Surprises and Non-human Agency

Did you grow up in an area that was more rural, suburban, or urban? if you were to think about the surrounding community and the sort of average person in the community, do you think it was a more tech savvy community or less tech savvy community?

Back to Topic Excerpts

Respondent 2

full text of transcription

J: Cool, so the quick connection thing, so, you don’t have to tell me where exactly you grew up, but was it like an urban area, a suburban area, more rural, or…?

I: Urban

J: Urban, okay, so what would you say the town’s technology level and savviness was like?  In general.

I: Well, I can say that in my neighborhood it’s not—I think I was probably one of the only people around the block that had a computer… [too garbled to understand]

[Back to Top]

Respondent 3

full text of transcription

J: So did you grow up in a rural area, or a suburban area or urban?

I:Well, actually I grew up in [small central IL city].

J: That still could go either way, because if you live in downtown [small central IL city] that’s pretty urban, vs. if you go 10 miles out of the town that’s pretty rural.

I: I lived in [area outside of small city]

J: Okay, so that’s almost like a suburb of [small city].

[Back to Top]

Respondent 4

full text of transcription

J: When you talk about growing up with communications technology and stuff, were, did you grow up in a rural area or a suburban type area or urban?

I:I grew up in the suburbs.

J:how technology savvy do you feel the town overall was.

I:I would say pretty savvy, um it was a Chicago suburb, it was fairly small, but I went to high school in a big town, like, I had to drive pretty far to get to school, actually, but, um, yeah, the Chicago suburbs I would say are pretty with the times, er.

J:Ok, cool.

I:as far as technology goes.

[Back to Top]

Respondent 6

full text of transcription

J: Oh, first, did you grow up in an urban area, suburban, or rural area?

I:Suburban. But yeah we had a 56K and AOL and logging on and everything.  So we had AOL Instant Messenger with that.  But only on the main computer, so my parents could monitor.

[Back to Top]

Respondent 7

full text of transcription

J: Okay.  Cool.  So did you grow up in a more rural, suburban, or urban area?

I:Urban.

J: So if you were to think about the surrounding community and the sort of average person in the community, do you think it was a more tech savvy community or less tech savvy community?

I:Umb, you mean the community of our school, or?

J:The surrounding neighborhood and community you grew up in?

I:Oh okay, yeah I would say tech savvy, because I mean I live on the North side and we have hospitals around us and a community college down the street, but I would say tech savvy, yeah.

[Back to Top]

Respondent 8

full text of transcription

J: Alright so to get an idea of where you grew up, was it more of a rural area, or city or suburb?

I:It was a suburb.

J:Okay, so how would you characterize the sort of technological norms of savvy-ness in your town?

I:I would say it’s pretty middle class.  The town next to us is pretty upper class, they have TV’s in their hallways to their school, we didn’t have anything like that, but we had lots of computers in our school, we had access to it all of the time.  I would say it was pretty technologically savvy. 

[Back to Top]

Respondent 9

full text of transcription

J: Alright, so did you grow up in a rural area, urban area-?

I:Urban.

J: So would you say within the surrounding area was technology a big deal, or was it a technologically savvy town, was it a common thing?

I:Not so much. Most people didn’t have the means—if they did have a computer it was a crap computer.

J:Was the internet then easily available in the area?

I:I’m not sure if they had it in libraries at first.  I had the internet at my house, so-

J: So a modem and AOL or?

I:Yeah we started with AOL.

J:Did your family ever make the transition to broadband from that?

I:Yeah we’ve got cable now.