Issue 1.2, April 1995

Bandwidth
by Don Rittner

Just Who Is This Online Community Anyway?

  Well, if you believe all the figures touted around about how many people
are online (about 40 million worldwide), it makes you wonder just who makes
up this community of cybernauts? Fortunately, there have been a few surveys
and studies that give us a pretty good look, at least in terms of the
American cyberspace population.
  America Online, with more than 2 million members, 
and Interactive Age, along with the Gallup organization, 
have recently looked at their demographics and the results are pretty
interesting - and alarming.
  AOL has found that the average age of their membership is 40 years old.
Eighty-four percent are male with a household income of over $50,000.
Sixty-seven percent are married and the same percentage have children; in
fact, the average is 2.3 per household (I have never seen a fraction of a
child). Seventy-five percent own their home and 60% have college 
or post college degrees. Eighty percent work full time and 62% of their
spouses work full time. More than half, 58% are employed in a professional or
managerial position. 
  The number of people online in the U.S. is still small 
(about 4%), but those that are online are an active bunch. Interactive
Age/Gallup found that at least half of American consumers are interested in
using the Internet for research or business and that interest is higher in
younger people and higher by about 12% for men as compared to women. In their
study they found that more than 65% would use online services for getting
news and information, about 60% for communication with friends and
colleagues, and 57% for database searches.
  Clearly these statistics show that those online can afford 
to be. But we must not loose sight of the fact that all Americans should have
access to the vast resources of the Net. The alarming small percentage of
women online and the lack of computer resources among poorer segments for our
population call for some form of intervention. The small number of women
perhaps can be explained away as "male" thing. Most technical fields have
been traditionally male dominated; computer technology is no different. On
our own local BBS, Newslink, we had over 80,000 capital district people
register during a one year period. Ninety-five percent were men. Those
numbers will change.

Cost a major factor?
  One of the reasons for this skewed user base is that personal computers use
to cost a small fortune - until recently. In some cases, automobiles were
cheaper than computers. My original Mac II retailed over $8000. The big drop
in computer prices and the fact that they're now very easy to use may smooth
out this problem in the near future. The new PowerMacs have the raw power of
a Cray supercomputer of ten years ago and can be purchased for less than
$2000. PC clones and Macs using non PPC technology can be picked up for less
than $1000. Online services such as America Online, CompuServe and others
have all dropped their prices, and there are still thousands of free bulletin
boards around the country that offer educational information, in addition to
the normal computer related material. Hopefully, we will be able to report
some positive changes in future issues of the MESH. Be sure to read our
feature story this month on 
telcom for the rural masses. [M]