Internet Use Across Generations

I chose to interview members of my family because they are the easiest for me access and the most likely to answer all my questions honestly (for the most part). I talked to my brother first. He is a year and 11 months younger than me but his life path has been much different than mine, so his internet usage is much different than mine also. He doesn't have a job currently and has had no post high school education. So as you might guess he has a lot of time on his hands for things like surfing the web. When I asked him what his primary use of the internet was his first response was "myspace". He is on myspace all the time, he has a blackberry and if he's not at home he's on myspace on his blackberry. He communicates with his friends more through myspace than anything else. He meets new people through myspace. Not having a job and not going to school makes meeting new people hard he says, so instead of getting a job or going to school, he meets new friends on myspace, obviously not the most intelligent decision, I would vote for him to just get a job! Or go to school! He is very comfortable communicating on the internet, he thinks the internet has definitley changed his life for the better. He gets to "meet all kinds of hot girls" he might not meet if he didn't have access to myspace. He also said that when he's not on myspace he is researching cars, downloading ALOT of music, and looking for a job (yeah right), and he uses the internet to find cheat codes for the xbox games he plays (whatever that means). The next generation would be my stepmom. She uses the internet mostly for emailing, advertising, myspace, and business related research, and occasionally downloading music. My stepmom owns a coffee shop uses the internet to order supplies and check the shipment status of her supplies. She likes myspace because even though she can't always know what I'm doing she knows she'll see the pictures on myspace eventually. (frightening) She communicates with lots of the members of my family through email and gets email updates on shipments of products. She also has a webpage for her coffee shop which was created and is maintained by someone else but she visits the page frequently and decides what sort of updates she thinks it needs. She likes to think she mostly uses it as a business tool but she spends just as much time checking up on me through myspace, and emailing her friends and family, and downloading music to her ipod as she does placing and tracking her supply orders! She is a big fan of the internet, she can't imagine how she would get the product that she needs without it. The next member of my family that I talked to was my Grandma. She calls her computer an electronic solitare game, meaning that it's main use to her is as a deck of cards, she plays solitare on her computer more than she does anything else. She does know how to access her email and how to respond to emails. She keeps her contacts in microsoft outlook, and uses her outlook calendar. My grandma and I communicate via email more than any other communication method. She is alot better at technological stuff than she lets on to be. She likes the internet because she gets to "talk to her grandkids" more than she would without it but she still wants me to call her more :). They all use the internet for personal entertainment and for organization or business purposes. They have personal and business uses for the internet. Maybe we are abnormal but all three generations of my family find the internet to be both fun and useful.

Online Communities??!!

So when I first read through this assignment I was very unsure of joining an online community. Beyond myspace and facebook I am not nor have I even been part of an online community. I think that when I think of online communities the first thing that comes to my mind is chat rooms. I knew for certain that I didn’t want to be part of any chat rooms. So I started thinking about what I would even want to join an online community to discuss and the first thing that came to my mind was fashion. I just returned yesterday from Las Vegas where I attended the MAGIC Tradeshow (which was SO amazing!!!!!!!!!). MAGIC is the largest tradeshow in North America for textiles and apparel. This is where designers and their designs meet with buyers who will sell their products. Buyers from Nordstrom, Bloomingdales, Saks, Macy’s, every huge name you can think of and lots of buyers from small boutiques were al there to place purchase orders for products that they will sell in the fall. While I was there I got to see design and apparel that no one else will get to see for months. I felt so good! I also go to purchase items from the designers that will not be available for anyone else to purchase for a really long time (lucky for me I’m the sample size :) ). Anyway I thought that because I had been to this show I would have a lot of useful knowledge that others like myself would be really interested to hear about and probably on a fashion site there would be lots of individuals who know the newest, latest, and greatest that I might not know about yet. I did a search for a fashion online community and returned lots of results, the one that struck me was one that was created by Damon Dash, the Fashion/Music/ and now Internet mogul. Damon Dash is on of the cofounders of Rocawear which is Jay Z’s clothing line. The only thing I love as much as fashion is music. Hiphop and R&B is my music so this online community seemed like the best fit for me.

The site is called BlockSavvy, it mixes fashion, music, and entertainment with the people who want to know about it and mixes people who care about the same things together. Since I have joined I have actually spent more time on BlockSavvy.com than on myspace and facebook combined. The community is so ahead of anyone I know in Corvallis or Salem or Portland that I enjoy the information that I find here more than the information I find on either myspace or facebook. I assimilated just fine into the group and the group accepted me very well. We all love the same things, we have a lot in common. I get comments a lot about being a little white girl from Corvallis Oregon and being so into hiphop and urban fashion. The online community has an overwhelming majority or African American men and women from very urban areas. I feel like they are very accepting of my interest and passion for the subject matter but love to tell me how unusual it is. I’m SO happy that I was given this assignment I discovered an online community that I LOVE!!! If anyone that reads this has an interest in music and/or fashion check it out... I think you'll really like it.

internet vs hard copy resources

I decided to develop my conclusion about the differences between online resources and hard copy printed materials by taking note of how I actually research a topic for a paper that I am working on for another class. I am a Merchandising Management major so must of the subjects I do research on are in the fashion or retail industry. The paper that I am currently doing research for is about the marketing mix of an apparel company called Anthropologie. Most if not every bit of information about the company itself, I found on the Internet. The company is owned by Urban Outfitters, it’s a publicly traded company; the information is abundant throughout many different sources on the Internet.

I am very used to doing most of my research on the Internet so it seemed very inconvenient to have to go to the library for this assignment but I did it and I was there for hours actually. I use the website WWD for a lot of my research and just for pleasure, it’s an amazing resource for all things fashion. Apparently the library has a subscription to the magazine, Women’s Wear Daily, so instead of using the website I could actually flip through the pages of the magazine. I looked at about 20 issues while I was there, I grabbed a table and grabbed a huge stack of the magazines and didn’t leave my seat except to pee for about two and a half hours. The biggest difference for me was that when I was on the WWD website I was there looking for very specific information about the company, so I mostly used the search bar and it brought back related information. For the sake of my research for my paper using the internet was more efficient because I didn’t have to view any unrelated information but for my own viewing pleasure and general knowledge development, I learned a million amazing things from flipping through the pages. As a senior in Merchandising Management I’m also looking for a job for post graduation…. There was a section in the middle and at the back of each magazine that I looked at with internship and job opportunities! I loved that.

I got off track, I realize. The point is that in my opinion my use of the internet is more efficient. For more than one reason. The information that was in the magazine was dated in comparison to the information that I found on the website and I ended up getting very sidetracked by all the information that was unrelated to my research but still very interesting to me. That ‘s totally my fault. If I was supposed to find an aspect of hard copy research that is better than internet I didn’t really. Expect that when I was doing my internet research I was at home on my laptop and my dog was dropping her toy rope on top of my keyboard repeatedly making it very difficult to complete my research. I got to avoid this distraction at the library.

Snailmail vs Email

I chose to write an email to a person at the company that I work for, he previously was my direct manager and has since been promoted twice so he is now my boss’s, boss’s, boss. He was actually the person who hired me on with the company, and he is now my boyfriend’s direct manager. He was my mentor; he taught me most of what I know about being successful at our company. He also hired my boyfriend and has been instrumental in his success at the company. We email and text message each other regularly at work, which is why I chose to write the email letter to him. The person I wrote the pen and paper letter to is my Grandma. She is one of my favorite people on the planet. Even though she uses the internet to email me frequently, we once communicated via pen and paper before she knew how to work her email. She still sends me birthday and Christmas cards through the mail. Both of my parents and my grandparents use the internet to communicate. My grandma travels often, I actually had to call her to see which address I should mail this letter too. I didn’t tell her what I was sending to her just that I needed the address to where she would be in about a week or a week and a half. (I don’t even have any idea how long it takes for a letter to get from my house to southern California via regular mail, the only shipping I do is through UPS usually.)

I composed my letter to Jesse (my boss’s, boss’s, boss) in Word, I wrote in a business letter format, just for affect J. I knew he would think it was funny; we have a very relaxed relationship. I actually needed him to write me a letter or recommendation for another class so I thought this would be a topic for my letter. I let him know how important I think he was to my success at the company and how much I appreciate him and his guidance that he has offered to both my boyfriend and myself. He got back to me within the day. I sent him the letter last Wednesday morning and on Wednesday afternoon he had already responded and he had a letter of recommendation for me on Friday afternoon. He’s a very efficient individual. I have spoken to him five or six times since I sent him the letter and got my response.

I wrote my Grandma’s letter on Wednesday morning also. It took me much longer and I was less satisfied with it’s physical appearance than the letter I wrote to Jesse. I am not a big fan of my penmanship. I love using Microsoft Word because it corrects my grammar, punctuation, spelling, and always looks so much neater and cleaner than my handwriting. My Grandma loves me whether I spell everything correctly or have amazing handwriting or not but I can’t say the same is true of employers, current or future, or professional contacts in general. After I wrote my letter to my grandma I realized that I didn’t have any stamps in my house and that I have no idea where the post office is from my house in Salem. Apparently you can purchase stamps at grocery stores, I honestly didn’t know that. I thought you had to get them at the post office…. shows how much I mail things. I ended up not being able to mail it until Thursday because I didn’t learn that stamps could be purchased at grocery stores until Wednesday night when my boyfriend informed me. I’m not even sure if the letter has reached my Grandma’s house yet. I am planning on calling her as soon as I have a second, to see if she has gotten it yet. It could have been lost somehow in the mail. That’s not really something I had to worry about with the email. If it doesn’t get to the person I sent it to I get a message in my box immediately informing me that it wasn’t delivered. I am pretty sure I wrote less in the letter to my Grandma than I would have liked to but I was working hard on my penmanship and writing is harder on the hands than typing either way.

I very much prefer email.