Wow am I surprised! Here I thought America and the rest of the world was in the middle of a technological and information/communication revolution. I thought millions and millions of us were steadily moving more and more on line—that we were all tied to the internet and usingit to transform every aspects of our lives.
Then I read some basic info trends on the Pew Internet site.
Pew Report
What an eye opener. We aren’t all rushing to open virtual businesses. We aren’t all publishing, networking, voting, dating and creating. According to the survey, most of us…..(drum roll here) use the internet for
E Mail.
That’s right. 54% of us check e mail everyday.
But only THREE PERCENT are auctioning/buying, TWO PERCENT are blogging and ONE PERCENT of us are doing those transformative things like downloading podcasts, selling products,
Using search engines, getting the news and checking the weather are three of the top four activities (all over 30 percent).
Hardly the exotic stuff I expected. We’re automating the stuff of everyday life.
There are tons of us getting directions (8 percent) making travel reservations (8 percent), playing games ( 9 percent) reading blogs or paying bills, social networking (nine percent), downloading music (6 percent) or checking sports scores (15 percent).
But I expected to find that big chunks of our society were making videos, creating businesses and maybe engaging in the important work of say, EDUCATION (only one percent).
More people look up medical ailments (five percent) than create content (four percent).
Heck, even the amount of pornography traffic has been overestimated and over covered (one percent).
Granted, some of the data is a year or two old so the number might be a bit higher in some areas. However, it’s hardly the revolutionary life changing all encompassing radical social change engaging we all have on our home desks—at least according to the media.
Is the Net making life easier. Yep. And at least for some, fun. Sure.
I use it for almost all of these things everyday. But you know, I still love a good walk on the beach, dinner out and a play or movie, not to mention a good book. And it looks like a pretty big chunk of the country still does too. We aren’t really all just blobs of flesh and brain tissue hooked to computers. Yet.
Interesting stuff. But it’s important to look at the methodology of the survey. If I had been asked all of these questions, I’d have to answer “no” to:
Check the weather
Visit a local, state or federal government website
Do any banking online
It’s not that I haven’t done these things plenty of times before — it’s just that I didn’t do them yesterday, as the survey asks.
I have to wonder how the results of this survey would differ if the question asked people if they had done these activities over the last week or month . . . and I also want you to observe that the results come from surveys taken in different years.
Still, I don’t disagree with your overall point, which is that this is surprising news.
Thanks for you’re post on the pew survey about internet usage — it was informative and surprising.I have a question. Who is the us in 54% of us (who check the email everyday). Is it America or America and the rest of the world. The reason I ask is because the numbers may seem more substantial when you take into account the population of the U.S. (280 million) — and the world population closing in on (6.8 billion). Pew is supposed to be an independent think tank with a good reputation but like the Profesor says the methods of the study are not known.
Another point I would like to make is that everyday people don’t feel comfortable transacting cash business or posting
blogs or downloading podcasts — that is for intellectuals and techno-savvy people. Before I took this class I didn’t know the correct definition of a blog and niether did anybody else whom I asked. We are still trying to find new and good uses for the home computer and the internet, but it is taking time.
I heard about a company that is making laptops cheap for 100 dollars that can run without electricity by a hand crank and can log onto the internet and be used by poor people in the third world.
Maybe what we are experiencing is the cutting edge of the technological free information revolution.
Don:
Only ONE percent are seling products? What about the great internet monster known as Ebay?
It’s not based on dollar volume but total number of people using the internet–in the hundreds of millions. So 1 percent is a pretty significant number. The survey has some interesting things in it, not to mention an unpublished margin of error (many surveys are +- 3 or 4% as a standard deviation). Anyway EBay’s volume to number of users ratio might be interesting to see…I’ll see if it’s out there anywhere.
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