducted in
retail outlets will rise over time, as the ‘promotion of retail digital printing services by drugstore and
discount chains will help increase awareness of retail printing options and contribute to the growth of
retail printing volume’ (PMA Photo Industry 2004: Review and Forecast, 8). Whether this prediction
is borne out remains to be see, particularly in view of improvements of home-printing equipment.
Digital Print as a Precentage of Total Print Volume
35
30
Digitial Print Share of Total
Volume of Printing
25
20
15
Retail Produced Digitial Print
Share of Total Volume of
Printing
10
5
0
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006
Source: PMA Review and Forecast for the Photo Industry 2004
Fig. 5 Digital Print and a Percentage of Total Print Volume
7
The charts reproduced above clearly reflect a market undergoing dramatic change and a
formerly well-established industry in the throes of significant adjustment to a disruptive technology.
Whereas the market was not long ago stable and dominated by a single firm (Kodak), it is now highly
competitive with numerous actors carving out their respective positions and promoting various
technological paths. Further, the industry has attracted various new players not formerly associated
with photography, including several electronics firms such as Intel, Hewlett Packard, Toshiba, Sony
and Epson, software firms such as Microsoft and Adobe and Internet service providers such as AOL.
79% of professional photographers in the US use digital and 21% of the remainder plan to purchase a
digital camera this year (Infotrends Professional Photographer Survey 2004).
AGENCY, SOCIAL STRUCTURE AND SOME ASPECTS OF ROUTINES
It would be hard to deny the dramatic nature of the episode sketched above, and from the perspective of
history it will no doubt appear as having been a sharp and sudden shift from an old technology towards
a new one. But there are two things to notice here. In the first place, the hardware, services and
consumables associated with chemical photography, while falling in importance, look set to continue to
be sources of significant revenue for incumbent firms for some time to come. Even now, almost half of
the cameras sold in the US continue to be traditional cameras, and sales of film rolls, while down on
former levels, will still be of the order of $8 billion this year (2004).6 The indications are, therefore,
that there are still large numbers of consumers who approach photography in much the same way as
they did before the advent of digital imaging. Secondly, and this is the point we want to develop
below, the unsettled macro picture masks significant continuities in the practices of consumers,
including those who have gone digital. This should not come as a surprise, of course, as many of the
procedures and practices associated with digital photography are ones we would recognise immediately
from traditional photography. But it turns out that, at the micro level, there are many interesting ways
in which this ‘carry over’ - or in some cases, lack thereof - affect the (rate of) take-up of the new
technology.
In order to be able to address the aforementioned continuities, we need an appropriate model
of the consumer. The economic literature on technological change and other work influenced by it, is
dominated by the classical model of rational choice theory. In terms of this model, i) actors’ desires
are formally represented by a well-defined preference ordering over the relevant domain; ii) their
beliefs are assumed to mirror perfectly their objective situation (i.e. a consequence of their being
assumed to know their hypothetical model ‘world’ as and in exactly the same mathematical
formulation in which those worlds are formulated); and iii) they are constantly choosing their most
preferred option given their beliefs. It is a consequence of these three assumptions that such actors
adjust immediately to every perturbation of their environment, even the smallest change to the actor’s
decision-situation invoking an unerring shift to a new maximising position (a point made by Heiner
6
The decline in sales of film rolls over the last few years is of course likely also to reflect other factors besides the rise of digital
imaging, such as general economic conditions, steep reductions in travel, and so on.
8
(1983) a long time ago). The associated view of the adaption to technological change at the level of the
individual actor, is then one of immediate and fully informed adjustment.
On the face of it this model is not a very promising place to start for the analysis of
technological transitions. For if actors have what is effectively a God’s eye view of the world, then
achieving an understanding of the benefits of a new technology and acquiring the skills required to use
it are never an issue. Of course there are economic models of the standard S curve of technological
diffusion, some of which employ the classical model assuming either perfect or imperfect information
(see Stoneman 2002, Part II for a review). For example, the Rank approach proceeds on the assumption
that different but perfectly informed members of a population would benefit differently from adoption,
which makes it possible to generate an S curve by varying the costs or benefits (or both) of adoption
over time. In other work the perfect information assumption is relaxed. The usual approach here is to
assume that one or more of the actors in a model suffer from a ‘black spot’ in the otherwise fully
comprehensive and precise knowledge they have of their situation (the usual move being to have one
actor being able to observe a variable when the other knows only the distribution of that variable). But
here too the model of human agency is the same as before, one of perfect deliberation and complete
and immediate adjustment to even the smallest change in the agent’s situation – but which now include
limitations on what he/she knows about the situation.
It is not our intention to rehash the many criticisms that have been made of the classical
model. Neither do we wish to deny the core idea on which it is based, that peoples’ conduct is
sometimes guided by reason directed at achieving the best outcome given their means. Indeed the
purchase of a relatively expensive item such as a camera, where there are many choices and the costs of
associated consumables, peripherals and services may vary greatly with the technology chosen, may be
a case in point. Nevertheless an exclusive reliance on the classical model tends to obscure several
important factors. First, it obscures the extent to which peoples’ day-to-day doings consist of the
enactment of routines rather than being guided by conscious rational deliberation. 7 Second, it ignores
the fact that even where peoples’ choices and actions issue from a conscious maximising orientation,
routines are still likely to be involved at various levels. For instance, routines may reflect zones of
comfort or ingrained ways of thinking about things, thereby fixing views on what is possible or what is
acceptable, blinker people to new possibilities, and so on. And third, a recognition of the pervasiveness
of routines is at once a recognition of the extent to which social life is structured by social rules, many
of which play an integral part, not only in regulating our activities, but more fundamentally, in making
the contents of the world the immediately recognisable entities we interact with all the time. We
therefore feel that there may be some mileage in developing some implications of an alternative view
of human agency that, rather than starting with an hypothetical actor who is perfectly informed,
recognises the highly routinised nature of social life. This view of agency is drawn from the recent
7
It is a testament to the influence of the classical model that we should need to make a case at all for how much of the passage
through our day-to-day lives takes the form of the enactment of routines (Nelson and Winter 1982 provide a classic account of
the role of routines within the firm). But even a little reflection will reveal how pervasive routines are in our day-to-day affairs,
even in the case of what is for most us the relatively occasional activity of using a camera: from taking a camera along on
holidays and special family occasions as a matter of course, through to the sequence of steps we regularly go through in attaching
a telephoto lens, removing a film, and transferring jpeg files to a PC hard drive. As these examples already suggest, the adoption
f a product innovation is likely to induce changes in existing routines and the emergence of new ones, and that this is something
that will be influenced by the relative costs/benefits.
9
literature on realist social theory, particularly the writings of Lawson (1997, 2003) and Searle (1995,
1999, 2001).
By a routine, in what follows, we mean a standard procedure that is regularly enacted, one or a
series of actions that are regularly performed in the same way in similar circumstances, that is,
according to some rule. By social rules we mean generalised procedures for action that can be
expressed by suitable transformations of the formula ‘if x do y in situation c’, where ‘do y’ should be
interpreted liberally as a placeholder for injunctions such as ‘counts as’, ‘take to mean’, ‘refrain from’,
etc. (the ‘if x’ and ‘in situation c’ parts of the injunction are of course sometimes suppressed in
ordinary language, e.g. in statements such as ‘publish or perish’ or ‘keep left’). Social rules may arise
either as the product of deliberate thought and planning or as phenomena that emerge spontaneously in
social systems, without being designed by anyone. Social rules may usefully be divided into two
categories, constitutive rules and regulative rules. Constitutive rules are rules that make possible
certain kinds of activity, e.g. the collective assignment of function in virtue of which we are able to
recognise and treat what would otherwise presumably be more or less mysterious lumps of plastic,
glass and silicon, as digital cameras (these correspond to what are sometimes called cognitive rules).
Regulative (or what are sometimes called normative) rules regulate antecedently existing activities,
such as the rule that one does not take flashlight photographs during a match on the centre court at
Wimbledon.
Clearly our definition of a routine casts a wide net. In the first place, it includes the case of
private routines, that is, routines followed by single individuals only. In the second place, and more
importantly, it extends to include what are sometimes called ‘recurrent practices’ (or simply
‘practices’), conventions, and habits where these are in accordance with some rule. When we use the
term routine, in what follows, we will typically be using it in the wider sense.
We shall adopt the view that rules and the practices/routines they govern or otherwise reflect
are recursively organised, each being at once a cause and a consequence of the other (Giddens 1984;
Lawson 1997, 2003).8 The guiding idea here is that social rules are not something that emerge de
novo out of the actions and interaction of human actors that are somehow preconstituted, but that
human agency and social structure presuppose each other. That is to say, we shall proceed on the basis
that human actors are constantly drawing on social rules in acting and, in the process of doing so,
contributing to the reproduction of those same rules. This so-called structurational or reproductional
model of social activity makes it possible to steers a path between the voluntarism associated with the
classical model on the one hand and social determinism on the other. Further, the model immediately
underlines the processual nature of socio-economic activity and the relative stability of social rules and
the practices that these reflect, while at the same time retaining the possibility of agency and free
choice.9
9
Note that although we are concentrating on social rules here, this is not to say that what is sometimes called social structure is
exhausted by social rules. For Giddens, for example, social structure consists of rules and what he calls resources, and in critical
realism discussions of social structure make as much of social relations/positions as they do of social rules. In any event, what
people actually do is dependent on more than rules, and includes the positions they occupy (see below) and their natural and
artefactual environment.
10
There are many different aspects of routines that bear in important ways on the take up
technological product innovations. Here are the ones we shall return to in and discuss in section IV
below: i) routines and the rules they reflect are distinct entities; ii) routines are subject to inertia and
tend to change relatively slowly over time; iii) routines reflect capabilities and their enaction is
typically an expression of tacit consciousness; iv) routines tend to be associated with particular social
positions; v) the effectiveness of routines is context-dependent and routines may be re-deployable; and
vi) routines change at differential rates and may exist within hierarchies. Before we can move on to
these, however, it is necessary to say something about how technological artefacts become the
immediately recognisable things that we interact with all the time..
III LOCATING TECHNOLOGICAL ARTEFACTS IN THE SOCIAL WORLD
The question we wish to consider here is how the technological artefacts that we interact with every
day become part of our taken-for-granted social world, that is, recognisable entities with generally
accepted functions (such as credit cards, fridges and digital cameras). As this may seem an overly
abstruse issue for a paper of this kind, let us begin with a thought experiment. Suppose that what we
would recognise as a modern silver-halide camera was somehow transported the medieval ages,
bearing in mind that the manufacture of lenses only began around the 1840s. It seems safe to say that
no-one then would have known what to make of this object. They would simply have had no concept
of a camera in the modern sense and none of the capabilities and complementary equipment and
materials required to make it work. No doubt the situation would be similar had a modern digital
camera-phone unexpectedly dropped to earth at the turn of the last century. And the same kind of point
also applies to technologies that have been superseded and disappeared. Give most people today the
paraphernalia of the camera obscura allegedly first employed by painters in the 1400s (Wright 2004),
and they would in all probability not know that they were looking at an ancestor of what we now
recognise as a camera. And even if they did, they would probably not be able to operate it.
The foregoing examples suggest a number of important points. The first is that although the
physical properties of the technological artefacts have to be such as to allow them to perform the
functions we assign to them, these functions do not fully determine the purpose of those artefacts, how
they are to be used, understood, and so on. Another way of putting this is to say that technology has a
material aspect and a social aspect, and that both are required to make the thing what it is. What makes
a digital camera a digital camera to us, i.e. a physical artefact with certain functions, depends in part on
us. This is because those functions are collectively imposed or assigned by us. Transport a modern
camera to medieval times and if it is used as anything at all, it seems likely that this would be very
different from how it was intended by its designers. Second, the functions may be the product of
deliberate design (e.g. a convenient facility to transfer data from a camera to a PC such as the Sony
memory stick) or something that emerge in ways perhaps not unintended by designers (e.g. digital
cameras being used as a form of techno-jewellery or as an alternative to a fax to create images of
documents transportable via email). Third, the functions assigned to technological artefacts are
expressible as constitutive rules of the form: ‘x counts as y in c’. Fourth, these constitutive rules, once
11
implicated in routines, are reinforced and reproduced through those routines in the manner described in
the previous section.10
We have borrowed the concept of collective assignments of function and what we have been
arguing about the explanatory force of constitutive rules from Searle’s (1995) theory of the ontology of
social institutions. Although Searle’s own examples tend to focus on broader social institutions such as
money, elections and law courts, we maintain that similar arguments apply in the case of technological
artefacts: that it is in virtue of the functions collectively assigned to physical objects that we recognise
them and can interact with them so seamlessly, and then usually without any conscious effort at all.
This is important, because the activities of companies attempting to introduce and create markets for
technological product innovations will often involve attempting to change assignments of function,
creating new ones, doing things that do not disturb old ones, an so on (i.e. commonsense ways of
seeing things, concepts of particular products, managing the congruence of frames, etc.). In some cases
entirely new (mongrel) products might emerge, such as the digital phone-camera, the acceptance and
use of which will nevertheless be heavily influenced by prior conceptions of mobile phones and digital
cameras. In other cases products that already have generally accepted uses might start being used in
new ways, perhaps ways that were not even intended or conceived of by their makers (Regulative
rules).
TECHNOLOGICAL SHIFT AND THE TAKING, BREAKING AND MAKING OF ROUTINES
We have sketched an abstract picture of a structured social world in which peoples’ activities are
conditioned by a network of relatively stable constitutive and regulative rules. As the emergence of
any new technology necessarily always occurs within such an environment, the adoption of new
technology is unlikely ever to take the form of people simply and immediately abandoning the old for
the new. Instead, it is more likely to involve a gradual, uneven and messy process of adjustment, since
rules and the routines they govern or otherwise reflect take time to change. Indeed, there is no
guarantee that existing rules and routines will always adjust in ways that will allow a new technology
that is even manifestly superior to supplant what is already on offer. Further, even where large scale
transitions to a new technology eventually occur, the transition time is likely to differ in different
localities. This means that ‘old’ technologies may survive shoulder to shoulder with new technologies
for significant periods, representing revenue flows worth protecting and preserving for as long as
possible
We are now in a position to consider in more detail at the transition to a technological product
innovation in the kind of social world that we have described. We proceed by looking at each of the
six general observations about routines we listed above, in each case drawing on empirical material
gleaned from our study of the home photography market.
10
The issues we have raised here are ones that are simply not addressed by the classical model. And the reason for this is that it
tends to treat technology as means that are already fully understood (the God’s eye view of the world we mentioned earlier).
12
1. Routines and the rules they reflect are ontologically distinct
Recall that we take routines to be standard procedures that are regularly enacted by one or more people,
that is, one or a series of actions that are regularly performed in accordance with some rule. On this
view, rules by themselves do not constitute routines. For it is possible to state a rule or define a
procedure without their generating or being otherwise reflected in behaviour. Neither are rules, even
social rules, reducible to the routines in which they are reflected, since peoples’ behaviour at any one
time is typically conditioned by multiple rules and there is often no simple and exceptionless
correlation between even widely followed social rules and what people do. For example, even law
abiding drivers in the UK sometimes depart from the rule (and the associated routines) that they should
keep to the left hand side of the road if they are passing a slower car on a narrow country lane.
How does the ontological separation of routines and rules bear on our understanding of the
transition from chemical photography to digital imaging? A key distinction here is between the kind
of rules and procedures that are explicitly stated and followed in a conscious, deliberate way, and those
that are not. We shall concentrate on the former here, and leave the latter to point 3 below. Two
important forms of explicit rules and procedures involved in the use of electronic equipment are the
kind of instructions, injunctions and procedures that appear in user manuals on the one hand, and the
drop-down, menu-driven kinds of procedures built directly into digital devices on the other. An
important feature of the transition from traditional photography to digital imaging, is that it has shifted
the weight of users’ immediate engagement with photographic equipment towards following rules and
procedures of the inbuilt and ever-present menu-driven variety.
This shift is of some significance as it underpins a key aspect of the transition towards digital
imaging, namely the extent to which it allows the ordinary user to perform tasks that were formerly the
almost exclusive preserve of professional developers and photofinishers. 11 Each stage of the process
involved in producing photographs, from image capture, image enhancement, to the actual making of
prints, can now be performed at home using standard computer equipment and without significant
investment in darkroom equipment and skills. This expansion of the ordinary user’s repertoire has
been facilitated by the extent to which digital imaging removes and reduces what were formerly
specialist skills to simple manual tasks and clicking buttons in (pre-)specified sequences (e.g. compare
the complexities of loading film into older traditional cameras with transferring a memory stick
between a camera and a PC or, more significantly, of producing traditional prints in a darkroom with
printing out digital images on the home Deskjet). 12 This simplification and reduction to menufollowing was facilitated in turn by digital cameras being designed to be operated in ways that were
already familiar from other digital devices, and to be compatible with existing and largely familiar
home computer equipment.
The ‘inbuilt’ nature of the rules and procedures in the equipment associated with digital
imaging thus bears significantly on how they condition routines. For, at least as far as the elementary
11
These changes are of some significance to companies operating in the industry, as they represent an enormous shift of power
from producers of film to producers of paper and printer ink.
12
Indeed digital imaging has come close to achieving the early Kodak slogan ‘You push the button, we do the rest’ (Overdorf
and Christensen 2000: 1) than the company might have imagined or subsequently wished.
13
operation of digital imaging equipment and software is concerned, those rules and procedures are nonoptional, allowing little or no latitude in their how they are implemented, and bearing little in the way
of even minor deviations on pain of the device simply not performing the desired function. 13 The
standardised and immediate way in which menu-driven procedures confront the user accordingly
produce a high degree of ‘pull’ on the routines they condition. This strict and rigid channelling of how
users interact with digital cameras is an important and perhaps even necessary condition for the
increased range of tasks that advances in digital imaging have put within the scope of the ordinary user.
And to this extent it is a precondition for the new assignments of function and regulative rules enabling
new activities such as the immediate reviewing and sharing of images that digital affords.
2. The inertia of routines
In terms of the model of social activity outlined above, so long as social rules are being drawn on and
reflected in routines, those rules are being reproduced. And so long as they are being reproduced, those
rules serve to underpin the same routines in subsequent rounds of activity. Routines and the rules they
condition thus assume a self-perpetuating quality that imbues them with a measure of stability over
time. This stability is reinforced by the automaticity of routines (on which more below) and peoples’
apparent psychological need for what Giddens (1979, 1984, 1991) calls ‘ontological security’, namely
for a sense of sameness and continuity in their self-identity and the material and social environment
they are constantly in the process of negotiating. Routines represent zones of comfort that people are
often reluctant to leave, and reflect investments in skills, self-image and views of the world that they
are often reluctant to relinquish. Further, routines may be connected with investments in material
things, equipment, and so on, which might lose in value if displaced, thereby lending further to their
stability.
The challenge facing purveyors of technological product innovations is thus no less than to
achieve a successful intervention into, and partial transformations of, existing ensembles of social rules
and routines that, individually and collectively, tend to be resistant to change.14 This resistance
represents an advantage to incumbent purveyors of traditional technologies and a barrier to be
overcome by those who wish to break into markets with new technologies. It is for this reason that
whereas incumbents such as Kodak early on made a point of actively ignoring digital and devoted
significant resources to attempting to perpetuate the life of film by emphasising traditional views on the
role and significance of home photography, 15 newcomers such as Sony have gone to such lengths to
transform what people formerly understood as photography into ‘imaging’ (and thereby highlighting
13
We are here concerned with the basic operation of the tools associated with digital photography, with what is required for the
ordinary user to arrive at acceptable results. This is of course not to deny the availability of a good deal of digital imaging
equipment and software that offers highly sophisticated functionality and the mastery of which may require significant
investment.
14
Of course it is also possible that the intervention may one that does not involve existing practices related to the activity in
question, because that activity didn’t exist before. In the case of emerging markets it has been known for a generation of
technology to be skipped, such as the case of moving from no phones directly to mobile phones. It is conceivable that the same
could occur with respect to digital photography in some developing countries.
15
Examples here include Kodak’s own ‘Kodak Moment’ and associated ideas about capturing and preserving memories. It has
been suggested that Kodak’s original ‘active ignorance’ of electronic cameras at the onset of the digital era was much like
Microsoft’s strategy towards Sun’s Java (Garud et al 2002). But as the 1990s progressed, Kodak’s strategy increasingly turned
towards of digital technologies as a way of increasing the range of things people could do with film, and thereby increasing the
demand for film (Christensen and Overdorf 2000). See also Munir (2004).
14
the new affordances associated with digital, such as immediate review, disposal, sharing, printing and
the electronic transmission of digital images). The efforts of both incumbents and new entrants have
centred on winning the battle over popular conceptions of what photography is and what it should be
(Munir and Phillips 2004).
At the same time, the presence and stability of existing rules and routines also serve as a
resource for new entrants, as a platform to be leveraged in the promotion of a new technology. In the
case of digital cameras, what is being sold is after all an item that is in most cases still recognisably a
camera: the fundamental assignment of function that marks off digital cameras from most other devices
is the same as in the case of traditional cameras, namely that it provides individual users with the
means to capture still images. Further, many of the regulative rules reflected in the routines associated
with traditional photography are precisely the same under the digital regime. We pose for photographs
in similar ways, take cameras to similar kinds of events, continue to use photographs to record
significant events or occasions, and so on. Just as technological innovations tend to consist of
syntheses of existing capabilities, such as the PC being built from already-available components from
the electronics industry, TV monitors, printed circuit boards, memory chips, and so on (Utterback
1996, 17), then, so too does the process by which technological product innovations become
established draw on existing capabilities associated with the product being displaced. Again, we shall
have more to say about this below.
Finally, existing rules and routines associated with a pre-existing technology serve as a
benchmark against which new entrants are able to differentiate the new, the attractive, the convenient,
and so on, associated with the new technology. In some cases digital cameras have been portrayed as
offering everything that traditional cameras do, and more to boot. For example, they have been
presented in terms of what is effectively an assignment of function that has been expanded to include
the production of images that can be reviewed, printed, transferred electronically, discarded, etc.
immediately the image has been captured. In other cases digital cameras have been portrayed as
simplifying existing practices or making them redundant altogether, for example, in making it possible
to print, email and share by being placed onto a docking station without having to go to a professional
developer. Elements of both of these messages surface in the advertisement reproduced in Figure 6
below.
15
Source: Times Magazine 7 July 2001
Fig. 6 Advertisement for Kodak Easyshare system
In summary, existing rules and routines provide the backdrop, the subconscious expectations, and so
on, against which the affordances of the new technology can be thrown into sharp relief (i.e. be
perceived as ‘revolutionary’ in the above advert, and then in a way which then immediately offsets the
threat of the new with the phrase ‘Let’s say t couldn’t get any easier’). And to this extent, of course,
they may serve as the instruments of their own eventual demise.
16
3. Routines as an expression of tacit knowledge
Although it is possible to follow rules consciously such as when we deliberately go through each of the
steps in a manual when installing a piece of software, we would not describe someone rule-following in
this way as enacting a routine. For it is precisely because the steps involved are not routine that the
manual is being followed. This observation suggests a further important feature of routines, namely
that they tend to issue from subconscious mental processes involving non-discursive or ‘tacit’
knowledge employed in the conduct of activity or the interpretation of information. Indeed, some
authors regard ‘tacitness’ as a distinguishing feature of routines (see Cohen et al. 1996: 658).
The dividing line between particular bits of discursive knowledge and particular bits of tacit
knowledge is sometimes permeable. Actions that might once have issued from conscious rulefollowing may, with practice, become things that can be done without thinking about it. This form of
tacit knowledge may be recoverable at the conscious level, at least to the extent that the individual
actor can recall the relevant rules. But in other cases people seem to act in accordance with rule
structures without following the relevant rules consciously or subconsciously. Searle (1995: 137-147)
suggest that, instead of describing people as behaving as they do because they are following the rules
of some institution, they might be more accurately described as behaving as they are because (1) they
have a structure that disposes them to behave in that way, and (2) they have become disposed to behave
in that way because that is the way that conforms to the rules of that institution. These dispositions
from part of what Searle calls the ‘Background’, a reservoir of nonintentional ‘capacities, abilities,
tendencies, habits, dispositions, taken-for-granted presuppositions and “know-how” generally’ (Searle
1999: 107-108), and where the relevant rules are then often not recoverable in discursive form. 16 The
Background is a precondition for all our activities whether or not they are guided by discursive
knowledge, ranging from our use of language, recognising and interacting with the objects that
populate our everyday lives, through to the performance of particular tasks and roles. 17 And given
that our Background abilities are mostly tacit, all of our activities are likely to involve tacit knowledge
at some level.
It Searle’s thesis of the Background is right, it is then a mistake to think of some of our
activities as issuing purely from discursive reasoning, as though discursive reasoning when drawn upon
16
Intentionality is a feature of representations in virtue of which they are directed at or about something. Thus your fearing X,
loving X, or intending X are all intentional states because they are all directed at X. Searle defines the Background as the set of
non-intentional or pre-intentional capacities that allow intentional mental states to function, and rather than attempting to prove
its existence, prefers instead to demonstrate it by way of examples. His favourite examples deal with how the Background
enables linguistic interpretation. Consider the three statements:
John flew into Heathrow.
John flew into his opponent.
John flew into a rage.
Each sentence shares the same basic form, ‘X flew into Y’, but what we understand by ‘flew into’ in each case clearly differs.
Hearing that John flew into a rage does not lead us to imagine him arriving at Heathrow. Nor do we imagine him flying into his
opponent when we are told that he will be arriving at Heathrow. Yet we somehow manage to come to the right interpretation
without consciously engaging in any act of interpretation (and indeed it is very hard to say how we do so). Searle proposes that
this ability is one manifestation of our Background abilities.
17
We shall not attempt to justify our adoption of Searle’s thesis of the Background here, save to say that ideas like it have wider
currency in the philosophy, e.g. in the work of the later Wittgenstein, in Bordieu’s notion of the ‘habitus’, and in Hume’s work
on human cognition. For more on the background, intentionality and intentional causation, see also Fotion (2000), Searle (1995,
Chapter 6; 2001 chapter 2), Nightingale (2003) and Runde (2002).
17
leaves no room for tacit knowledge. And if so, it is important to recognise this and to be sensitive to
the particular ways in which peoples’ tacit knowledge may affect and be affected by their exposure to
product innovations. One way to uncover such instances is to look at how unstated, subconscious
expectations are disappointed in moving from one technology to another. A good example here is the
length of exposure required by many digital cameras, as compared with the more rapid shutter-speed of
conventional cameras. First-time users of digital cameras coming from traditional cameras tend to be
surprised and irritated by this aspect of digital photography, which they seen as representing a loss of
control over picture taking. The same goes for the missing click in early digital cameras, the absence
of which left users uncertain about whether and when they had actually captured the image. In both
cases, the new technology had the effect of disturbing aspects of the taken-for-granted world of users
accustomed to the traditional technology.
As the adoption of digital cameras gathers pace, the associated routines and relevant aspects of
users’ taken-for granted world has been changing. Some of the routines associated with traditional
photography, together with the tacit knowledge they reflect, are becoming redundant and may
eventually atrophy and disappear entirely. At the same time, new forms of tacit knowledge are
developing, ranging from automatically resorting to the LCD rather than the viewfinder to aim the
camera, through to …
Issues relating to tacit knowledge bear on the adoption of digital imaging in three important
ways. In the first place, digital cameras represent a threat to the stability of the established order of the
taken-for-granted world of potential users and, to this extent, faced a natural resistance additional to
that already described above (and for reasons that users may not be able to articulate and which may
only emerge over time). Of course, there do exist consumers who are specifically attracted by new
technologies, but these are usually, and certainly in the case of digital cameras, regarded as a particular
segment of the market. In the second place, the adoption of digital imaging inevitably leads to the
decay of the practical knowledge, as particular skills associated with traditional photography become
redundant. And finally, the adoption of digital imaging involves investment in new skills and
capabilities, the cost of which may discourage people from switching. Each of these considerations
represents a barrier to be overcome for companies promoting digital imaging. It is no surprise then,
that producers went to such lengths to make early digital cameras look and feel like their analogue
cousins, in emphasising their ease of use, and in attempting to demonstrate links with what potential
buyers were already doing. The motivation here was to offset ‘the liability of the new’, and the
successes that were achieved on this front were no doubt a necessary stage in paving the way for the
unusual looking digital cameras now available, and the way in which they have become embedded in
other devices such as mobile phones and PDAs.
18
4. Routines and social positions
It is a commonplace that society is structured by social positions and that particular social positions are
associated with, and in some cases even defined by, particular routines. 18 Like most companies selling
consumer products, the companies interviewed segment their target markets in terms of social position,
and focus on the associated practices and routines in which their products might be implicated. Not
surprisingly, the emergence of digital imaging has led incumbent producers of traditional cameras and
supplies to adopt complex strategies aimed at reinforcing existing routines in home photography and/or
at encouraging new ones that would favour the traditional technology. Perhaps the most pervasive
figure here is the so-called ‘soccer mom’ who acts as the family archivist and is typically the most
active photographer in the household. The soccer mom was at once an ally to market incumbents
seeking to ward off the threat of digital early on (as the stereotype is that mothers are generally less
interested in new technology than are men, and have less opportunity to engage with it) and someone to
be seduced by those wishing to promote digital photography (and who would prefer to promote a
techno-mom who does all of the things the mother-as-family archivist does, but who is also sufficient
technologically savvy/friendly to move on to digital).
The general movement towards digital imaging has affected how companies treat the soccermom in different ways. For example, an important aspect of the family archivist role connected with
traditional photography has been the notion that photographs provide a permanent and truthful record
of the events they capture. This idea that ‘the camera never lies’ was long reinforced by traditional
industry incumbents who used advertisements to encourage wives to build an ongoing record of their
marriage and children. The ease with which digital images can be modified poses a threat to this idea,
however, and manufacturers have accordingly tended to promote the rhetoric of the ‘enhancement’ of
images rather than their alteration (Munir, forthcoming). Traditional incumbents who have entered the
digital arena have also sought to sustain the routines associated with the soccer-mom’s role in obtaining
professionally-made prints, by providing facilities for printing pre-selected images from various digital
storage media in retail photo processing outlets or from processing machines located in shopping
centres. The emphasis here is on the convenience and time saved, and on exploiting the affordances of
the new technology to maintain existing routines.
The practices and preferences associated with different social positions, relating to their
views on and use of different forms of photographic equipment, are wide and varied. Other positions
that came up in interviews included the serious hobby photographer intent on the best gear, the
technophile who always needs to have the latest gear, different nationalities (‘Americans prefer big
machines with few buttons, Japanese prefer small machines with many buttons’) and different forms of
occupation. As far as the last of these is concerned, the introduction of digital imaging appears to have
coincided with a significant rise in the use of cameras in work-related activities in which they were not
used before. Examples here include the use of digital cameras for record keeping in building and
manufacturing processes, the electronic transfer of visual information, the use of photographs on
18
See Lawson (1997: 163-165; 2003: 38-39) on social positions/practices. Thus far we have emphasised social rules and their
relation to routines. But rules it is a mistake to regard social rules as the only form of social structure. Who has access to rules is
a resource question.
19
websites, for computer conferencing communities and so on. Finally, teenagers are a significant
category, particularly in the market for digital still cameras in mobile phones, where the emphasis is
primarily on communication and immediate sharing (immediate disposability), and far less on the
recording of memories.
5. Context-dependence and re-deployability
Routines often emerge as the product of repetitions of slightly different attempts to perform some task
in similar conditions, and in many cases the routine ultimately ‘selected’ may be an efficient adaptation
to the typical environment in which they are enacted (Kesting 2004). It is therefore misleading to talk
about the effectiveness or efficiency of any one routine in the abstract. Routines that are perfectly
effective ways of doing things in some contexts may be considerably less so in others. An interesting
question is how existing routines fit and/or adapt when there is a significant change in the technological
landscape.
There are different ways in which the move from traditional to digital photography has led to
existing routines bumping up against and/or being rendered ineffective by some feature of the new
technology. In some cases, practices associated with particular features of the older technology that
were retained in the new have become inappropriate or redundant, while in other cases users have
missed formerly unacknowledged features of the old technology when these disappeared from the new.
A good illustration of the former is the practice of aiming through a viewfinder associated with
traditional camera. Although most digital cameras have viewfinders, most new users quickly migrate
to aiming their cameras by looking at the desired image on the LCD. 19 This raises the question of
whether digital cameras need viewfinders at all, and if not, whether the takeup of digital photography
would have been hindered if digital cameras had not included a viewfinder. A good example of the
latter case is the absence of the click in early digital cameras already mentioned above, which was
missed so much that many digital cameras now come supplied with a click that is as portentous as it is
synthetic.
We have noted that where technological change disturbs routines this is often tantamount to
destroying existing capabilities. But technological change also provides opportunities for leveraging
existing routines and capabilities, possibly ones that were not formerly associated with the relevant
activity. Thus while the shift to digital imaging is reducing engagement with traditional camera
technology, it is at the same time increasing engagement with complementary technologies that were
often already familiar from other contexts and activities (e.g. working with electronic menus, knowing
how to operate printers, how to send compressed email attachments, and so on). Indeed, the way in
which users engage with their Sony digital camera may well have more in common with how they
engage with their Sony laptop and mobile phone using the same proprietary memory stick device, than
with how they engaged with their former 35mm camera. Social structures are ‘invariant certain
transformations’ in other words, that is, can continue to exist and exert the same kind of effect while
19
Indeed there are now cameras, e.g. the Samsung Digimax V50, that have a pull-out LCD that can be tilted for shooting from
different angles.
20
their constituents undergo changes in attributes which are not relevant to their reproduction (Sayer
1992: 94). Routines that work well in one context may be transferable to others, e.g. Windows cut and
paste technology in imaging software being operated in much the same way it is with word-processing,
spreadsheet and music software programmes.
The key issue is whether or not the new technology is well-adapted to (changes in) the
prevailing technological landscape.
In the case of digital imaging, much of the technology was, and
continues to be, designed to fit in with the evolving ‘digital culture’ (Gere 2002). People already have
a general familiarity with digital devices, which then provides the confidence to learn new devices and
makes it more straightforward to leverage existing capabilities exercised in the use of home computers
and printers, sending emails and accessing the web. Indeed digital cameras are now distributed in
channels associated with home electronics firms rather than shops specialising in photographic
equipment and materials.
6. Continuity, change and hierarchies of rules and routines
We have emphasised how the adoption of a new technology is typically conditioned by its forerunner
and the rules and routines that accompany it, and that transitions to new technological regimes are
therefore likely to involve continuities as well as discontinuities in the practices of users. The final
point that we would like to make is that, in contrast to the image conveyed by punctuated equilibrium
models of technological change, changes in the rules and routines associated with both the old and the
new technologies are unlikely to occur in one go. Rather, there is likely to be a period of adjustment
with some of the rules and routines remaining constant over the transition and others changing at
different times and at different rates. Further, there is no a priori reason that the timing and rate of
change will be the same in all localities or even that the same elements of social structure will change
in all localities. The diagram below attempts to depict the relationship between the level of behaviour
on the one hand and social rules on the other, in a way that highlights the temporal patterning of change
in response to the emergence of a new technology.
Fig. 7. Responses to a technological product innovation
21
The diagram depicts the two levels of the reproductional model of social activity we have
been adopting, the level of action at which routines are observed and the ‘underlying’ level of social
structure, that condition peoples’ doings. The vertical arrows represent the idea that structure is
reproduced through agency, which itself depends on structure. Each of the rows in the bottom part of
the diagram represent various elements of social structure, and specifically the constitutive and
regulative rules that underpin the routines associated with home photography. The white areas
represent rules associated with traditional photography and the grey areas where those rules have been
(are being) displaced by the new or transformed rules associated with digital imaging. As we have
already argued, some of the rules associated with traditional photography have carried over to digital
imaging in unaltered form, sometimes in spite of the new possibilities enabled by the new technology.
These are represented by the solid white row, and might include social rules relating to the continued
status of photographic images as a relatively permanent, truthful record of significant events; 20 rules
governing when taking photographs might be regarded as inappropriate; rules governing how people
pose for photographs on particular kinds of occasions; and so on.
The diagram includes some specific oppositions where social rules have changed in the wake
of digital imaging (note that the particular sequence and rates of change depicted are for illustrative
purposes only and should not be taken too literally; for example it could well be that particular
rules/routines might persist longer in some communities or localities than they do in others). The point
we wish to make, however, is that the rules and routines associated with home photography need not all
have been changing at the same time or at the same rates. In some cases the change has been rapid.
For example, the adoption of mobile phones as image-capture devices among some consumer groups,
notably the young, has led to a sharp shift away from ideas about photographs as preserving memories
towards ideas about digital images as a component in communicating and sharing with peers. But in
other cases the changes have been more gradual, such as those influencing the relationship between
images and prints. While it is widely acknowledged that only a small proportion of digital images are
printed, many consumers still choose to obtain prints of particular kinds of images, which, given the
increased number of images captured with digital cameras, has had the important effect of mitigating
the decline in the processing market.
It goes without saying that the diagram is highly metaphorical and that we do not want to
suggest that social structure is actually layered in separable blocks in the way that we have portrayed.
Indeed an alternative and in some respects better way of thinking about routines (and by the same
stroke, rules) is in terms of interacting routines within routines, both of which may display varying
degrees of constancy over time. For example, the practice of packing a camera when people go on
holiday seems to be one widely-enacted routine that has remained largely unaffected by the advent of
digital cameras. Nevertheless, many of the routines associated with the use of cameras on holiday have
already changed significantly under the digital regime, in the various ways that we have already noted
(people tending to capture more images than they did before, reviewing and sharing them more quickly
20
At the level of action, users who have gone over digital continue to document major life events, although there is some
evidence of more digital photographs being taken of everyday objects and events.
22
than before, disposing of images before printing, and so on). This example suggests that it may be
useful to distinguish between routines at a more general or abstract level - call these macro routines and more specific or particular routines - call these micro routines - that are enacted within the context
of macro routines. An interesting issue that arises here is when there micro and macro routines change
at different rates. The example we considered above was one in which the macro routine remained
constant but micro routines change and new ones emerge in response to technological change. More
intriguing perhaps, is where macro routines change while micro routines remain constant. A good
example here is the move towards capturing more everyday events experienced after the transition to
digital imaging, while micro routines relating to the use of digital equipment, many of them transposed
from the use of computers, mobile phones, and so on, remain constant.
CONCLUSION
We have argued that the use of technology is inseparably bound up with the social rules that delineate
it, and which give meaning to technological artefacts and condition how we interact with them. The
successful introduction of a product innovation is therefore never as straightforward as simply
presenting potential users with some shiny new item, whatever its perhaps considerable affordances
might be. Rather it is something that requires deliberate intervention into ensembles of social rules and
the routines that issue from them, where those rules and routines may be resistant to change and likely
to change at different times and different rates. Of course, the emergence of digital imaging has been
greatly aided by its being a variant of the already well established activity of home photography, and
by the fact that many aspects of the associated technology were already familiar from other contexts.
As we have seen, digital imaging products incorporate pre-existing ideas drawn from other areas of
activity, such as navigation by the equivalent of drop-down menus, and potential buyers tend to be
capable users of similar and complementary technology such as CD-Rom drives, home printers and the
web. Even so, potential consumers of digital imaging products still literally have (had) to be made to
buy into that innovation, where doing so requires them to interact with unfamiliar entities, develop new
skills, and write off prior investments in skills and equipment.
We close with some summary observations on the interventions (and counter-interventions)
that have characterised the emergence of digital photography and the competitive struggle between
traditional photography and digital imaging. As we have seen, the situation is clearly different from
the perspective of companies (or the divisions of companies) 21 selling traditional cameras and the
products associated with them, than it is from the perspective of companies selling new technologies.
Whereas the former have an incentive to preserve existing routines bound up with the use of the
traditional technology and foster new ones that fortify it, the latter are more interested in how existing
routines can be leveraged, changed or substituted in a way that favours the new technology. We
consider each in turn, beginning with purveyors of traditional photography.
See ‘Has Kodak missed the moment?’, The Economist, December 30, 2003, for a commentary on the problems that incumbent
companies face in attempting to protect their traditional markets while at the same time expanding into digital.
21
23
Incumbent sellers of the equipment, consumables and services associated with traditional
photography appear to have attempted to deal with the digital threat in three broad ways. The first has
been to fortify the traditional technology, and thereby the use of film and processing materials
associated with it, by attempting to preserve existing consumer routines. This approach has taken
various forms, including introducing new equipment, standards and so on to sustain the old technology
(e.g. simplified film loading that appeared during the mid-90s, such as Fuji’s ‘drop in’ method and
Kodak’s film cassette); reinforcing stereotypical roles (e.g. promoting the mother as the family
archivist wedded to the familiar analogue technology); and finding new ways of organising existing
services so as to reduce the costs of using traditional technology (e.g. the introduction of ‘index prints’
by Fuji, which facilitated the reordering of prints in made-to-order sizes). The second approach, more
evident before traditional incumbents had committed to throwing in their lot with digital, was to
undermine the new technology by throwing doubt on its quality, cost, ease of use and so on. An
interesting example here is attempts to highlight problems surrounding the safety of storage, with
producers of film, paper, etc. feeding fears about possible obsolescence problems that might arise with
electronic storage media.22 Finally, the third route has been to accept the new technology and find
ways to increase demand for products supplied by traditional sellers (e.g. suppliers of photographic
paper attempting to encourage users to print more). A feature of all of the above strategies is that while
they are aimed at preserving a traditional technology in the face of the threat of being supplanted by the
new, they too involve innovation, be this on the product or the marketing/organisational side. Standing
still is not an option.
The challenge facing sellers of digital cameras and associated products has been at once to
wean existing consumers away from traditional photography by making (ideas about) digital more
attractive, to create alternative products, and to transform the world of users into one in which those
products become desirable and taken for granted. That is to say, the aim has been – and continues to be
– to create a world in which the routines associated with digital imaging as it evolves, are well-adapted
and become widely established. Again, companies appear to have adopted three broad strategies
towards this end. The first has been to introduce the new technology in a way that disturbs existing
rules and routines as little as possible, so as to avoid the effects of the kind of inertia and resistance to
change of consumer routines that we described above. Manufacturers have accordingly tended to go to
great lengths to make digital cameras look, feel and operate like their analogue cousins (consider the
more or less standard shape of most digital cameras, the synthetic digital click, for example, neither of
which are determined by the technology); 23 to incorporate familiar peripherals associated with the old
technology (e.g. telephoto lenses), and to leverage existing capabilities wherever possible. Indeed it is
only quite recently, namely only after conceptions of digital photography had become relatively widely
established, that camera manufacturers have begun producing digital cameras that look significantly
different from traditional cameras, and to embed digital cameras in devices that formerly had nothing
to do with photography, mobile phones, PDAs, and the like.
Ironically, Kodak ran a campaign in the late 1990s offering a Kodak picture CD ‘to get your pictures safely stored on a
compact’, to customers who were coming to them to have their 35mm or APS film developed.
23
Indeed there is nothing intrinsic to digital cameras that demands that their major components, the electronics, the lens and the
LCD, should all reside in the same self-contained box.
22
24
The second strategy has been to make a virtue of, or at worst downplay, the disturbance of
existing routines where this cannot be avoided There are at least two routes here. One, and which is
exemplified by the Kodak advert reproduced above, has been to focus squarely on ease of use relative
to the traditional technology, and to attempt to create and promote products that are as transparent and
user-friendly as possible. The other, and again, has been to emphasise the opportunities for making
more extensive use of prior investments in complementary technologies, the effectiveness of which is
largely taken for granted and where learning costs have already been incurred (the home PC and
printer, the web, and so on). Finally, the third strategy that companies have adopted has been the
obvious one of putting centre stage the benefits of the new. And here, as we have seen, the things that
been emphasised here range widely, from access to the new affordances, communication and
integration possibilities brought by digital imaging, through to having a larger role in the process of
creating photographs and the opportunity to be seen as technologically up to date or simply hip.
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