How do technologies and services become indispensable?

Well I am not about to give you a recipe, but lets consider what happens to technologies in order for them to become indispensable. That is, these technologies must be integrated into the process of daily living - the everyday routines of getting things done, getting through the day and making self. The goal of much research in the HCI community is not just on developing innovating concepts or understanding the role of technology in everyday life, we are also aiming at changing everyday behavior or weaving technologies into the part of the everyday. Admit it, who wouldn't want to design the beginnings of the next ipod, invent the next twitter, skype or sms service, design a better facebook that is just as popular worldwide.

Sometimes technologies take over our lives, becoming indispensable to everyday functioning - imagine loosing access to you mobile phone or never again having access to the Internet? The world would radically change for you, wouldn't it?

There are other technologies though that we like to use, and find them certainly entertaining or even at times useful, but if tomorrow we were to wake up and find them missing, it wouldn't be the end of the world. In fact, we wouldn't do much more than shrug and move on. So far when we talk about technology being indispensable - we make the assumption that this is the case for all users. Logically though, it would seem to be obvious that there are differences between people when they say that technology is indispensable and when they don't much care whether it might vanish tomorrow. In my data I have three technological constructs - mobile phones, the internet and social network sites. I have asked people how they would feel if they were to wake up tomorrow and find each of these missing. The answers were as surprising as they were predictable. Would you be shocked to find out that most people could not imagine their world without mobile phones (though some could), about two thirds felt the world would go back to the dark ages if they were to loose access to the Internet (though a third couldn't care less) and that the vast majority felt they wouldn't be loosing all that much if SNSs were to vanish.

Ok, the first two were predictable. The people that didn't care for these never really "took" to them in the first place. The last one though, the SNSs, was a bit of a shocker because even the people who used the services frequently, those that had just talked my ear off about the wonders of reconnecting with former classmates or long lost friends, weren't bothered much. They shrugged and many even said they might then have more time to do other things - like meet people in person instead. There were a few that said their lives would have to be altered because they would loose an important daily tool, but these were few. What was the difference?  How can this be if we take all of Facebook research at face value? SNS use is seen as positive and useful and increasing social capital and all that, and yet when asked to consider a sudden loss of the service, most users I've spoken you just shrug it off?????

Caveat of course - my research was conducted in places outside the Western world and my respondents were on average a decade or two older than the college students most research has considered so far (although Burke et al. work looks at random selections of FB users, if the age-range is slanted toward younger users and the sample is constrained by US-based users, the sample would nevertheless have a prevalence of users between 20 and 35).

Yet I think the things I am finding are useful for thinking what it is that seems to accompany integration into daily life and a particular technology becoming "indispensable" and when technologies remain on the periphery of life despite fulfilling useful functions. I can't really answer this definitively, but I can do a good start on that... we shall see, time to go ask the data what IT thinks on the topic.