How do they use the Internet?

This assignment was an interesting one for me to complete. Before I began it, I had a general idea of how my relatives and friends had used the Internet. I didn’t realize it had played such a big part in their everyday doings. Here is what I found out when I did the interviews.
My Mom: She uses the Internet mainly for email. She also checks on my brothers soccer schedule and can change her staffs work schedules and check work progress for the department store she works for. She is comfortable communicating online, but prefers to use email when she communicates. Online banking has made her life much less uncomplicated because nobody likes to pay late fees on bils.
My friend Audrey: Her primary uses are for researching medical questions, likes Facebook and doesn’t use MySpace much anymore. “I don’t communicate with people I don’t know.” Better, know she can research stuff quickly. Uses online banking. One thing that annoys her is when the connection doesn’t work.
My Grandma: Searches for info about people, recipes, photo work, pictures, email, easy for email, is frustrated by junk mail and jokes sent by people, technology has made her life better, it is difficult for her to use technology sometimes, “It is a highway to the outside world that I can travel easier than freeway,” she likes that she can get answers to complicated questions.
There were not as many things the three of them had in common with the Internet. All of them use email as one of their main way of checking in on friends and family. They only email people that they have some sort of previous relationship with. I was surprised that only two of the three use online banking. It has made my life so much easier and it is very easy to keep track of expenses.
Wood and Smith explain on page 147 how “dining rooms and bedrooms make way for home offices filled with computers, scanners, and fax machines.” It seems more and more that our houses are filled with pieces of technology. When I think of my house, I can’t think of one room without a piece of electronic technology in it. People in society cannot seem to go anywhere without their Blackberry’s or iPods these days. It is so refreshing when I am able to travel some place and not have the capability of using my cellphone, music player or watching television. I know that when I am not around these things I am much more communicative and tend to pay attention to work I have put of because it wasn’t as entertaining as watching television. There are times I wish I could travel back before all the technology we have today to a time when life was so much simpler. For as much as technology may have helped our world move into the modern age, there is something nice about societies such as the Amish that do not believe in using such gadgets. They seem to have much more time for family and the things that are most important in life.