[lojban] Re: Official Statement- LLG Board approves new baseline policy

[sbelknap <sbelknap@UIC.EDU>]

On Wednesday, December 4, 2002, at 09:23  PM, John Cowan wrote:

sbelknap scripsit:
:My sentiments exactly. I believe lojbanistan has much to gain from 
:cooperating with Bob McIvor and the other remaining active Loglanders. The 
:remaining animosity of some lojbanistani has much of the flavor of the battle 
:of New Orleans.

There weren't near as many as there were a while ago, eh?

John-

Are you familiar with the Ryan & Gross study of the spread of innovation? (See 
Ryan, R., & Gross, N. (1943). The diffusion of hybrid seed corn in two Iowa 
communities. Rural Sociology, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 15-24. and also 
http://www.ifz.tu-graz.ac.at/sumacad/01/sa01_boudourides.pdf) This classic 
study of the diffusion of innovation studied the adoption of hybrid seed corn 
by farmers in Green County, Iowa between 1928 and 1941. The new hybrid seed 
corn was demonstrably superior in nearly all ways to locally grown seed corn. 
Of 259 farmers in the study, only a few had adopted the new seed corn by 1933. 
Here is how it went after that:

1934: 16 newbies
1935: 21 newbies
1936: 36 newbies
1937: 61 newbies
1938: 46 newbies
1939: 36 newbies
1940: 14 newbies
1941: 3   newbies (all but two of the original 259 were using the new hybrid 
seed corn)

Ryan and Gross divided the farmers into 5 groups: innovators, early adopters, 
early majority, late majority, and laggards. the early adopters were the 
opinion leaders who watched what the wild innovators were doing and adopted 
the successful practices. The early adopters then were the ones who influences 
the rest of the group to try the new method. The early majority watched the 
early adopters, the late majority watched the late adopters, and the lagggards 
brought up the tail end. Only the innovators relied on radio advertising, farm 
journals, or seed salesmen in making their decisions. Everbody else followed 
the example of a trusted group of peers.

JCB was an inventor, so he is not in one of Ryan and Gross's groups. Those who 
bought his books were innovators, but I believe nearly all of them abandoned 
Loglan as a failed experiment because no language community developed. We now 
have a language community, (though far too much of the conversation still 
occurs in English, mea maxima culpa). Thus, I believe that many of these 
Loglan innovators would rekindle their interest in Loglan/lojban if we were 
able to reach them. I'm not so interested in reaching what little remains of 
the TLI political structure, what I seek is to track down and recruit all 
those Loglan book buyers. I believe that if these persons became aware that 
there was a stable language community, we would be well on the way to 
developing a community of lojban speakers that speak about something other 
than lojban.

I have not changed my estimation of the number of these convertible sleeping 
Loglanders. I think it is about 500. Occasionally, I meet one on an airplane, 
at a conference, or in some online forum unrelated to lojban. I last met a 
sleeping Loglander 3 years ago at a lecture on the electronic medical record. 
He thought that Loglan was dead and had given up on it. Innovators are the 
seeds that will eventually form lojban clubs, give lojban courses, talk about 
lojban at the local Rotary Club, etc. It is foolish to ignore this 
possibility. Even if I am completely wrong, what harm can it do to expend a 
trivial amount of effort with a mailing to these book buyers?

-Steven