Nollywood subliminally told me to go into tech
Recently, I was studying the Technology Adoption Lifecycle model (Rogers, 2003; Moore, 1999). The model assumes there are five subsects of consumers, all with differing roles in the assimilation of technology. You find a small percentage as the innovators, followed by a slightly larger group, the early adopters. A chasm forms before you reach the early majority and the late majority, making up nearly seventy percent, and finally, with some hesitation, the laggards. The chasm is relevant in that those to the left of the chasm can imagine the future benefits of technology, and it reflects in their eagerness to adopt it. Those to the right are seen as more pragmatic and bound to reliability. Crossing that chasm is what puts you at the cusp of breaking into the mainstream.
Although it may not be considered chasm crossing, the BlackBerry was notable in creating the groundwork for the success of the iPhone, defining the concept of a smartphone before it really took precedent. The BlackBerry featured a mini keyboard and did away with the flip. It genuinely felt like you held the future, at least at the time. It was a handheld Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), and it brought together email, contacts, calendaring, and web browsing facilities as standard, with a built-in digital camera and music player.
The BlackBerry wasn't quite a status symbol globally as the iPhone was positioned, but in the West of Africa, Nigeria, it was a different case. The BlackBerry was an object of desire and appealed to the divide in Nigerian society. One might push back and say that BlackBerrys were a big deal everywhere, but Nollywood even went to the extent of producing a film called "Blackberry Babes," which touched on the elusive lives people led in an attempt to possess a BlackBerry. It's undeniable that Nigerians use phones as a status marker. I think this desire, both good and bad, honed in the groundbreaking nature of such technology, and even for myself as an impressionable teenager, it fed into the consumerist frenzy which, luckily, with age, has somewhat dissipated.
I believe it is important to speak about how revolutionary mobile phones have been. We're believed to be in a post-PC world, and I think this is particularly poignant for some parts of the world. We've reached a stage where a desktop or a laptop is not a necessity because the mobile outperforms in terms of intuition, range of services, and integrated software. In 2008, Mary Meeker predicted mobile internet use would surpass desktops by 2014, and present figures confirm that this was indeed the case. That's not to say they are completely eradicated. However, even with the mobiles valuable use, there's a desire that they will not simply bridge the gap or be in place of well-needed infrastructure. Let it be the innovators spirit that has pushed the mobile phone across that chasm that also makes Nigeria and Africa a viable platform for technological advancement and investment. For sure, the talent is there, and the world reaps the benefits annually from this most precious export.
