One of the real dangers in running a high tech company is making decisions and setting priorities based on our own, very warped perspective of the world. Yes, we may know about the latest and the coolest, but how many of these products ever make it to the mainstream? We can banter with all the acronyms of Web 2.0, but how many folks at the mall have ever heard of RSS?
As Anick Jesdanun reported for the Associated Press, a recent Pew study found 31 percent of Americans to be elite technology users, 20 percent moderate users and the rest to have little or no usage of the Internet or cell phones.
For those online, the Web changes the way many mundane tasks are done but it doesn’t fundamentally change basic human behavior.
While SharedBook focuses on the print medium, and believes wholeheartedly that it is here to stay, albeit in a revised, more personalized way, I am reminded of Joe Wikert’s blog comment about watching video on the computer. He wrote: “What is it about my attention span that causes it to shrink when I'm in front of a computer? I'd probably have no problem watching those same videos in their entirety on my TV, but I can't watch them all the way through on my computer.”
I agree. I can’t see commuters on the Lexington IRT subway line (4, 5, 6) reading their computers instead of a book or newspaper. Or reading my son Jack his good night story from a computer. But perhaps I’m just old-fashioned and slow to change?
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