Technological change and users: An actor-network perspective on the digitalization of video surveillance
- Resource Type
- Authors
- Weaver, Benjamin; Lahtinen, Markus
- Source
- Subject
- actor-network
Economics and Business
security industry
Information Systems, Social aspects
technological change
video surveillance
communities of practice
- Language
- English
This paper discusses aspects of technological change and the path towards institutionalization of new innovations, with a focus on how users matter and are part of the co-construction of such change. An empirical example from the security industry is used to illustrate how two distinct phases in the analog-to-digital shift in video surveillance technology have had very different outcomes with respect to the pace and nature of user adoption. The notions of actor- networks and communities of practice are used to analyze the different user and industry reactions to the introduction of the digital video recorder (DVR) and the network video camera respectively. The analysis focus on how established industry socio-technical actor- networks encompassing users incumbent industry and technological artifacts can resist attempts of disruptive innovation technological change from powerful outside forces.