(no subject)

[sophiaserpentia]

Well, let's see what the results of yesterday's poll point to.

The devices that appear to be the most essential to those who have them are:
Broadband internet
Portable digital music player
CD player
About 50-60% of people who have these consider them essential.

The next tier included:
TiVo
DVD player
PDA
cable/satellite TV
About 20-25% of people who have these consider them essential.

Cordless phones/cell phones, digital cameras, and CD burners were only considered essential by about 10% of those who have them. WRT phones, that is an interesting result. Are people not so happy with being accessible everywhere they go?

26% of the people who responded said they could do without any of these devices. I suppose perhaps many of you are, like me, actually old enough to remember life before these wonders came along.

Comments

life before broadband

[rothko.livejournal.com]

eh, i'm old enough too. old enough to remember having to connect to the internet with a 2400 baud modem, old enough to remember when there was no web (gasp!) -- which is why i couldn't imagine having to go back...

as far as cell phones -- for me, it's not that i don't really want to be accessible everywhere, it's more that i just don't *need* to be. i don't have a job where i need to be on call for anything, and my friends can usually reach me at home. if i know somebody might want to reach me when i'm out during the weekend or evenings or whatever, i'll turn the phone on, but otherwise, it mostly stays off.

[soulsong.livejournal.com]

Though I put down broadband and cellphone as 'essential', this is really only because of my job - working from home as a software developer and all that. Otherwise, I'm old enough to remember not having any of those things.

I do like being able to look up anything instantly via google though. I find when I'm away from home I have to make lists of things to look up when I get back, because it frustrates me that I can't learn pretty much anything I want to.

I wonder what schoolwork in the age of the internet is like? What used to take hours of research can now be achieved in 0.00000053478 seconds, retrieving 1,247,453 results.

Schoolwork in the Internet Age

[dhaaz.livejournal.com]

"What used to take hours of research can now be achieved in 0.00000053478 seconds, retrieving 1,247,453 results."

Plus a good deal of extra time flipping through the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers trying to figure out how to reference the sites for the bibliography. Trying to figure out how to cite a transcript in the library of Congress accessed in image-form via their website can take a while.

[arbiteroftruth.livejournal.com]

i'm old enough to remember campfires and berries.

OLD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[azaz-al.livejournal.com]

(she shrieks)
OLD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[kumbunny.livejournal.com]

I am old enough to remember a day without these devices.

Most of the devices I thought "essential" I do not even have!

How mental is that?

k.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

Well, gaah! That throws off my statistical results. ;-p

Actually I think it makes perfect sense, that you could consider something you don't have to be essential, because you know from seeing friends have so much fun with these things what you are missing out on!

Re:

[kumbunny.livejournal.com]

::tears::

yes

digital camera desire is becoming voerwhelming,,, it shall surely launch me into the 21st century.

k.