Dear AIR'ers - Ok, I think possibly this could be very similar to the "early adopter" curve that went around in the management circles in the 1980's. It is not technology specific. It states that the first 10% of adopters arrive 'early' to the technology, 70% arrive in the middle of the life of the technological innovation, 10% arrive at the end, 10% never get there, it looks something like a normal curve with 5% left in each tail. One paper that uses this adoption pattern (but hardly a communication type reference): Muth, R. M. and J. C. Hendee (1980). "Technology transfer and human behavior." Journal of Forestry: 141-144. The question then is to differentiate as to what are the appropriate timeframes for each technology, but of course, one could be fairly early to internet (1985) and not arrive at all with SMS (oh well). As far as internet in 1991, ok, that leaves out all the unix hackers. Oh well again. Cheers, Denise ===== "The distance between here and there is growing; and getting even larger as we speak" (S. S. Hall) Denise N. Rall, PhD student, School of EnvironSciMgmt, Southern Cross Uni, Lismore, NSW, 2480 Australia Phone +61-2-6624-8627 Fax +61-2-6624-8637 Office (Tuesdays) (02) 6620 3577 Mob 0438 233 344 http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/rsm/staff/pages/drall/index.html __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard http://antispam.yahoo.com/whatsnewfree