The Digital Differences In Americans

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The Digital Differences In Americans

Posted by samzenpus on Sunday April 15, 2012 @05:41AM from the no-surfing dept.

antdude writes "When the Pew Internet Project first studied the role of the internet in American life, there were big differences between those who were using the internet and those who weren't. Today, differences in internet access still exist, especially when it comes to access to high-speed broadband at home. From the article: 'Virtually every U.S. household with an annual income over $75,000 is online, but that’s only true for 63% of adults who live in a household with an annual income under $30,000. The numbers look quite similar for different education levels: 94% of adults with post-graduate degrees are online, but 57% of those without high school diplomas remain offline. Beside the obvious economic barriers to entry, though, the Pew poll also found that half of those who don’t go online do so because they just don’t think “the Internet is relevant to them.” One in five of those who are not online today think that they just don’t know enough about technology to use the Internet on their own.'"

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What a surprise! by memoreks · 2012-04-15 05:42 · Score: 4, Funny

People earning less cash can afford less things! Who'da thought it?
1. Re:What a surprise! by spire3661 · 2012-04-15 06:01 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Actually yes it is a big deal. After heat, internet is #1 need in the modern age. You can run a workstation, router and modem easily from solar. Maybe not all day, but enough to get a day of schooling in. I dont think you understand the importance of the internet in every home. EVERY HOUSE should have the option for affordable or free internet, its that important.
  
  --
  Good-bye
2. Re:What a surprise! by JoeMerchant · 2012-04-15 06:09 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Actually yes it is a big deal. After heat, internet is #1 need in the modern age.
  So, make sure to recycle those old P4 desktops into needy homes, heat and internet access in one package.
3. Re:What a surprise! by Cheerio+Boy · 2012-04-15 06:11 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  First - the internet doesn't immediately rank as a survival item. Not even close.
  
  BUT I agree with your point that it should be very close after satisfying those needs.
  
  The problem is that a great many companies want to lock down what you can and can't learn on the Internet. They want you to be nice little servants and only learn those things that don't open the doors to you thinking about things other than those immediate survival things.
  
  The more you educate people in how to think and what's available outside their front door the more free they become. The more free they become the less they wonder why they should pay heed to those in power.
  
  And to those in power that's a dangerous thing. And until we fix the system (not likely any time soon) you will see them clamp down and clamp down hard on anything they consider a threat to their nice cushy positions.
  
  --
  
  "Bah!" - Dogbert
4. Re:What a surprise! by spire3661 · 2012-04-15 06:18 · Score: 2
  
  I qualified it with 'modern age' and prefaced it with implied shelter and then dashed it with bit of hyperbole. I didnt outright say it was a survival item but after heat, shelter, food, and love nothing else comes close.
  
  --
  Good-bye
5. Re:What a surprise! by rubycodez · 2012-04-15 06:21 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  a pampered product of a prosperous area, you have no idea what is important and essential. internet not even on the list. let me help you out. income, clothing, health are some other things in the top ten. Internet not even there, mostly a convenience and entertainment source for most people with plenty of alternatives.
6. Re:What a surprise! by spire3661 · 2012-04-15 06:38 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Im sorry you see the Library of Alexandria at your fingertips to be a mere source of entertainment. I live in the reality of my time, internet is VITAL to surviving in the modern era. Cant even file your taxes in the U.S. except online now. We arent talking about hypothetical post apocalyptic eras. Im fully aware of the PRIORITY SHIFTING that would occur if we entered a mad max scenario. Even then id be working on long range radio, re-establishing packetized data transfer, and start work on a library that can be easily shared as soon as more basic survival needs were met.
  
  --
  Good-bye
7. Re:What a surprise! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-04-15 07:00 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  First - the internet doesn't immediately rank as a survival item. Not even close.
  i think if you know what you are doing its the only thing you need.
  For a time my cousin went homeless. Facebook and a smart phone was her way to beg food and transportation, eventually finding her way to the right government assistance. She has an apartment and a job now. Her facebook has a chapter of all the pictures she took as she wandered the street for a few months.
8. Re:What a surprise! by ideonexus · 2012-04-15 07:16 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  I'm sorry this display of ignorant prejudice got modded up as "insightful". I know there are unthinking people on slashdot like anywhere else, but I would expect the more thoughtful community members to down-mod such an offensive stereotype that has no basis in reality. If 13 percent of Americans are poor then, based on your idiotic generalization, there should be base-thumping rim-spinning Lexus cars all over the freakin' place.
  I accidentally bought a house in a poor neighborhood in Northeastern North Carolina because I naively didn't know segregation still existed in the South. The people who lived on my street owned old beat-up cars and a few lived without electricity, heating their homes with wood stoves. Yes, there were a few kids whose hobby was working on old Cadillacs to bling them out or whatever, but they were the exception and not the rule.
  When I got to know these families, I was constantly challenging them as to why they didn't get rid of their cable-TV service (shared between households) and not go in on a community internet connection with wifi? The answer, it took me forever to finally understand, is that the entire family can share watching a single cheap television, while a computer is something only one person can use and interact with at a time. When you have five kids, you can't get a computer for each and every one of them.
  Finally, I sold some stock and used it to buy every kid on my street a used laptop at $200 a head. I gave the kids the laptops on the condition that they take a series of classes from me about computing, which I blogged about, and everything seemed great. I opened our internet connection and put signal-boosters in some of the houses so everyone could enjoy it. I thought I was doing a good thing in this world.
  One year later, not a single one of those laptops was still functioning. One by one they succumbed to being stolen by neighborhood gang members or simply broke from the abuse they took at home (if you've ever been in a poor family's damp, cockroach-infested, ancient crumbling home, you'll understand this last statement completely). On the bright side, after the kids got on the internet for a little while, they craved more and I get to keep in touch with most of them on Facebook today as they will walk to the library to get online or have pooled their money together on a family computer.
  So when I read comments like those of the parent, it fills me with rage at their ignorance, and when I see people the statement up as "insightful" it breaks my heart.
  
  --
  i ~ Celebrating Science, Cyberspace, Speculation
9. Re:What a surprise! by Azadre · 2012-04-15 07:17 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  You can go to the Post Office and Local Library to file your taxes. The working world still exists primarily outside of the internet. Banking is the only industry that has truly become dependent on the internet because of NACHA. Yet cash still exists in our society.
10. Re:What a surprise! by magarity · 2012-04-15 07:24 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  EVERY HOUSE should have the option for affordable or free internet, its that important.
  Free internet service? How does that happen? Oh, you mean "paid for by someone else". Is it really that important?
11. Re:What a surprise! by anagama · 2012-04-15 07:39 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Much of your post is just wrong.
  Regarding #1: DSL and cable aren't $100/mo -- I have comcast at home, which is expensive but my only choice, and it's $60/mo. I don't get cable TV or voip, just internet, but it is wrong to say that internet is $100/mo.
  #2: Clear used to be a better bargain, but I have a Clear for my boat and it's currently $50/mo, not $100. Netflix streams just fine with the basic account.
  #3: I have an unlimited unthrottled data plan with TMobile (which sadly they don't offer anymore), $70/mo and I could add tethering for $15/mo. As soon as I get around to it, I'll ditch Clearwire and do that, but for the most part, cell phone data plans do suck, so I'll give you this one.
  #4: Not sure where you live, but in my particular smallish-80k-person-town in the Pacific Northwest, you'd be hard pressed to find anyplace downtown where free wifi was NOT available. Every coffee shop and many restaurants offer so much overlapping coverage, there's never an issue with access. Granted, this may not be true everywhere, but in this region, free wifi is as expected as a free glass of water.
  #5: never had any trouble with saturated connections.
  #6: while plenty of homeless people do use the library computers, there's usually space available and if you have your own laptop, it doesn't matter due to the free wifi.
  You make it sound like getting on the net is hard or expensive -- in many places it isn't if a person can find $200 for a used laptop. Certainly my experiences will not be true for every place in the country, but you should realize that your experiences are also not ubiquitous.
  
  --
  What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
12. Re:What a surprise! by the+eric+conspiracy · 2012-04-15 07:44 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  What complete bullcrap. There are still some 40% or so of people who file by mail. And as far as reference libraries, less than one percent of the Library of Congress is online.
13. Re:What a surprise! by JosephTX · 2012-04-15 08:30 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  most things listed in the Bill of Rights don't help with survival either (except for the 2nd amendment... 200 years ago). Sheltered suburbanites need to stop saying "well they can SURVIVE without that."
  The simple fact is that, when most people have access to the internet, it leaves those without access at a SEVERE disadvantage--and most don't have that access because they're already at a disadvantage to begin with. And before people go all libertarian and say "that's their problem", it's not just theirs: It's also their kids' problems. Nobody can seriously expect a kid growing up in a poor neighborhood--most likely with one parent working afternoon shifts to pay bills instead of staying home to raise them--to somehow compete with all the other kids who can just google any subject they're having trouble with.
  A modern new bill of rights regarding the internet and computer science really is needed, and not just limited to giving everyone affordable internet access (which would require the prostitutes we call Congressmen to take back the telecommunications infrastructure they sold to Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon for a fraction of its cost in the 90s), but should also include guarantees such as net neutrality, privacy protection, and rights to any algorithms too basic to be patented.
14. Re:What a surprise! by jtownatpunk.net · 2012-04-15 08:40 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  After heat, internet is #1 need in the modern age.
  Spoken like someone who's never had to worry about having their fundamental survival needs met. You're assuming that every person in America already has the basics and that just isn't true.
  Water, food, and shelter come way before internet. Also heating your shelter, preserving your food, and preparing your food. That'd usually be done with electricity but that requires more expenditures of greater priority than internet. Fridge, electric heater, electric stove. Still don't have hot water yet, tho. It wasn't very long ago that it was common to rent a "cold water flat" where you heated water on the stove. So your next splurge will be a water heater.
  Those are the things poor people worry about. I can remember a time when my dad lived in a barn. If the internet had existed back then, getting a computer and going online would have been waaaaay down on the to-do list. It looked more like:
  Get a room in a house with a floor.
  And running water.
  HOT running water.
  And heat.
  And a fridge.
  Put food in fridge.
  Get a phone. (Today's version of the internet, I suppose.)
  Communication's way down the list of fundamentals.
15. Re:What a surprise! by evanbd · 2012-04-15 08:46 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  EVERY HOUSE should have the option for affordable or free internet, its that important.
  Free internet service? How does that happen? Oh, you mean "paid for by someone else". Is it really that important?
  It's really hard to get a job without an Internet connection. Sure, it can be done, but it's harder. It's almost as important as having a phone number and address. Would it be cheaper to subsidize Internet access than to pay unemployment benefits? Or to forgo the taxes that get collected from people who are employed?
16. Re:What a surprise! by YrWrstNtmr · 2012-04-15 09:10 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  buy every kid on my street a used laptop at $200 a head.
  
  I did similar in the late 90's. Bunch of ex-corporate laptops, given to kids who would otherwise not have one.
  
  One year later, not a single one of those laptops was still functioning.
  
  And I had exactly the same experience. All of them were toasted/stolen/pawned in short order.
17. Re:What a surprise! by lennier · 2012-04-15 09:59 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Water, food, and shelter come way before internet.
  
  I know it's only one data point, but let me give you a counterexample. I live in Christchurch, New Zealand, and as you may know we had a little earthquake last year. For nearly a week, in my part of town, power, water and sewerage were down, the roads had huge potholes - but I had a Blackberry with battery power, and the cellphone towers were up. With the web browser on my Blackberry, I was *literally* able to locate drinkable water - the local city council had a truck handing out free water bottles, but its location changed every night. They posted the location on their website and I learned about it from reading the site on my Blackberry. In this case, Internet access GAVE ME water.
  Second data point, is that we got electrical power back a week before we got tap water back, and when the tap water did come onstream, it had a boil notice (ie, it wasn't considered drinkable without boiling). You might not realise it, but electrical grid power has a HUGE survival advantage - unboiled water can make you sick, but boiled water is good. So in this case too, electricity preceded just "water" as a requirement: there was lots of "water" available, but converting it into "drinkable water" required electricity. (Or gas; so as well as a water cache, I've now stashed a disposable butane stove).
  Third data point: power and water didn't fail equally across the city, and petrol stations remained accessible. So cars became very important, and driving to friends and relatives to charge cellphones, fill water bottles, and take hot showers, quickly became a thing. Not what we expected, but there you are.
  What I've learned from the quake, and what I think isn't at all obvious to your average First World suburb-dweller (as I am), is that disaster scenarios (including economic collapse and poverty) are never a total all-or-nothing thing. You don't "go back to the Stone Age" in one hit, and you don't come back in straight line. Infrastructure tends to fail raggedly, in random order, and it doesn't recover in a strict linear Maslow hierarchy either. So it's very likely that you may have cellphone but no power, power but no drinkable water, Internet and TV but no phone... and so on.
  So don't laugh at people who think the Internet is up there with drinkable water. Use whatever you've got access to and leverage it. And information on "what services are near you" is very very very important in any scenario.
  
  --
  You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
18. Re:What a surprise! by godrik · 2012-04-15 12:02 · Score: 2
  
  Bullshit, I filled up my taxes by mail.
19. Re:What a surprise! by rubycodez · 2012-04-15 12:14 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  clueless you be. We are talking the reality of 2012. Most human knowledge is still not found on the internet. The local library has plenty of current books that are not available free online, and even the poor can borrow them the same as my family does. You can file your taxes in the USA without the internet. At half a century old I have gone half my life with no cell phone, you probably think that a necessity too in your pampered delusional mind. You will NOT be building a packet radio network if civilisation fails, those plans are taking for granted too much of infrastructure that will be gone and resources that will dwindle away rapidly.
20. Re:What a surprise! by jtownatpunk.net · 2012-04-15 12:47 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  You weren't poor. You were inconvenienced during an emergency. Like comparing apples and elephants.
21. Re:What a surprise! by couchslug · 2012-04-15 13:01 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  "If 13 percent of Americans are poor then, based on your idiotic generalization, there should be base-thumping rim-spinning Lexus cars all over the freakin' place."
  I certainly didn't say "Lexus". I have lived in South Carolina for decades, and I'm a mechanic who has PLENTY of intimate exposure to what the poor drive while working on those vehicles at my buds car lot.
  There are blinged out junkers "all over the place", and it's common to see people piss away money decorating their dangerous, poorly maintained vehicles when they could be doing something much more beneficial to themselves.
  Like it or not, many of the poor cherish self-destructive behaviours. Meth doesn't buy itself, nor crack, nor booze and nicotine for that matter.
  Of course the TV is a babysitter. You don't have to interact with it.
  OTOH, while we have the frequently-degenerate local poor (many of whom wouldn't be poor if the females used birth control) there are many poor Mexican and Latin American immigrants who rapidly move out of poverty by working their butts off.
  They are refreshing to hang out with, and I must conclude the GOP bashes them out of envy. They choose not to be wretched. They hustle. Unlike many White folks who are bemoaning the "lack of opportunity", many Latinos (I'm not one, BTW) are out there creating it. I know of one brickyard owner who only hires (legal) Mexicans because they are so productive.
  
  --
  "This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
22. Re:What a surprise! by drsquare · 2012-04-15 14:03 · Score: 2
  
  All your three points admit that water is more important. What use is your electricity and Internet without water to be distributed and boiled?
  You're still talking from the perspective of someone with access to drinking water. If those water trucks hadn't come, would you be crying out for the Internet and electricity?
23. Re:What a surprise! by Medievalist · 2012-04-16 01:30 · Score: 2
  
  First things i need in any house(i had some places simply empty), are bed, shower, internet(well, pc wi), washing machine, owen.(in that order)
  I don't think Owen is going to be pleased to learn how far down the list you've put him.
24. Re:What a surprise! by s0nicfreak · 2012-04-16 02:56 · Score: 2
  
  Because that's a society that is set up to survive without the internet. The US is not really set up that way anymore.
That can't be right by NoNonAlphaCharsHere · 2012-04-15 05:44 · Score: 2

If that's true, then who's misspelling the captions on all those cat pictures?
50% of people... by hsthompson69 · 2012-04-15 05:50 · Score: 2

...are by definition below average intelligence.
Why would we think that 100% of people would be able to use the internet on their own? Or get a higher education for that matter?
1. Re:50% of people... by vlm · 2012-04-15 06:02 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  No, the definition is 50% are below median. The median doesn't necessarily have to equal the average, although for a typical bell curve like intelligence it usually is pretty close.
  Its not terribly hard to find a distribution where median and mean are not the same. Stereotypical heartbeat rate in a morgue. Video game level/skill/score.
  The almost blindingly obvious reason 1/5 of the population doesn't use the net is its almost impossible and fairly pointless if you're functionally illiterate. Which is probably a good description of about 1/5 the population. I had a former boss who "bragged" about not reading a book since high school... punchline was he had gray hair. Probably not a amazon/kindle customer, etc.
  
  --
  "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
2. Re:50% of people... by Trepidity · 2012-04-15 06:18 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  That hypothesis doesn't explain why 94% of people age 18-29 use the internet, unless intelligence and/or literacy rates have massively increased.
  A simpler hypothesis is that old people don't use the internet, and young people do, and other factors are minimal.
  
  --
  10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
3. Re:50% of people... by toejam13 · 2012-04-15 06:35 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  I agree. I think that the huge influx of laypersons onto the Internet has been both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, having more people of all social, economic and education backgrounds has encouraged a more rounded environment. It has allowed websites to flourish which otherwise may have been little more than a niche sites back when it was mostly university geeks and researchers. But on the other, we have a subset of people who are more open to scams, who place a larger burden on support resources and who are unable to deal with issues such as compromised computers infected with Trojan horses.
  But the bigger and darker issue is that the Internet is much more about user feedback than at any time before. It is a place where every voice and opinion can receive an equal audience. What happens when you have millions of uneducated riff-raff joining in the conversation, especially when the topic is political in nature? It often drags the quality of the conversation down. You end up with people parroting their worldviews rather than thinking about the subject at hand. Unless that environment is heavily moderated, it will end up sullied.
  As to the groups of people who are underrepresented on the Internet, I'm relieved that is the case. While some of them may begin to change their worldviews from being exposed to more ideas, I think the benefit to society would be greatly outweighed by the damage such people would cause. But the genie is already out of the bottle. Costs will continue to drop and more services will simply require Internet access in order to procure them. Internet penetration will continue to climb. I think that it is inevitable that everyone will have access, and we as a society will just have to adapt to it, for better or worse.
4. Re:50% of people... by tomhath · 2012-04-15 08:09 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  I prefer Miss South Carolina's explaination of why 20% of Americans aren't on the internet:
  “I personally believe, that U.S. Americans, are unable to do so, because uh, some, people out there, in our nation don’t have computers. and uh...I believe that our education like such as in South Africa, and the Iraq, everywhere like such as...and, I believe they should uh, our education over here, in the U.S. should help the U.S. or should help South Africa, and should help the Iraq and Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future, for us.”
5. Re:50% of people... by MaskedSlacker · 2012-04-15 08:14 · Score: 2
  
  The distribution of IQ is defined (in modern tests anyway) as a normal distribution--the median is 100 w/ a sd of 15, and the median is equal to the mean. It is not even slightly possible to have over 50% on either side of the mean.
6. Re:50% of people... by Trepidity · 2012-04-15 08:19 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  That's not what the statistics in the linked report show; they show a much bigger age difference than an education or class difference. 41% of people 65+ are online, whereas 94% of people 18-29 are online, a difference that completely swamps the other factors.
  
  --
  10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Re:No internet at home? by uncanny · 2012-04-15 05:54 · Score: 3, Funny

Ever wonder why poor people have so babies?
elderly are a large portion of it by Trepidity · 2012-04-15 05:54 · Score: 5, Insightful

If you remove the single largest factor for non-adoption (age), the rates are generally pretty high, and the other factors mentioned make less difference. That's why I wish these surveys focused more on multi-factor analysis instead of these easy-to-do but less-useful analyses where you just pull out single factors. Sure, people with lower incomes are less likely to be online, and people with lower educational attainment are less likely to be online, but those two factors also correlate strongly, and matter differently for different age cohorts. Which factors have independent effects after controlling for the others? That's the kind of analysis that would be more helpful...
So yes, 22% of Americans don't use the internet. But a large proportion of those are over 65: in that age group, 69% of people don't use the internet. That's just generational change.
If we look at young people, age 18-29, a full 94% use the internet. There is probably some education/income effect in there, but a much weaker one: only 6% of total young people, even including the poorest and least educated in the statistics, don't use the internet.
Note also that educational attainment isn't separate from the age effect, because going to college used to be less common in my grandfather's generation than it is today, so there are some confounds baked into those numbers, too.
In short: Where are the goddamn crosstabs?!?

--
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
1. Re:elderly are a large portion of it by OzPeter · 2012-04-15 06:14 · Score: 2, Funny
  
  If you remove the single largest factor for non-adoption (age), the rates are generally pretty high
  so you're suggesting Logan's Run as a solution to improving the rate of internet usage?
  
  Who are you? some kinda liberal/commie/lefty who embraces Obamacare and is just itching for the death panels to get up and running?
  
  --
  I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
2. Re:elderly are a large portion of it by Trepidity · 2012-04-15 06:23 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Logan's Run is such a panacea, really. Not only would it increase internet adoption, but imagine the other statistical benefits: It'd raise our percentage of college graduates, increase the average physical fitness of both men and women, improve our per-capita GDP, and even decrease cancer rates.
  
  --
  10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
3. Re:elderly are a large portion of it by OzPeter · 2012-04-15 06:27 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Logan's Run is such a panacea, really. Not only would it increase internet adoption, but imagine the other statistical benefits: It'd raise our percentage of college graduates, increase the average physical fitness of both men and women, improve our per-capita GDP, and even decrease cancer rates.
  Damn you for taking my trolling post and converting it into a reasonable argument!
  
  --
  I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
4. Re:elderly are a large portion of it by jimbrooking · 2012-04-15 06:55 · Score: 2
  
  You might want to watch the stereotyping. I'm the (volunteer) webmaster for a fairly affluent community of 2,000 or so mostly retired people. We require registration for our website to keep community information away from outsiders like Google and spammers. I personally approve each registration after verifying residence status. At the moment we have about half our community registered; around 250 are on the site weekly, another 100 or so lees frequently, and another 200 occasionally. My site does make provisions for vision-impaired people, but is pretty attractive for all. It's dynamic (changes a few times a week), and has lots of AJAX pages like directory lookups, bulletin board search etc.. We do have our share of problems, many related to lack of computer skills and knowledge, e.g., when users "can't login" or "can't find xyz page". With patience and some hand-holding, our users mostly find what they want with little hassle. So I submit that at least from my N=1 sample, you might find the computer usage among older demographic follows income and education as much as age. Oh - I'll be 73 in July.
Hope they mentioned population density... by Nutria · 2012-04-15 05:57 · Score: 3, Informative

I've got family that live out in the country, and their dial-up service was so slow and noisy that they could only reach 14.4Kbps for 5 minutes at a time. Naturally they dropped service and haven't tried it since.

--
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
1. Re:Hope they mentioned population density... by clang_jangle · 2012-04-15 08:34 · Score: 2
  
  Yes, the crap quality phone lines are a huge issue for those of us in outlying areas without broadband options. I relocated to such an area last December, and my average connection speed hovers between 1.5 and 5.2 kbps. It's painful, and I can see how the average person simply wouldn't bother. Using a smartphone isn't much better when you're more than 4 miles from the nearest tower, either. AT&T took all that tax money 2 or 3 years ago to "rollout broadband to rural residents", but they haven't done a damned thing about the problem. Our phone lines are probably the same ones they installed in the early 60s.
  
  --
  Caveat Utilitor
Who needs the damn internet? by fustakrakich · 2012-04-15 06:00 · Score: 2

I get all the gossip I need from my neighbors, bartenders, and hair stylist

--
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Re:No internet at home? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-04-15 06:02 · Score: 5, Funny

No, but I wonder why dumb people so many words.
Re:Upward mobility how? by vlm · 2012-04-15 06:11 · Score: 2

Anonymous Coward wrote:

TV is for poorer, less educated people.
But then how are less educated people supposed to become more educated? NBC, ABC, CBS/CW, and My/Fox haven't been doing a lot of good in that respect IMO.
They're supposed to get federal government guaranteed loans for the maximum possible amount to attend training schools of course. Educational-industrial complex profit maximizing, etc.

--
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Internet access has passed cable TV in the US by Animats · 2012-04-15 07:05 · Score: 2

Only 44% of the residences which can get cable TV actually buy it. In comparison, 68% of US households have broadband access. (3% are still on dialup.) That's impressive reach for an industry that barely existed a decade ago.
Bear in mind that a significant fraction of the US population barely reads. 14% of the US adult population has "below basic literacy skills." They are not likely to find a computer very useful. Another 15% of Internet penetration and everyone who can read will be connected.
Measured by a different study, the most connected major countries are at 80%, +- 2%. The US and Japan are at 78%, Germany is at 80%, Korea is at 81%, and the UK is at 82%.
Re:Poor People Tend To Be Idiots by fredgiblet · 2012-04-15 14:23 · Score: 3, Funny

Idiots tend not to want to use the Internet as much
You must be going to a different Internet than I have been.
Re:Poor does exist in the US by s0nicfreak · 2012-04-16 02:59 · Score: 2

Homeless doesn't necessarily mean poor, and poor certainly doesn't necessarily mean homeless. Also, homeless people may not have internet access in their homes (since they don't have one) but they often do have access.