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When people hear "Appalachia," stereotypes and even slurs often immediately jump to mind, words like "backwards," "ignorant," "hillbilly" or "yokel." But Appalachian attitudes about technology's role in daily life are extremely sophisticated—and turn out to be both insightful and useful in a technology-centric society.
[...] In a recent study, my colleagues and I used focus groups and interviews to explore how people use technology in rural Appalachia. These open-ended methods allow participants to discuss their experiences and opinions in their own terms. For instance, most technology surveys don't ask people why they don't own the latest phone or computer—they just assume people would if they could.
Those studies miss key insights our research was able to identify and explore. When we gave people a chance to tell their own stories about technology, we most often heard about two themes.
The first, which we called "resistance," appeared in people's doubts about the concept that more technology is always better. They also carefully considered whether the potential usefulness of new technologies was worth the privacy sacrifices inherently required to use them.
People also described their intentional choices about how much technology to use and for what purposes—as well as intentional choices not to use technology in some situations. We called this theme "navigation."
Source: https://theconversation.com/resisting-technology-appalachian-style-94245
(Score: 3, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Thursday April 05 2018, @12:16PM (5 children)
So in other words, they found a group of people who still have common sense.
That is sooo horrible! We have to get them to buy the latest crap regardless if they need it or not and turn then in to proper 'merican consumertards!
(Score: 2) by looorg on Thursday April 05 2018, @12:39PM (4 children)
Very much this. They seem to have found only sane people left. Instead of just believing that everything new in inherently better and more useful then something old and that we apparently need to jump on every new technology fad that comes around and that it will somehow bring meaning to our lives that didn't exist before.
That said how is wifi and cellservice in RURAL Appalachia, or just anywhere rural for that matter? It might not really be a super idea to use "the latest" if you can't get speedy and responsive service for it. I can only assume service out there is a bit on the bad side, lots of dense forests combined with high and long chains of mountains doesn't tend to do wonders for signal reception.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Thursday April 05 2018, @01:52PM (2 children)
No, you'll have to look elsewhere for sanity. [religionfacts.com]
(Score: 2) by looorg on Thursday April 05 2018, @02:43PM (1 child)
As far as I know the people that live in the Appalachian mountains are not Amish, but I guess I could be wrong on that. I don't really keep track of them or anything like that.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Thursday April 05 2018, @06:50PM
Sorry. The post followed a thread which was Amish-centric, and I was still thinking about that. Apparently a little too hard. :)
Mea culpa.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 05 2018, @05:24PM
The answer is it depends, and of course the next question is where does it depend?
For the small bit of Rural Appalachia I see on reunion visits, cell service is hit or miss depending upon how far outside of each small town you are. And even when in the towns that do have service, usually there is only one provider to choose from. So unless you subscribe to that one, you are SOL.
For WiFi, most of the hotels/motels do have wifi for guests. But finding wifi in random other businesses is also rather hit or miss.
So the reality is, limited cell service, generally centered around the larger towns, and limited access to public wifi in other locations.