Internet Attitudes Poll Coverage
The Internet Attitudes poll that we put out yesterday had us pretty busy talking to reporters as far as way as Australia and India. After the jump, are outside perspectives on the data that we collected from 1200 Americans.
Yes, we thought that the front page report in the San Jose Mercury News was pretty cool.
From that Mercury News story....
Paul Saffo, a technology forecaster and consulting professor at Stanford University, said the poll shows how quickly the Internet has become part of the daily life of Americans.
``It really shows that the Internet has gone from a gee-whiz 1990s novelty to an unremarkable and essential fact of life,'' he said. ``Back in the '90s the attitude was, `Gosh, can I really do that?' Today it's, `Of course I can do that, but why is it so slow?' ''
As for the perception that the United States is losing its technological lead, Saffo said, ``It's important to note that the Web was not invented by an American or even in America. It was invented by an English researcher working on the Swiss-France border in Cern. The Internet is now borderless and global, and on the basis of relative population alone, Indian and Chinese innovations are a sure bet.''
Dan Gillmor, a former Mercury News technology columnist and now director of the Center for Citizen Media, also was not surprised that Americans think the next Bill Gates will be someone born abroad.
``There's no doubt that the rest of the world is moving ahead of the U.S. in some respects,'' he said. ``In a global economy where other regions are educating people better than the U.S. and learning how to embrace risk-taking, innovation could come from anywhere.''
Step forward, Bill-ji or Bill-san or Bill-xiansheng.
The next Bill Gates is more likely to be lurking in Asia -- in China, Japan or India, in that order -- than in America, according to a new poll released by Zogby International and 463 Communications....
Survey: TV News Not Dead Yet
Internet podcasts have not replaced television news, according to a Zogby poll of Americans’ Internet habits. The survey of 1,203 adults released on Wednesday found that, by a 2 –1 ratio, most people still prefer to get their news the old fashioned way, from an evening TV newscast.
“Everybody’s talking about Internet video, and everybody’s watching Internet video, and all the ad dollars are moving onto Internet video,” said David Michel Davis, executive director of the Webby Awards. “But if you start to really pay attention to what’s going on your television, you’ll see that it’s actually starting to look a lot more like your computer.” ....
....perhaps unsurprisingly--given a summer episode in which the blogosphere ridiculed veteran Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens for referring to the Internet as a "series of tubes"--about 83 percent of the surveyed folk predicted that a 12-year-old child could outsmart their U.S. congressmen on all matters Net-related.
One unrelated observation: The 463 and Zogby released not only the results of the survey, they also produced the survey instrument itself, along with the raw data cross-tabulated. When it comes to public opinion polls in the political arena, this level of detail is rarely produced, and usually for good reason.
The data from these kinds of surveys are often taken out of context, massaged and generally twisted to score the kinds of points that the sponsoring groups or companies want to make. It’s far easier to distort survey results when no one can inspect the survey instrument or raw data. I generally conclude that someone wants to mess with our minds when only hand-picked and limited data from public opinion polls are released.
Nice to see full disclosure — more companies, trade associations, political groups and so forth should follow suit.
Boing Boing and other blogs.
This is an Awesome article. I love the information you guys find and post here. I do believe that over time, the podcast will replace TV's.
"Blogs are taking over the WORLD"
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Posted by: Xeng Vang | December 26, 2006 at 01:12 PM