Internet and life

Cyber Scholars

"What I found, however, at the Digital Divides conference convened by the Pacific Regional Humanities Center at the University of California, Davis, was that the academic world has made quite a turnaround. In the 80s and early 90s there were a handful of university folk exploring topics like hypertext or the social impact of computers, but by now the topic of digital change has infiltrated every department from history and linguistics to art and psychology. The Digital Divides event was itself one of a series of three such conferences within the University of California system....

Alladi Venkatesh, of UC Irvine, looks at the results, rather than the roots, of the digital revolution: using ethnographic research techniques to study the impact of home networks and highly-wired communities on family life. For his research he has focused on a housing development called Ladera Ranch, in southern Orange County, where homes have 'IT nooks,' high-speech Internet access and the entire community of 2000 homes is interlinked with a common intranet. 'Unlike other appliances,' he notes, 'Americans haven’t yet figured out which room of the house the computer belongs in. This will be a very important time to study.'

His findings should interest Lee Rainie, head of the Pew Foundation’s ambitious Internet and American Life project, which for two years now has conducted in-depth polling to study how the Web is changing U.S. society. At Davis, Rainie presented some newer findings about the 70 million Americans currently not online. Of that number, fully 45 percent say they don’t believe they will ever go online, for reasons that include fear, cost issues—and 40 percent who simply say they don’t need it. Among the offline, 23 percent are disabled—a number underscoring the importance of Web site accessibility—and close to 20 percent are 'drop-outs' who once had Web access but no longer do. On the connected side, Rainie described the 63 percent of American teenagers who use instant messaging. Among them, 14 percent have used IM to ask for a date, 12 percent have broken off a relationship with IM, and 20 percent have shared their screen name and password with a 'best friend.' In the last instance, Rainie adds, often with unhappy consequences: 'Best friends don’t last forever in the teen world.' " [MSNBC]

You can view the whole conference program and even listen to some of the presentations. It sounds like it was a fascinating event! Emphasis throughout the article is mine.