Slashdot Mirror
Internet Use Grows to 69 Percent of US Adults
NickABusey writes "According to Harris Interactive, more than two-thirds, or 69 percent of American adults were internet users last year. This is up from only 56 percent in 1999 and a measley 9 percent in 1995. Perhaps more noteworthy is the increase in users with high-speed Internet connections. In 2001 is was 22 percent, now it is up to 37 percent."
Is it suprising that high speed use increased so much? AOHell is offering it now, and in this area, SBC DSL is like $2 more a month than plain old AOHell dialup. This is what I expected to happen.
You should use AdiumX on your Mac.
what if it declines to below 50%?
Or reading and posting on slashdot, but yeah, I see your point.
Here's a point for you to consider: who judges what use is use rather than just fiddling around?
The other interesting bit is how much of this 'use' happens at work...
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Most of these people probably do not use the Internet for something truly worthwhile.
100% of those polled when informed of your response replied:
And who the hell is this guy to tell us what is "worth while"?
Sent from your iPad.
I think it's rather naive to say you get your news from NY Times, AP, Slashdot, etc. rather than biased sources like Fox. ALL news sources of some degree of bias. If you think a news source is un-biased, that just means you agree with whatever bias they demonstrate.
I find it helpful to get news from a variety of sources of all types. The most interesting comparison to me is to see what stories are not covered by a news outlet.
Ranger96
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.-Ecclesiastes 1:9
Some people use their television to keep abreast of current affairs and learn about the world around them. Others use it to watch sitcoms, soaps, and/or game shows (and, of course, porn). The degree of market penetration of the television would not be where it is today if it had been only seen as a medium for education and news. Instead, the entertainment side is what drew the average Joe Sixpack.
Likewise, some of us utilize the Internet for research and keeping abreast of current affairs. Others use it to chat, download files, and play games. We wouldn't see the market penetration we have here without those kinds of features - the entertainment sector, you could say.
Without the housewife chatting with her pals, the kids playing games online, and the hubby downloading his porn, we may not have seen any push to get high-speed lines installed in many areas.
I was taking one day at a time, but then several days got together and ambushed me. (from a Rhymes with Orange comic)
But for all this marketing-driven drivel, it seems that little substance has been added to the internet. Think about how much text-based content you could download, compared to the fancy ill-designed un-navigatable front page so many companies use now.
It's symbiotic. More people get high-speed to see the pretty pictures, and more companies use pretty pictures to appease the high-speed people.
However, who are we to judge? My grandmother just turned 82 this year. Her husband also just passed away. I got her a computer and taught her to use the Internet. Right now she knows how to send email, chat over MSN, do her banking, and perform simple google searches. That's all. She isn't churning out homegrown linux apps or discussing religion on usenet, in fact, I'm quite sure she couldn't change the resolution on her monitor. However, it's her lifeline to the outside world. It's given her a reason to not just give up on life.
So, what I'm trying to say that the beauty of the Internet is how it can be so many different things to so many different people.
I always save my last mod point to mod up a good troll. You people are too serious.
Is it a problem that people used movable type to read Richardson's "Pamela" rather than the Bible?
Is it a problem that people went to the movies to watch Rudolph Valentino kiss Theda Bara instead of "Greed?"
Is it a problem that people used radio to listen to Amos 'n Andy rather than to the speeches of great statesmen?
Is it a problem that people used advances in color printing technology to subscribe to "Playboy" rather than "American Heritage?"
Is it a problem that people used vinyl LP's to listen to Elvis Presley albums instead of "Die Meistersinger von Nurnburg?"
Is it a problem that people used cable TV to watch MTV instead of C-SPAN?
Because, if these are problems... boy, have we got problems.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
...69 percent of American adults were internet users last year. This is up from only 56 percent in 1999 and a measley 9 percent in 1995.
:P
Sounds to me like the non-adults using the net in '95 have grown up and are now counted as adults.
Jesus Christ, come off your high-horse.
The Internet is fantastic. It has changed my life too: I have made friends over the Internet; I have the career I have because I fell in love with web design; I started two online magazines; and I spend probably two hours per day reading news and commentary from around the world. It still blows my mind how much better informed I can be thanks to the fact that I can read blogs from Iran, newspapers from India, etc.
But I also use the Internet to forward silly emails, chat mindlessly with peers, to search for pornography, and download crappy quality music files. In other words, to have fun.
It's great to be engaged intellectually with things that interest you, but it's also a fundamental human right to goof off.
No matter what technologies we invent, not everyone is going to want to program, read the news all day, or found a business. People have other interests, and that's fine.
Listen, I'm horrible at sports, I don't know the first thing about plumbing, I have no idea how to fix a car, and I'd rather buy take-out than learn to cook. Does this make me a bad person? Am I a lesser person because I am not engaged enough to learn how a car works? No, of course not! It just means that I have different interests from others, and I should be able to follow my interests just as much as they can follow theirs.
Note 1: Your case would be a lot more convincing if you didn't make it while posting to Slashdot! Shouldn't you be coding or informing yourself, rather than goofing off?
Note 2: Your case would also be a lot more convincing if you didn't make the argument that the Internet is a failure because it hasn't shown everyone that the Republicans are bad. One of the great advantages for me of the Internet is that it has expanded my news sources past the traditional left-wing sources that I read on paper (like the New York Times) to centrist (Washington Post) and conservative sources (like the National Review and Weekly Standard). I've become more, not less conservative, as the result of reading the Internet. It is objectively true that the Internet expands the range of sources we have our fingertips, but it is extremely subjective to say that having access to more sources makes you more liberal.
I think it's rather naive to say you get your news from NY Times, AP, Slashdot, etc. rather than biased sources like Fox. ALL news sources of some degree of bias. If you think a news source is un-biased, that just means you agree with whatever bias they demonstrate.
Well said. I almost coughed up my coke when I read the grandparent's assertion that he is getting unbiased news and then proceeds to list a number of American-centric news sources.
Ranger96 is right: all news has some bias. The only thing you can really do is to read news from several widly different sources. And consider including some non-US sources of info such as Al-Jazeera and the BBC. I'm sure someone will complain that Al-Jazeera is nothing more than a hate-mongering rag but the fact of the matter is that a large portion of the Arab world listens to it. If you want to understand the world, you'd better know what other people are reading because it will shape their worldview.
The most interesting comparison to me is to see what stories are not covered by a news outlet.
That's true but the only way you find out about these articles is through the 'activist' websites of the issue that got ignored. And let's face it: those aren't exactly unbiased sources of info either. I think what you have to do is get as much info as possible and then use some good old fashioned critical thinking to figure out what's REALLY going on. And that's admittedly pretty tough.
GMD
watch this
Within those paragraphs, there was a nugget of truth.
Instead of turning on the 5:00 news report, most of us pick and choose who we go to for our news.
I do not think that your assertion that FOX News is any more biased than the NY Times is correct. It is ignorant and naive to think that any newsmedia is objective.
The Europeans have known this for years; what is wrong with the Americans that we have this notion that the press is somehow objective (or should be objective)?
Is Slashdot objective? No! But, we read it because we like it and it entertains us. Same thing with the newsmedia.
You now have the ability to pick what you want, when you want it, how you want it, from the perspective you want, etc.
News has become a commodity and the means of producing it have diversified.
Who cares if they use it for anything useful? The more Americans (or Canadians, in my case) that are using the internet, the more companies are going to decide providing internet service is lucrative, the cheaper my internet service is going to get. "Useful" is a pretty loaded term anyway. Chatting and emailing frivolous messages can be useful, just to stay connected to people we wouldn't talk to otherwise. Downloading pornography is useful in that it provides a much more discreet way to obtain it, thereby reducing seedy looking porn shops that, typically, aren't adding much the city landscape. The downloading of music is insanely useful to me (at least it was, until EMusic effectively shut down). I also use the internet to read news and teach myself how to code in various languages, but I don't think these are the things that define "usefulness". If indeed our kids' test scores are dropping along with our standards (which I don't see happening, but maybe you have some insight that I don't), maybe it has more to do with their home situation, as opposed to the 9 hours a week or so that they spend online.
"Now gluttony and exploitation serves eight!" - TV's Frank
When fabrications appear in the Times, we find out about them first from the Times' open admissions and internal investigations.
When fabrications appear on Fox News, we find out about them (if we do at all) from sources other than Fox.
This distinction is to the Times' credit, and speaks to its greater value of journalistic integrity.
"Skill shows through where genius wears thin." -Wittgenstein || Religion: uniting aviation and architecture.
One way to use the internet more is to develop hopefully free uses (free voip) applications and applications where you can interface your windoz and linux boxes to all the other items in your house to the internet...it would be nice also, if people would complain that they can't have their machines serve as web servers themselves..doesn't the new internet standard do this?
An interesting point of view, but... so what? 99% of households in the US have a television receiver and access to programming. Most of those people do not use their television exclusively for something truly worthwhile. 97% of households in the US have telephone service. Most of those people do not use their telephone exclusively for something truly worthwhile. A similar percentage of households live within reasonable distance of a public library. Same "problem". Everyone has access to USPS service. Same "problem".
It's a communications medium. Some people will use it exclusively for worthwhile endeavors, some will use it exclusively for silly things, most will use it for some combination of the two. There's also the individual perspective to consider -- exchanging silly e-mails with my elderly mother is "worthwhile" to both of us.
All news sources are biased. Ny Times and AP have a democrate leaning, Fox has a republican one. Degrees are there over course, I won't argue that. However you are presenting things as if you don't question AP and NyTimes, and that is dangerious. Everyone has an agenda, and it is impossibal to avoid it. There is no way to be unbiased, not presenting a fringe side is biased, while presenting it may give it far too much credit.
If the above are biases you can live with, that is just fine, but always remember your thinking is influenced by them. Keep your mind open that.
There is no such thing as an un-biased news source. It's a nice ideal, but in practice, they're ALL BIASED.
Every last one of 'em!
Trick is to recognize the bias and THINK about what is being said. Don't just swallow whatever crap you are being fed, by ANY media outlet. Think for yourself, and don't just read/watch/listed to the news outlets that make you feel better about your own opinion. Open your eyes, and use your very own brain to filter the obvious garbage out of the (admittedly garbage-laden) stream of news.