The interviews

The process of interviewing three people for this exercise was interesting, although it seemed like the responses were largely what I would have expected based on their age group and the length of time and extent of exposure they have had with the internet. First, I talked to my friend, Jed, who is 33 and works as a network administrator. Understandably, based on his job, he spends nearly all of his waking hours connected to the internet in one manner or another. In fact, our conversation was conducted via the chat mechanism on Facebook. Jed mentioned having trouble recalling life without the internet, since he was first exposed to networked life in high school. Since then, nearly all of his communication, from work interactions to those with friends, family, and even his girlfriend seems to pass via the internet. Still, Jed was unsure if technology has overall been a positive thing in his life. Similar to Neil Postman's concepts in Technopoly, Jed perceives the internet to be a movement, working in both positive and negative ways. In fact, Jed was getting ready to take a vacation the next day, and expressed his wish to leave behind his phone and laptop, but the nature of his work wouldn't allow him to do so.

[Specific to the readings this week, I talked to Jed about the idea of employers spying on the internet use of their employees. Jed mentioned that his current employer is very concerned with where their employees travel on the information superhighway, and that a regular topic in employee performance reviews is history logs from web browsers. Jed felt the unease that his employer could be using the internet to look for his replacement on a job site, while he could be fired for looking for a new place to work on his lunch break. In fact, someone he works with was reprimanded recently for looking at Craigslist on his iPhone during a paid break using the company's secured wifi. Jed on several occasions used the term "Big Brother" to describe the extent that a panopticon has been established at his workplace.]

Next, I talked to my mother-in-law, who is 55. While she is intrigued by the internet and sees it as a gateway to a world of possibilities, she is still uneasy in navigating the internet as a whole, knowing what is trustworthy and how to find exactly what she's looking for. However, to her credit, for someone who didn't have a computer until a few years ago, she found her current job via an internet jobs site and uses email like a pro. She said she primarily uses the internet to accomplish specific tasks, such as her recent job search and her current quest to find a new apartment. She doesn't find much use for the internet casually, although she mentioned wanting to spend more time "looking around and exploring". She said that she wasn't entirely sure how technology has changed the way she lives, although she recognizes how different things are as time goes on. She is envious of those who use the internet with ease, and feels that it's a little late for her to catch up.

Finally, I talked to a woman at my mother-in-law's work (a retirement community), who is 75. I was somewhat surprised by her level of interaction on the internet. She said her primary use of the internet was to keep in touch with her children and grandchildren, although she also uses the internet to keep up with her finances also. She feels fortunate that she lives in an era when she can communicate instantly through Skype, Facebook and email to keep in touch with her family across the country and the world. She still refuses to spend money on the internet, fearing her credit card will be stolen, and is uneasy about privacy issues, but overall, she feels that technology has been a positive influence in her advanced age.

I wonder how these results will differ in five years, ten or twenty.