What Nominull said. Let us also not forget that it's not just the wealthy and the powerful that choose to use new technology (availability is another issue that I'd think should be squarely in economics court. May be Prof. Robin Hanson already has some posts on that?). Often times, it's the people who are generally enterprising that adopt new technologies because they see efficiency gains in doing so.

I've been reading Elizer's posts for about 2 months now and I am completely hooked! I can't find enough time to catch up (although I work in IT and I do have free time ;-)