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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 government recently noted that 54% of the population likes to eat.
Sheesh, you reckon it's popular?
Sent from your iPad.
We are some 80% in .se that has used the internet
and some 60% that does it on a regular basis.
Did I tell you we have digital cellnetworks and use
sms ALOT. etc. Been a while since the US was in the techno-fronteir?
This was not a flamebait. This was just to pointout
how utterly uninteresting statistics like that is.
- To understand recursion, we must first understand recursion -
...the online advertising revenue model collapsed, and the total content (fresh, updated content) has imploded to a fraction of what it was 2 years ago, with many sites that were vibrant not placeholders or shells.
I don't know if 80 000 000 people on AOL is really "on line". It's sad to see that as technolgy advances 'the people' remain in obscurity (ie.: in the hands of companies like AOL and MS) and it the comptres are still mystical boxes not to be tampered with. It makes me think that this headline in a dark ages newspaper would be: Church says God is popular.
--Manuel
"I hate quotations, tell me what you think"
The Internet isn't really that popular; someone at Microsoft just got confused about the subject of the poll, and sent out some email to the entire company claiming that the government was trying to measure the popularity of .NET.
Knowing how quickly our elected representatives recognise and take advantage of new technologies, how long before we get campaign ads as pop-under and flash ads, or spam? I realize there was some smearing going on in the last presidential primaries, via email, but I expect a bigger role for internet mediums in the upcoming presidential election, perhaps this years congressional elections. I can barely stand this stuff on the TV and radio, the deluge so relentless, how long before I'm hounded on the 'net, too?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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....
Though that number _includes_ the 33 million AOL users, I think...
So maybe the real number is somewhat less than half?
Seriously, it's obvious at this point that a large number of the population is online to some degree or another, just as it is obvious that broadband use has increased highly in the last couple of years (though not enough to stave off a slew of bankruptcies). The Internet has, for better or worse, gone from just being a playground for those "in the know" to a part of popular culture, with all the dumbing-down that goes along with the change. We just have to deal with it.
We're also probably getting close to the saturation point - I think there will always be about a quarter of the population that doesn't have or necessarily want anything to do with the Internet. So other than people moving to broadband for a few more years, I'd say the days of explosive growth are long gone.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
The U.S. Dept of Commerce reports that more than half of the nation is now online
;)
No wonder its so damn laggy today
Accoding the the article, your first post can now be read by 143+ million people. It's your 15 seconds of fame, take a bow. To bad you hadn't thought of something more meaningful than a quote from Kenneth Lay, just before Duncan jumped up and down and screamed in his ear, "Shread, shread like mad, shread like there's no tomorrow, because there isn't, shread!"
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
So is 143 million is 54% of the population then the total population is around 265 million, and given 2 million more apearing on the net every month, that is a monthly increase of approx three-quarters of a percent per month. After a bit of analasys this gives the disturbing figure that in about 195 years over 200% of americans will be on the internet.
Perhaps we should speed up the introduction if IPv6 to compensate for this.
:offtopic: A state of mind usually reserved for friday afternoons.
0101100101101111011101010110110101110101011100110
Conclusive proof that the internet is becoming all pervasive. It would also be nice, now, if the government could help facilitate future growth via funded expansion of shared infrastructure. Broadband access is apparently become less readily available and more costly, right at a time when demand for access is increasing. Just as there is a federal highway system, it would be nice to see a federally funded mega-sized inter-state backbone that would ensure bandwidth needs are met in future. The auto industry was the bellweather of the american economy for 50-75 years, but that industry was not responsible for funding the deployment of roads and highways. Similarly, software companies and internet services would greatly benefit from a shared, open infrastructure that ensures all Americans have access. Of course, I'm a Canadian so what do I know? ;)
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
Leave it to the US Government to state the obvious is some special report that they spent millions on.
Who cares.
He never claimed to have done so...
Best Slashdot Co
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.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
You're assuming it's linear ... it is possible that the 2M/month data is a linearized case of a more accurate statistical projection.
But then again, as we all know, 85.1% of all statistics are crap.
More people=more money=more infrastructure. Of course the old timers have been proclaiming "DEATH OF THE INTERNET! STORY AT 11" for years based on the same suppositions as yours. Having said that, pardoxically with the more people, the free content has largely dried up: You can't stream those Adcritic ads any more, and download sites have clamped shut or imposed limits, and just the general amount of broadband accessible content has diminished. I'd wager that the average Internet user downloads significantly less today than they did 2 years ago.
Maybe this is horror, not humor, but I must laugh here else I'll cry.
Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)
Yes, and the other 16.8% are highly dubious.
--
(if you're still looking for the point, it was back there, in the post. </sig>)
broadband users doubled in about a year then why are all the broadband companies dying? I'm not trolling. Just asking.
-- This is not a sig
It will be considered invasive, creeping Socialism (or Communism) by RW fringe groups and be shouted down at every corner. Like Flouride in water was during the middle of the last century.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
The story that Al Gore claimed to have invented the Internet has been thoroughly debunked by Phil Agre in http://commons.somewhere.com/rre/2000/RRE.Al.Gore. and.the.Inte.html
and
rebutted further later
That meme was a creation of Declan McCullagh, a "reporter" for Wired News who is politically a dogmatic Libertarian so extreme that he managed to get a book chapter using him as a poster-boy for Libertarian ideologues, and a different book chapter using him as Libertarian joke-fodder.
If you think this is flame-bait, the aspect of his fabricated story being a Liberatarian hit-piece on Al Gore was extensively discussed in a debunking by Salon
After Declan McCullagh was repeatedly taken to task for his hatchet-job, over more than year, by everyone who was there, from Dave Farberto Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf, Declan finally grudgingly retracted the "story"
But people still repeat it, because urban legends never die.
Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)
If I remember correctly, GWBjr lost the popular vote and only won the electoral college vote by a narrow margin. Though, according to the latest recount by the media, even that is in debate. :)
So Bush's art of simplicity is trickling down to government reports that "People Use Internet".
;)
Seriously... I voted for Bush, and think he's doing quite a good job (not perfect, but compared to slick willy... excellent).. it's titles like this that question his administration's competance, though
-- Is "Sig" copyrighted by www.sig.com?
In related news, the Government also declared that the Sky is Blue, Bill Gates is Rich, and that Governments spend money on obvious surveys.
Kind thoughts do not change the world
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."
This is good to know. This is a number that you need if you're thinking about Doing Something On The Internet - half the US can *possibly* get to you. This is not trivial info, though I doubt we had to wait for the Gummint to tell us this.
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?
If you hang around techie sites long enough, you'd think everyone who matters has it, and anyone who doesn't is a mouthbreathing fool. T'ain't so. Apparently upwards of 100 million first-world citizens get along just nicely, thank you very much without direct access to the net.
Though I get paid to deal with it on an hourly basis, I can easily see going back to 1970's time by removing my cell, laptop, fax, and voicemail, and pretty much not only living a full life and probably getting more of the 'real' life things done too.
Sounds vaguely luddite, but it's really only a reality check.
Of course, if I weren't online, I'd be muttering all this rant to the cat. Sad. Especially for the poor cat.
And remember - there are more houses with televisions than telephones, cuz you have to pay for the phone once it's in - and ditto^2 online access. Anyone have a good reason why an internet box of any sort would ever move up from third place?
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Analog phone data takes very little bandwidth. Plus, people don't want to use it continuously. It a resource that doesn't have an unlimited demand. Therefore, time-based multiplexing is easily possible.
By comparison, the internet is an unlimited demand resource - there will always be people who will use most (all) of their bandwidth part of the time. If it gets faster, they can store less on their computers.
But I still think that its caused by price-leading in the oglopoly who control internet access for most users.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Everyone knows that 82% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
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.
that 99% of these 54% are using Microsoft products to access the Internet.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Did the 'net get SlashDotted today?
Oh, maybe not; I think they forgot to include a URL for this Internet thing. I'll post the "root URL" here:
http://
Don't everybody visit at once.
-me
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
Declan McCullagh also lurked in the LiViD newsgroup during its early days, writing a wired story about "rampemt DVD piracy software" with the full knowledge that DeCSS and cssauth were being used to develop a GNU/Linux DVD player and that absolutely no pircacy was going on, anywhere (at that time). This was before burnable DVDs, before DivX, in short, before such piracy was even technically feasable even with easy decryption (without a $4000 DVD burner that could copy DVDs without decrypting them ... unlike later models following the start of the DeCSS court case). His actions were directly responsible for legal troubles by numerous early developers, some of whome were forced to drop out of the project and discontinue their work.
If you do not believe me, feel free to perus the LiViD mailing list archives. The entire ugly incident is well documented in the public record. His behavior was appalling and reprehensible, and very destructive to a number of free software volunteers. Yes, we now have free players galore, but at some great personal cost to a number of volunteers thanks to Declan's yellow journalistic tendencies.
What is even more interesting is the number of articles on slashdot that, when posted, mentioned Declan McCullagh as the author by name (effectively promoting his fame), in direct contrast to nearly every other article posted on slashdot then and now. Clearly, for a time at least, he had a cordial relationship with some influencial folks at slashdot despite his reprehensible behavior vis-avis the LiViD project, and despite posts and emails by myself and others trying to get the word out about his behavior wrt LiViD (and quite likely others). Hopefully this has changed, but for the public record, I feel it is important the free software enthusiasts know about this little chapter in LiViD's history, and the casualties and personal losses that resulted.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
and in other news the head of the FBI stated that "wrestling is fixed", and a former member of the baywatch cast was heard, while referring to Pamela Anderson, state that "they arn't real!".
I stole this Sig
Show me a 'meatspace' store where 100% of the US population has the ability to go into it, EVER, let alone any time and without leaving their home.
Unless you include Starbucks, nothing even comes close. Add the duplication and waste in setting up several thousand copies of the exact same store.. you're talking apples and oranges.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
are hopefully using the Internet to look at porn.
Being a computer geek is an act of terrorism, so you can't go looking for security notices. Working on Open Source is Unamerican, so you can't be off browsing CVS trees. Listening to Indy Artist X's music before buying tickets to their concert is Piracy, so you can't download MP3's either.
Looking at smut is about the only moral use of the Internet, according to the media.
"Look at me, I invented the stove!" -- Ben Franklin
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....
Let me guess.... you haven't been alive for very long.
Humans, on average, can survive a few days without water, a few weeks without food, and around 70 years without internet access.
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
Well, DUHHHHHHHHHHHHH! :)
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
Pamela Anderson's titties went back to being real some time ago.
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
Or haven't you noticed every politician using "God bless America" as a salutation?
Well, they do want to be (re-)elected. There's something to be said for P.R.
Opinion polls almost always find that a vast majority of Americans believe in God.
Which God? The Jewish God? The Christian God? The Catholic-Christian God? Yahweh? Jehova? Allah? The I-think-there's- something -out-there-so-I'll-just-check-yes God?
And remember the scene in Contact where Jody Foster doesn't get selected to visit the aliens (at first) because she doesn't believe in God, thereby making her unpopular?
In case you missed it, when Carl Sagan (a professed agnostic) wrote Contact he was trying to point out the negative effects of a culture where the majority expects that everybody should believe as they do, or else be looked down upon and treated with less respect. I'm not sure that's something we should be proud of.
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
Just as with anything else, I have the right to try to acquire Internet service.
The problem with calling "connectivity" a right is because it creates an obligation on someone else to provide it to you.
If someone is obligated to provide you with their labor, that is called slavery.
Freedom means that you might not get what you want all the time. That's your problem, you must provide for your own success. If you don't, and you loose "connectivity", don't blame someone else for your lack of foresight.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics