1. Hoffman's data for Project 2000 is based on the 1995-6 CommerceNet/Nielsen survey. She has publicly criticized Nielsen for skewing the sample by too heavily weighing certain segments of the population. Using the Nielsen data she recalculated each demographic to the proportions from the census. Consequently when the Nielsen data is cited within this text it is in reference to her results.
2. "Younger -- 38% under 30 versus 26% for adults in general; average age of 35 versus 43 for adults in general. Better educated -- 33% with a college degree versus 19% adults in general; 57% with some college versus 43% for adults in general." [Yankelovich, 1995-6]
3. Equal opportunity refers to the various campus labs, classes, and modem pools which are available for any currently registered student to use. However, some students' access was more equal than others. Students affiliated with certain departments get the benefit of access to additional machines and infrastructure dedicated exclusively to them. Computer science majors are just one example. They have access to machines which they only have to share with other CS or Electrical Engineering majors, not the rest of the campus. Also some other departments give out Internet accounts for their own machines which may be more comprehensive than the generic UCLink accounts [UCLink4, which was the most common place that the respondents had accounts, does not offer a UNIX shell. While the UNIX shell may be initially difficult to learn to use, without it they are forced to install, configure, and maintain any and all Internet client software on their own machines which can be equally unnerving for a neophyte to configure. The University does offer a prepared software suite to assist the process, but it stil reqires a degree of technical confidence that many may not have.] But these exceptions do not nearly cover the entire campus community leaving the bulk of the students, primarily students within the humanities and social sciences, competing for the same generally-available resources.
4. Or medium, which are one and the same, according to McLuhan [1964]
5. Such an example of the type of assumption U&G tries to counter is the notion that violence on TV induces violent behavior. While a U&G study might agree with the ultimate conclusion, the study would suggest that the relationship between the message and the receiver is much more complex, based more on the receiver than on the message.
6. It is also one of the problems in measuring the Internet. Studies have chosen to include (or exclude) all people who have simply used email, people who have used some Internet application other than email, or people who use commercial on-line services. Additionally, some studies consider the frequency Internet usage before defining an individual as a user. [Hoffman, 1996; FIND/SVP, 1995-6; Yankelovich, 1995-6]
7. Informational value, for the most part. Someone using the Web has access to any information anywhere in the world as long as it is readable by the browsers. Even by the beginning of 1996 when this survey was administered there are very few subjects that do not have any information available somewhere on the Web.
8. All percentages are based on the adjusted sample (with missing cases removed from the total) unless otherwise indicated.
9. These categories were chosen to differentiate those from a poor background, a generally middle class background, or from a wealthy background.
10. Looking at government documents, reading campaign literature, doing library research, visiting museums, finding out about news events, finding out about the weather, finding out about other places, getting help with hobbies, using the Internet instead of a newspaper, and using the Internet instead of a TV.
11. Keeping in touch with friends, relatives, neighbors, co-workers, and classmates, meeting people, using the Internet instead of a telephone, using the Internet instead of writing letters, and using the Internet instead of a fax machine.
12. Renewing library books, and buying or selling anything on line. Not many people said they used either of these functions so they were generally left out of the analysis, particularly since the two more important distinctions appeared to be the first two categories.
13. Frequency or intensity of use is an important factor in analyzing Internet usage because it goes to define a more accurate picture of an Internet "user." A person only using email is not using the medium in the same way as a person using the Web or the other Internet utilities. However, for this study users were allowed to self-report their Internet usage without necessarily being recoded based on what they said they actually used the Internet for. This type of differentiation was made later in the analysis to indicate particular usage patterns, rather than to define the user itself.
14. For example, if there were 10 people in a group and 1 said he didn't use the Internet, then the results were graphed as 10% and 90%, just as a group with 50 people would have been if 5 said they didn't use the Internet. This was necessary to do since the distribution in the survey sample was neither random nor even.
15. The original Nielsen data put the figure at 23%. [Plotnikoff, 1996]
16. Vredenburg, K, G. L. Flett, L. Krames, and P. Pliner. "Sex differences in Attitudes, Feelings, and Behaviors Toward Computers." Paper presented to the annual convention of the American Psychological Association, Toronto, 1984.
17. Anderson, R. E., W. W. Welch, and L. J. Harris. "Computer inequities in Opportunities for Computer Literacy." Unpublished manuscript, University of Minnesota, Minnesota Research and Evaluation Center, Minneapolis, 1983; Linn, M. "Gender Equity in Computer Learning Environments." Computers and the Social Sciences. 1(1), 1985, pp. 19-27.
18. The actual responses included were Calling BBSs; Email; programming; Computer class; Internet; Database; Library use; Logo and Turtle graphics [rudimentary programming]; and Computer science class.
19. Because the question on uses of computers at school and at home were offered as a free response in order to get an overall idea of the range of possibilities, it is difficult to categorize and rank the results. However, popular responses that were not mentioned earlier as "intensive uses" included using the computer for games, for typing practice, as a word processor, and as a vehicle for their general education mostly in the form of educational games.
20. For instance, the Apple Macintosh was only first introduced in 1984, though its Apple II series was introduced a few years prior.
21. Adjusted for missing cases, includes non-users because they may have used the Internet and just not continued to use it.
22. A seeming methodological problem actually goes to suggest additional data. That is, many people reported several influences as being their first reason for using the Internet. This multiplicity suggests that people who use the Internet often found it served many objectives simultaneously. Despite adding up to over 100%, this data is still significant in illustrating which influences had relatively more influence than others.
23. Because the responses were all different, it is difficult to present an accurate tally of each type. As an example, phone bills were explicitly mentioned 8 times out of 73 different responses, but the number of references to the loss of contact via email in general were even higher.
24. These elements of U&G are in Chapter 1 of Blumler & Katz, 1974. They cite Lundberg and Hultén, 1968.
25. There is a counter-argument here, that when too many people use the Internet it gets too slow to be of much interest to anyone. However, the bandwidth problems are a mundane, technical detail which can easily [if not cheaply] be corrected with higher bandwidth connections. If the upgrading doesn't happen then the gridlock will be a deterent to adopting the Internet, but all the companies with a vested interest in profiting from the Internet will likeley make the investment to eliminate the traffic problem.
26. These recommendations apply to any University like UCB that doesn't require use of the Internet. Schools like Dartmouth that make it an important part of undergraduate life would likely have had much different-looking results if the same survey was administered there.
27. The University is obviously aware of the advantages of the Internet given the proliferation of on-line scholastic resources such as the library catalogs, the Berkeley homepage, etc.
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