Cultural lag is the term first coined by anthropologists to describe the gap between an invention and society's ability to actually use it. It took about 50 years for the typewriter to displace the pen. When electricity first came to my father's Cape Breton village in the 1930s, it was viewed with distrust and adopted by few. But cultural lag is not just about machinery and inventions, it is also about ideas. >> continue (link updated with copy, already removed from the web!!!)
PS: The Cultural Gap - also an explanation for the reluctant active use of the internet by academics?