Re: new or inexpierienced users, et al.

I'll preface this by saying I'm just bringing a few opinions and
impressions of my own, and am not trying to construct a hard argument
here.

>I will open with a /hypothesis/ ...  I am of the impression that the newer
>users are more knowledgeable today than they were ... say a year ago ...

I would tend to think the opposite: new users today are less sophisticated
and knowledgable than they were a year or more ago.  Why?  The early
adopters of the Web were those already experienced with computers in
general, and the Internet in particular.  These were sophisticated
folks, who already knew a lot about how computers worked and who could
easily adapt to Web.

As the Web has grown more popular, though, people have started purchasing
computers citing the Web as a primary reason of purchasing them (I
believe Bob Pittman of AOL recently noted that instead of people buying
computers for a variety of reasons and eventually getting onto the
Internet, people are buying computers explicitly to get on the Internet.)
In many cases, these computers are the first home PCs they've had, and
perhaps the first they've used, although some no doubt have had experience
with PCs in the office or at school.

Because of this, these new users won't be very sophisticated about the
Web.  They may have initial understading based on print and television
news stories about the Internet, and have heard of some of the major
players, but still aren't terribly knowledgeable about how things work
on the net, or even their computer, for that matter.  So these
folks will be stumbling around for a while until they get a better
feel for how things work -- so long as they don't get so turned off
that they give up.

Some food for thought...



Jeff Foust
jfoust(at)mit.edu
http://reudi.mit.edu/

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