[Although I was familiar with internet when I went to Stanford, it was only there that it became a part of my life, since it was so easily available at home and in office. This column was published in Business Standard of 8 May 2000.]
The crowd is getting lonelier
India's Department of Telecommunications has spent the best part of the 1990s defending
its monopoly, and in the process ensured that the choice available to Indian
telephone users is minimized. Contrarily, US Congress destroyed the monopoly of
AT&T, the US equivalent of the DoT, in the 1970s. Especially in the
provision of access to internet, there is so much competition in the States
that the man in the street is bombarded, through mailers, the press and television,
to get access through a large number of internet service providers. I
frequently get flyers offering me unlimited, fast, 24-hour access through the
telephone cable at prices starting from $15 a month.
How is this
increasing access to internet affecting the US society? The Stanford Institute
for the Quantitative Study of Society has done a sample survey of 4113 adults
in 2689 families to find out. The survey uses an innovative method of reaching
households. It supplied 35000 people with access to internet through their
television sets. This involves giving them a box to connect to their TV; the
box also tells the surveyors who is connected to internet and who is not. The
method is the same as is used for viewership surveys of television; there too a
set-top box is used to monitor who is watching what. The other advantage of
giving people connections was that they could thereby be distinguished from
those who were already using internet. In other words, the survey sampled two
types of people – old users and new ones – separately. By now, almost half the
American population is connected – 42 per cent at home, and 10-15 per cent at
work. Whites and educated people are more likely to be connected,
African-Americans and Hispanics less so. Bengalis, incidentally, are highly
connected; I have come across Bengalis who send e-mails in Bengali written in
the Roman script.
What do
people do once they get connected? Most people use it for e-mail. It is easier
than writing; one does not have to go and buy stamps or mail a letter. It is
easier than phoning, which is a passion amongst Americans; it does not require
the other person to be connected at the same time, does not take his time, and
does not require him to respond immediately. E-mail comes closest to the old
telegram; but since it cuts out having to go to a telegraph office, it is far
more convenient, and hence its users use it more intensively. Slowly people
pick up communications with their acquaintances whom they have not bothered
about for years, and as time goes, both the number of their correspondents and
the frequency of their communications goes up.
Those who
confine themselves to e-mail usually spend less than five hours a week on
internet. But once they go beyond 5 hours, people start using internet for other
purposes. They start booking tickets on internet. I have just looked up the
programme of San Francisco ballet on internet and booked tickets, 50 miles
away. It saves having to talk to a booking clerk over the phone, it permits
much more accurate conveying of the necessary information – performance, name,
credit card number etc – it gives immediate confirmation, and the tickets will
arrive by mail in three days. I cannot, of course, see the performance on
internet, but that bit of inconvenience makes it more prized. Then people start
buying things on internet. If I went into town, I would spend perhaps half a
day getting information on half a dozen digital cameras; on internet I can get
information on all the cameras available, together with reviews, on a single
site in five minutes.
There are
fewer people doing banking or stock trading on internet. Stock trading is still
apparently in its infancy. The New York Times gave $5000 to a staff
member, and asked him to play around buying shares on internet. After two days
of frustration he returned with the money unspent: the market is too thin, and
the hassles of concluding deals too great. But despite these frustrations, a
quarter of the internet users said they spent less time in stores, and 15 per
cent said they spent less time in traffic.
But 60 per
cent of those who were more than five hours a week on internet said that the
time was coming out of what they earlier spent watching television. A third
also spend less time reading newspapers; but Americans spend far more time
watching television than reading newspapers, so the impact of internet on
television viewing is much greater. This is why all American newspapers and
magazines have set up attractive web sites, on which they are selling many
goods and services besides themselves.
This is
perhaps the most portentous finding of the survey. In America, television is
almost 50 years old. Every household has it; many have more than one. They
spend hours watching TV; single black mothers put their infants before a TV set
just as mothers elsewhere suckle them. Television programme companies were the
hot stocks of the 1960s and 1970s just as internet startups are today. They
made a lot of money, and bought up newspapers and magazines with it. That is
how Warner Brothers owns Time, for instance.
This
development completely bypassed India because the state monopoly of television
prevented it. But the next step – the battle between internet and television –
may still be fought in India. For television viewership in India is already
quite large, although it has far to go before it reaches the levels of
industrial countries. It absorbs a large chunk of time – into which internet
could cut in. Will it do so? Not if the DoT has its way; for it its fat profits
are far more important than what the Indian consumer wants. But who knows? Once
in a while the BJP government shows some concern for him; he may still strike
lucky.
