Discerning Rejection of Technology

Technology is innate to modern society and primarily embodies humanintellect. It greatly influences development, societal functioning, and sociotechnicaltransitions. Rapid technological advancements, made possible with advancement inscience, human ingenuity, and competitive markets, provide human society with affordableand unlimited choice. A society can be viewed, with an individual as the fundamentalunit, or as a community, or state/nation. In one view, sustainability can be viewedthrough a matrix of societal, economic, and environmental configurations associated withthe three societal levels. Technological advancement and complexity can either remainsimple and amenable to the user or, as emerging in recent years, may daunt the user tokeep away. While the phenomenon of technology adoption (acceptance) in society has beenwell appreciated, the increasingly characteristic phenomenon of technology rejection isyet to be understood and studied. Technology rejection is not merely a negation of itsacceptance, and hence requires to be discerned carefully. Rejection also does not implyin its totality, but varies in terms of its kind and/or intensiveness. While rejectionis discernable at all these three levels of society, this study remains focused at thelevel of the user (individual). It attempts to discern rejection of technology anddiscusses its distinctness from technology acceptance through an exhaustive literaturestudy. The article initially discusses the technology–society nexus and provides apreliminary technology–user interface model leading to a detailed discussion into thedeterminants of technology rejection