Diffusion of Ideas

The Diffusion of Ideas is a theory/graph that displays the lifetimes of certain ideas, pieces of technology, and more. I will be putting the television into this graph to explain its history. The graph moves from left to right, showing different categories for a given thing's life over the course of time. 

On the far left side of the graph is the pioneers. The television's pioneers were its creators like Philo Taylor Farnsworth, John Logie Baird, and more. Additionally, the earliest users and consumers of television could fall into this category. Moving right, the next category is early adopters. This category contains the users of the television once it started to gain some traction and uptaking popularity among the public. This can reasonably be estimated to have happened with the TV around the 1940's, at least in my opinion. Next is the early majority. The early majority phase occurred when the majority of the public began to adopt TV use into everyday life and most families possessed a television. I would say this tipping point appeared to have been reached around the 1960's. Next is the late adopters. The late adopters period was when the TV had solidified its place in society and was starting to mature. This likely happened around the 1990's or early 2000's. Finally, the laggard category contains the remaining people who have still never bought a television. This could be for many reasons, such as simple stubbornness or lack of funds. In the laggard category, the market for the TV has finally saturated and the level of TV ownership has probably reached its peak. While more TV's will continue to be made and bought, there will always be the group of laggards who will never buy one.

The Diffusion of Ideas Theory is one that proves useful in tracking the lifespan of virtually anything you can think of. Politics, ideas, creations, trends, etc. can all be visually inspected using it. This is why it is a helpful and important tool to employ.