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Govt Says: Internet Is Popular
michaeld writes "The U.S. Dept of Commerce reports that more than half of the nation is now online. In
September 2001, 143 million Americans (54%
of population) were using the Internet -- an
increase of 26 million in thirteen months. 2 million more go online each month. Between August 2000 and September 2001, residential
use of high-speed, broadband service doubled--from about
4 to 11 percent of all individuals, and from 11 to 20
percent of Internet users. ZDNet has commentary as does Reuters, while the government has the Full report."
The interesting thing to me is the extent to which Internet connectivity is (rightly) viewed as an unsupportable luxury in so many households. What I hope to see in the near future is the "normalization" of internet service, to the point where it is included as part of your utility bill. The government could help this along by promoting the idea of, and provideing incentives for, Internet access as a basic right on the level of shelter and food. It's a fascinating time to be alive....
With the same logic, George Bush jr. won the election by a landslide.
54% is nothing.
The subject should read "Almost half of the US population have yet to discover the Internet".
Leave it to the US Government to state the obvious is some special report that they spent millions on.
Who cares.
A non-trivial proportion of those people get their internet access via 56k dial-up modems, and certainly their surfing experience would be vastly better with a broadband connection. In addition, 46% of Americans do not yet have access to the internet. While with most forms of technology, not everyone wants to get online, I'd wager that a fair portion of that 46% would like to learn how.
I think there are several things that we as the richest nation on Earth should focus on going forward:
1. Making internet access available to those in the remaining 46% who cannot afford but wish to have access. Perhaps a large campaign to recycle used computers and 56k modems and then donate them along with free monthly access to poor people would be a good start.
2. Improve the broadband experience for those who have gone through it thus far. By this I mean a concerted effort to reduce the delays in getting DSL service and the fiascos related to the @home collapse.
3. Make broadband live up to its claims. Currently, many if not most cable modem users suffer from network congestion and slower-than-advertised download speeds. For me personally, while still much faster than a modem, the frustration I have in the evening when things seem to move at a snail's pace make me yearn for a modem; at least then I can't complain about the service. Probably the best solution is a two-tiered pricing scheme in which light users pay a lower monthly fee but are guaranteed a speed of, say, 768kbps down and in which heavy users (say, over 2 gigs a month) pay a much higher fee. There is little doubt that a small proportion of broadband users slow down cable networks for everyone; and they should have to pay for their heavy usage.
4. Do everything possible to support open standards on the internet. In other words, make web pages browser-agnostic. Avoid using proprietary services such as Microsoft's .NET offerings until the protocols are publicly known and other software vendors (or open source providers) have had a chance to develop products with a compatible feature set.
5. Do not use Microsoft .doc and .xls formats as the basis for document interchange. Not everyone uses Microsoft products, and because of their proprietary nature other software packages cannot offer 100% portability. If a document does not need to be modified, use a PDF file; if it does, use RTF or some other standards-based document type that can be processed by other software. For spreadsheets, use a basic CSV format if it is sufficient or use WK1, which all spreadsheet packages can handle.
Enough rambling. Time for breakfast.
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comptres [sic] are still mystical boxes not to be tampered with
Do you have to be able to tamper with your computer in order to be online? Do you have to know how to use Gopher, FTP, Newsgroups, and Telnet to be online?
How about another approach? Do I have to be a musician to enjoy music? Do I have to be a chef to enjoy food? Do I have to be a mechanic to drive my car? Do I have to hunt if I want to eat meat? Do I have to be a carpenter to sit on my chair?
I think you get the idea. Just because people are not technically inclined it does not make them any less online. Your elitist attitude will not serve you well when dealing with regular people.
But I will say that: knowing how your car works can make driving a more enjoyable experience, knowing how to cook can make dining a more enjoyable experience, knowing carpentry can help you appreciate the work that went into the chair you are sitting (and perhaps appreciate it more).
I think that knowing more about the technical side, even if not being a guru - just being a step above "Duh...", can make computing a more enjoyable experience. I think people who blindly use MS (and Mac) and AOL, for example, may be missing out - they may not realize the potential that their computers and the internet are actually offering them. They're living their computing lives with blinders on.
Before anyone jumps on me, note that I DID NOT say that if you use MS or MacOS or AOL that you are NOT realizing what more you can do, I'm saying there are a good number of people who aren't.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
I sat down the other day and thought about the internet and its part in my life and I realised, maybe for the first time, how utterly indispensible its become. I mean, its the first invention or "fad" in my lifetime that has generated interest and worked its way into my life in such a way that I would genuinely have difficulty if it was taken away. Nothing else has done this: not sega game consoles, or compact disks, or satellite tv or whatever.
Its in everypart of my life: I communicate with it, I play on it, I shop on it, I learn from it, I work with it.
It is uniquely useful - you can learn entire programming languages, and probably spoken languages, from deja. The other day I found a page which listed streaming russian tv stations for my homesick wife. Almost any piece of information you can think of is a google search away. And you can even publish your own brand of idiocy for (potentially) every person on the planet to read!! Good god. The idea of life without the internet frightens me...
Is there any wonder its becoming so popular.
http://www.davetansley.com - you proba
At least 90% of the people that I know use the internet. I'm sure many of you would say the same. I think it would therefore be logical to conclude that there must be a number of communities in the US where 10% or less of the people use the internet.
If we want to make further gains in percentage connectivity, it would probably be useful to focus on these communities where internet use is virtually nonexistent.
"If I could live to be several hundred
I could take a walk and really wander, really wonder."
It costs so much because it's expensive to deliver. Imagine, for a moment, that you're a cable company that wants to provide high-speed Internet services. You'll probably use an ATM switch for your backbone connection - $1.5 - $2 million (US). You'll either need to run fibre optic cable to other cities that you serve to form your backbone, or pay mega-bucks for a peering agreement with an upstream provider. What's that? You mean, you want reliable service? Well, then you're going to have to pony up double for a redundant connection.
Next, you need to fan out the traffic across the entire city that you service. These days you probably would go with Gigabit Ethernet - figure on about $50K (US) per switch. BTW - you will need anywhere from 5 - 20 of them, depending on the market you are in. I guess we are going to have to actually connect them together as well - figure on more fibre.
Well, by now, you have a pile of horrendously expensive equipment, along with a few spools of fibre optic cable. You are going to have to pay someone to install it all for you (unless you can find technicians that work for free. All the ones I've met have this strange obsession with paying the mortgage and feeding their families). You will also need an overpaid network manager to oversee the whole mess once it gets going. What's that? Ah yes - you bring up a very good point. Who do your customers call when they have problems? You can't let them talk the the network manager - he tends to be quite cranky and he'll piss off more customers than he helps (from his viewpoint, the fewer customers, the more bandwidth left for him). You are going to have to put in a call centre, staffed with people who like to spend lots of time on the phone telling other people to reset their cable modems. (A side benefit is that the percentage of attractive people in the call centre population tends to be higher that other occupations, but don't you dare let on that you know this, or you will have legal expenses to add the the list).
There are a few more items to add to your list - like a building to put your people and equipment in, but I hope you get my point. Internet access (fast and slow) is expensive to provide. It requires a much more complex infrastructure to support than the comparatively simple and stupid telephone. The industry is still in the growth phase - meaning that someone is going to have to pay to continuously add expanded capacity to the network. In a free market, capitalist economy, that person would be the customer. (IMHO it's better than the alternative, but that's a different discussion) You can compare this with the phone network, which, for the most part, is past the growth phase and is in the maintenance phase. You phone bill basically goes toward fixing parts of the phone infrastructure that breaks.
I'm not an elitist. Far from it actually. The first time I saw the nonsense about the digital divide I was furious. Just another way for the government to spend my money on something that people will vandalize and not care for. If you don't work for it, you don't value it.
;)
I'm sorry but computers are not a necessity. I see Internet Access like I do Cable. Its nice but you don't need it to survive. I work for a local ISP and I sure as hell don't want the government getting involved in how we do our pricing/marketing/etc. And if I had to help every idiot on the planet I wouldn't do this job. Computers knowledge doesn't seem to correspond to income level. I've even met Cisco Engineers who were stumped by a dialup connection. I've had problems with every ethnic group out there. Foreign born and made in America. Age has some importance but not much. At least older people listen to you and will talk to you!! The only group I can swear seems to have NO brain at all are liberal arts majors still in college. These are the same people screaming for internet access for all because they feel guilty that they can afford it.
I grew up poor. I'm not afraid to talk about that. And my only access to computers (Macs and Apple IIs) was at school until 1992 when my engineer uncle gave us his 1981 IBM PC after he bought a 386. It was upgraded as much as you could. We had a 300 baud modem that we used to call the local bbs and did email with it. I did all my high school math assignments on the computer by writing the programs in basic. This was allowed as you had to know how the formula worked in order to write the program for it. I just had to submit the program with my homework and one problem done by hand. My parents saved up and bought a 486 almost 2 years later. The relic was given to a friend of mine who was also in a bad financial place. He's now a Computer Animator and finished school a few years ago. Apparently the computer was better for him than me cause I'm still working through school.
If a private, non-profit were to start up and refurbish old computers and give them away, I'd definately volunteer my time/money/effort for them. Just don't use my tax dollars to fix something that not only isn't broken but doesn't exist.
Frinstance - you want to open a bookstore. 50% of the people you want to sell to can click into your store. 100% of the people can head thru the door of a meatspace store. Your call. Jeff? Jeff? Anyone? Anyone?
But, what percentage lives close enough to actually bother to head to your store? 1%? Less? What percentage of internet users is bothered about how far away the .com store is (or even if it's in the same country)?
How about another approach? Do I have to be a musician to enjoy music? .... Do I have to be a carpenter to sit on my chair? "
That is just rethorics, we all know that the answer is of course not. But is it helpful to have musical education to appreciate music, yes. Is it important to know the basics of how your car works so you do't get ripped off by a mechanic: yes.
I don't believe in being elitist (nor in judging people by a single post of being one!) I belive in KNOWLEDGE, I belive that if we all have to learn to read and to write and to how to use a car and how to deal with other people and how to behave in specifuc situations we all have potential to learn.
And big institutions depend on the limited knowledge of the indivudal. That is why each time i stumble with a person that needs help with a PC, insetad of just fixing the problen i try to teach them not only how i did it but WHY the problem occurred. That's why each time I reply to a post attacking my character I try to be polite and not judge the other person at the end of the line. PS I _volunteer_ at a local high school as the tech administrator and i do training for teachers, just so you know more about myself before making up your mind....
--Manuel
"I hate quotations, tell me what you think"