> WIRED magazine has published the results of a fascinating poll of
> the "wired" community. The article by Jon Katz and some of the poll
> results can be found at
>
> http://www.hotwired.com/special/citizen/
In one respect I am already less than impressed with this survey, and
I haven't started reading the results.
By their definitions I am "semi-connected".
At work I have two phone lines, voice mail, a pager, an Internet
email address, and two PCs on a network which includes a T1 Internet
connection (and a third PC which I rarely turn on). I am browsing
the Web (work-related) at least twice a week, and receive an average
of probably 20 emails per working day. My email is usually running
constantly. At the end of the workday I get on a bus and RELAX for
forty-five minutes. Since I am relaxing, I don't want to be working
on a laptop or talking on a cell phone, so I don't have those.
I go home to a telephone with answering machine, a modem on a
separate line, a different Internet email address, a half-dozen very
active newsgroups (average about 200 new messages per day not
including spam), a couple active Internet mailing lists (average
about 60 emails per day not including spam), a half dozen web sites
that I look in on at least once a week, and another half dozen per
week that are mentioned in the newsgroups or email and I judge worth
checking.
If that is "semi-connected", then anyone who is actually connected
really should get a life.
I would have suggested a different standard:
Count the number of telephones, modems, fax machines, pagers, cell
phones, and answering machines dedicated for your use (including
your family stuff); add one if you *use* some sort of modem pool or
communal high-speed internet connection at least once a week, ditto
for a communal fax machine. Include voicemail. If you have a
multiline phone and the lines are dedicated to your use (with no more
than two coworkers, but including your family), count the extra
lines. Count the email addresses you check at least three times a
week. Count the web sites or public archives you have maintained in
the last three months. Count the mailing lists you've subscribed to
that result in at least three emails a week on average. Count the
web sites you visit at least once a week, and Usenet groups you read
at least twice a week (that actually have non-spam messages that
often), and the Web sites that you visit in a typical week as a
result of receiving the URL in an email or newsgroup message in that
same week.. Add them all up. Three or fewer is unconnected. Four
to nine is semi-connected. Ten to twenty-seven, connected.
Twenty-eight up, super-connected.
(The exact numbers that define the categories are not essential.)
By the way, by this standard my count is 30; my 16-year-old
daughter's is 12.
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