More than a third of U.S. consumers born before 1946 (seniors) use the Internet, according to Pew Internet and American Life Project. Pew also said that more than half of the younger members of this group (ages 62 to 71) are online.
Older users also use the Internet for the same reasons younger users do: to stay in touch with other people. Nearly six out of 10 U.S. Internet users 62 and older use search engines. Among other activities, almost one quarter of the group banks or pays bills online and one fifth are video gamers.
Multichannel video, PCs, game consoles, mobile voice and use of the Internet now are totally mainstream.
Use of digital video recorders is nearing that point, as are text messaging and MP3 players.
But there's still a ways to go with other innovations such as VoIP and mobile broadband. Unified communications is no where close to being mainstream. It typically takes three to seven years for a successful mass market digital innovation to reach 50 percent penetration of households.
The big exception is high definition television, which will reach--and surpass--that status virtually overnight as a result of government mandate in February 2009.
As for the thousands of other bleeding-edge applications, most will fail to gain widespread mass market adoption. That's always the case for digital consumer electronics.
Monday, May 5, 2008
Internet Use Now Totally Mainstream
Gary Kim has been a digital infra analyst and journalist for more than 30 years, covering the business impact of technology, pre- and post-internet. He sees a similar evolution coming with AI. General-purpose technologies do not come along very often, but when they do, they change life, economies and industries.
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