For those unfamiliar, a good framework for thinking about these choices is the Crossing the Chasm model. A brief summary: you can divide people up into innovators (will try new tech because it's shiny), early adopters (will try new tech because they are willing to work to gain a major advantage), early majority (will use the new thing if it's better, safe, and easy), late majority (will use the new thing if everybody else is), and laggards (death before novelty). The "chasm" bit of the title is that a lot of tech dies between early adopters and early majority because both the product and the marketing have to change to suit the new audience.

I think a "why the shiny thing is unsafe" essay is reasonable from two groups: 1) early majority types telling other early majority types that no, tech X isn't ready for them yet; and 2) people who have been early adopters for other tech, and are investigating whether their particular needs match the benefits of this tech.

I like this essay, and I think it's analysis of people self-justifying is really good. But I think it's a little over-contemptuous of people going with the herd. Animals herd for a reason: there's safety in numbers.

By nature, I'm not herd-oriented. E.g., I'm typing this on a Linux laptop. And when Raganwald was selling Macs, I was doing NeXT development, because it was clearly better tech than PCs, and also way better than Macs. I felt pretty smug, and we wrote some great software. But in a practical sense it was a stupid choice: NeXT only got uptake in a few niche markets, and Jobs promptly fucked all of those people over when he reclaimed his throne at Apple. Commercially, all of the people who chose Windows-based systems over the NeXT platform made the right choice.

If you want to reach the herd, I think you have to, as Crossing the Chasm says, use the innovators and the early adopters to build a beachhead. So yes, don't sell your novel tech to the early majority; they won't buy it. But that's temporary. Dominance among the innovators gives you access to the early adopters. Dominance among the early adopters gives you access to the early majority.