The Pew Internet and American Life project has come up with a new typology of technology users (and avoiders). Highlights:
Digital Collaborators: 8% of adults use information gadgets to collaborate with others and share their creativity with the world.
Ambivalent Networkers: 7% of adults heavily use mobile devices to connect with others and entertain themselves, but they don’t always like it when the cell phone rings.
Media Movers: 7% of adults use online access to seek out information nuggets, and these nuggets make their way through these users’ social networks via desktop and mobile access.
Roving Nodes: 9% of adults use their mobile devices to connect with others and share information with them.
Mobile Newbies: 8% of adults lack robust access to the internet, but they like their cell phones.
Desktop Veterans: 13% of adults are dedicated to wireline access to digital information, and like how it opens up the pipeline to information for them.
Drifting Surfers: 14% of adults are light users — despite having a lot of ICTs — and say they could do without modern gadgets and services.
Information Encumbered: 10% of adults feel overwhelmed by information and inadequate to troubleshoot modern ICTs.
The Tech Indifferent: 10% of adults are unenthusiastic about the internet and cell phone.
Off the Network: 14% of adults are neither cell phone users nor internet users.
Pew provide a quiz designed to help you assess where you fit in this classification system.
(Footnote: I’m a ‘digital collaborator’, apparently.)
