By James Pilcher
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Ever change the company you use to access the Internet, known in geek-speak as your ISP?
Know how to change the home page the ISP provides you? Pay for online content?
More willing to give up your TV than your computer as an information and entertainment source?
You are probably one of the 31 percent of Americans called "highly tech-savvy." That's according to a new survey by a reputable polling organization that studied technology and Internet use in the United States.
What the report says is a perfect way to kick off this column, which will be a periodic check on the pulse of the technology community: the people who make, sell and use this stuff.
According to the report by the Pew Institute's Internet and American Life Project, those 31 percent who are "highly tech-savvy" spend $169 monthly on accessing their technology - Internet access fees, cell-phone charges, satellite or cable TV bills, etc. That's 36 percent more than the national average.
Estimating that the nation's population is nearly 293 million, that's nearly 9.1 million people spending $184 billion a year on just service, not to mention their purchases for tech hardware.
Here's the kicker.
The results are based on a random telephone survey done in October ... of 2002.
Just think of everything that has happened in the past 13 months.
• Cell phone number portability is now a reality.
• Using a cell phone as a home number is coming.
• Wi-Fi "Hot Spots" where one can jack into the Internet without a hard line are blooming like the Starbuck's coffee shops they are featured in.
Even the author of the study acknowledges the number of tech-savvy Americans has grown since the survey was done, as has the money spent on technology, whether it be hardware, software, service and access fees, or content.
"That's exactly the case, and we see a fairly clear growing pool of wireless Internet users," said John Horrigan, author of the Pew report.
It is this exploding market of technology products and consumers that this column will tap into from time to time - at least the Tristate's share of it.
But it won't be about the latest video game or do nothing more than review the neatest new camera/game platform/music player/phone on display at the neighborhood cellular provider.
Rather, the hope is to help understand whether technology is doing what it promises - does it make work and life more productive and enjoyable?
Also, we'll look at what issues such technology raises, from privacy concerns to information overload to not being able to get away from the office.
One personal pet peeve: the inescapable feeling when you plunk down a couple of hundred bucks on a new PDA or even up to $1,000 on a new desktop, knowing that it will be obsolete within two years. (Although the Hewlett-Packard Jornada 548 I used for this column still holds up pretty well, 21/2 years later).
And since this is the Business section, we'll be checking in to see who is actually making money off the cutting edge, or not making money as the case may be.
Have any ideas? Issues to address? (Yes, e-mail spam is already on the list).
Let the wireless e-mails via cell phone PDAs equipped with Bluetooth from a Wi-Fi Hot Spot flow.
I'll probably be the guy next to you with the foldout keyboard and caramel machiatto, checking them all out.
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E-mail jpilcher@enquirer.com
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