Technological development often comes before the social, cultural, and economic configurations that support and interact with the technology. Mass Communication Media specifically: newspapers, radio, television, and movies; often precede the development of similar communications techniques in the field of higher education. Going back in time, 16mm training films were the direct result of technology developed and expanded by the Entertainment Industry in the 1920s. Movies brought visual learning into the schools. Further, the introduction of video technology was a direct result of the widespread use television for entertainment in the news.
Often there is a conflict in the marketplace when it comes to the diffusion and adoption of technology. An excellent example of this is the introduction of videocassette technology to the home consumer market. Sony developed the Betamax and U-Matic videocassette formats.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betamax
Sony brought this new, breakthrough technology onto the market in 1975. Shortly thereafter in 1976, Universal City Studios and the Walt Disney company brought suit against Sony for the marketing and distribution of video cassette technology.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betamax_case
The Betamax could readily record and redistribute off air or cable television signals the content copyright holders were taken off balance by this new technology.
The negative reaction to new technology is often, simply the shellshocked reaction of major paradigm shift. Ironically, within a few years Disney, Universal Studios, and your team industry were generating considerable cash flow by selling prerecorded the VHS video cassette tapes in the home consumer market
In similar fashion with new technologies are introduced higher education, particularly if they are very comprehensive and all inclusive, considerable reaction from the existing status quo institutions can be generated.
In the 1950s and 60s the Ford foundation funded extensive studies on the use of television and instruction. The concept was to select a master teacher, capture what shows on videotape and then rebroadcast those lectures to amass educational audience.
However, this technological breakthrough was not sustained or integrated into ongoing educational practice.
From Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPATI
“The Midwest Program on Airborne Television Instruction (MPATI) was a special broadcasting initiative designed to broadcast educational television programming to schools, especially in areas where local educational television stations are either hard to receive or unavailable.
From 1961 through 1968, MPATI’s programming broadcast from two DC-6AB aircraft based at the Purdue University Airport in West Lafayette, Indiana, using a broadcasting technique known as Stratovision.
The undertaking began as a three-year experiment in 1960, with MPATI organizing, producing, and broadcasting instructional television with seed money from the Ford Foundation. This was a nonprofit organization of educators and television producers that pioneered instructional television for enriching education in public schools throughout the midwest. This was in times prior to the advent of satellite television transmission. By 1963, MPATI moved into its second phase where it relied totally on membership fees but it was never financially stable. MPATI found it difficult to get enough member schools to finance the organization. In its third reorganization, MPATI, unable to meet its expenses through membership fees, ceased producing and broadcasting courses in 1968 and became a tape library.”
Henry J. Burnett 