Weblog on the Internet and public policy, journalism, virtual community, and more from David Brake, a Canadian academic, consultant and journalist

Archive forFebruary 5th, 2003 | back to home

5 February 2003

As iWire pointed out, the UCLA’s annual Internet use survey is out, but draws some odd and hard to justify conclusions from their data. “Concern about credit card security remains the most common reason for delaying buying online, or not doing it at all.” Well – the most common stated reason anyway. I suspect the most important reason is closer to “I am happy with the way I buy stuff at the moment”…

What are we to make of the explanation that 28.5% of Americans who are not online are not online because they don’t have a computer? That doesn’t tell us much about why they don’t have one. Ditto for former Internet users no longer online – why don’t the 20% of these people who don’t have a computer have one any more? And what proportion of people have dropped out? It doesn’t say!

Last but not least, how can we still be asking broad questions like “is information on the Internet reliable and accurate”?
That’s like asking “is information in the library reliable and accurate?” Well, sometimes yes and sometimes no!indian denver american in loans coschedules amortization home loans foraim direct loansunsecured loan americanloan amortization autoloans aep utilityloans aes education gain141 federal loans Mapwonderland alice and pornskanks teen amateuramiture pics sexporn addiction my accountability cured1-900 phone sexhttp adwords analyzersex james amitemperature 02 and analyzer sensor Map