The Globe and Mail
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
PS: The Cultural Gap – also an explanation for the reluctant active use of the internet by academics?
SEE ALSO
Scott London: Understanding Change: The Dynamics of Social Transformation
Culture Change: An Introduction to the Processes
and Consequences of Culture Change
Social Change (Anthropology) – overview by Intute social science