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December 3, 2007
How the other third lives
We're in the midst of a kitchen remodel. On Saturday, our drywall guy asked me what I did for a living. I gave him my standard short answer, "I build websites ..." That didn't get much of a reaction, so I followed that up with "for Amazon.com ..." I could tell that the name didn't register either, so I just said "I'm a computer programmer; I write software." His response, "I haven't really gotten into the whole computer thing."
Wow, he's not online, and he doesn't even own or use a computer. Here is a successful sub-contractor with a friendly, professional crew who doesn't use a computer and hadn't heard of Amazon.
In this Information Week article, found via a quick Google search, in February 2006, only 64% of US households are online. Of the 36% who aren't online, only 2% have a desire to get online. I don't really have time to find more recent data, but one can assume that things probably haven't changed too much.
I'm curious to know how much that demographic has been inadvertently marginalized by the assumption that, "everyone's online these days." This was refreshing and a good reminder that we could in fact live healthy and productive lives without computers and the internet. Unless of course you build websites for a living.
Posted by mark at 3:24 PM | Comments (0)