"Relying on journalists and stock-market professionals for one’s view of the Internet’s future is like relying on a referendum of sugared-up 11-year-olds for an assessment of the Jolly Rancher and Pokemon industries."
—Kurt Andersen, co-chairman, Inside magazine, New York City

"What we do know now is that the ‘e’ in e-commerce doesn’t stand for ‘easy.’" —John Hagel, chief strategy officer, 12 Entrepreneuring Inc., a San Francisco-based operating company for e-commerce businesses

THIS IS YOUR FATHER’S INTERNET

As it turns out, the young and wired aren’t the be all and end all, after all.

Based on interviews with more than 2,000 online consumers, a study by Accenture (www.accenture.com), formerly known as Andersen Consulting, found that business-to-consumer ventures should stop trying to pull in young, trendy customers. Instead, these businesses should focus on consumers over age 35—a demographic that includes heavyweight buyers who account for 70% of all online spending.

Surprisingly, the study found that pricing matters less to consumers than the speed of the Web site, ease of use, security, and the breadth of the product selection.

THAT STARTS WITH E, WHICH RHYMES WITH B, WHICH STANDS FOR BACKGAMMON

Even as e-commerce spreads around the world, police in the small Turkish town of Kirikkale recently detained some 130 children for hanging out in Internet cafes. Officials say, among other things, they feared the children were playing backgammon.

Kirikkale’s police chief, Hayrettin Gok, says there were also complaints that Internet cafes were full of cigarette smoke and that children potentially had access to pornographic materials. Gok says he lectured the children: "Stay at home and do your homework. We want you to become people who do some good for the state. We want to see you in nice places, not bad ones."

DIAL M FOR MAYHEM

In a recent roundup of drug dealers in Amsterdam, Dutch police stumbled upon cellphones that had been converted into guns. The disguised pistols fire .22-caliber bullets through a barrel designed to look like the antenna. The pistols hold four rounds, which are fired by touching 5, 6, 7, or 8 on the keypad.

The phones’ innards have been gutted, so they no longer function as telephones—but it’s impossible to tell that from any distance.

"We find it very, very alarming," says Wolfgang Dicke of the German Police Union, which is investigating reports that the guns may be manufactured in that country. "It means police will have to draw their weapons whenever a person reaches for his mobile phone."

Airport authorities across Europe are deploying systems to X-ray all cellphones—a precaution expected to be taken eventually by airports worldwide. The cellphone guns haven’t been spotted in the U.S. yet, but the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Customs Service say they’re on the lookout.

BANDWIDTH BANDITS

At the risk of blowing a good thing for some friends:

While many services have sprung up that, for a fee, let people send and receive e-mail or get on to the Internet from airport terminals, it’s possible to do all that free of charge. All a traveler needs is a little persistence and a laptop or hand-held computer equipped with an increasingly common plug-in card.

Here’s how it works: Internet-access services like Aerzone Business Centers (which used to be called Laptop Lane) have set up antennas that give customers high-speed wireless access to the Internet within small, designated areas. But radio waves don’t respect physical boundaries. The signals spill out into nearby waiting areas or walkways.

Unless an access service is careful about security, people in those nearby areas have free rein to jump on to a network. They just need to have a $150 card that complies with 802.11b, a wireless technology standard that is increasingly being used to let computers talk to each other within offices. A traveler walking through an airport knows he has hit paydirt when a green light on the card starts flashing slowly.

It’s not to the point where people are milling three-deep near Internet-access stations at U.S. airports. But if you see someone walking around an airport seemingly using his laptop or hand-held computer as a divining rod, you can be pretty sure what he’s looking for.

LIFE OF FACTS

During the past year and a half, the Pew Internet & American Life Project has held up a mirror to U.S. society to see how the Internet is changing how people live, and it has found some surprises. For instance, despite all the emphasis on e-commerce, more people used the Internet to socialize than to shop during the holidays at the end of last year. More than half of the Americans who don’t currently use the Internet say they never will venture online.

To try to make sense of how the Internet is—and isn’t—affecting families, communities, the workplace, schools, health care, civic life, etc., Context chatted with project director Harrison "Lee" Rainie.

CONTEXT: How is the Internet shaping American life?

LEE RAINIE: Contrary to widespread fear that the Internet is isolating people by confining them to chairs in front of their computer screens, we have found the exact opposite. People who use e-mail feel more connected. They believe it extends their social world, making them more active socially. It adds to their communication.

CONTEXT: What are the downsides?

RAINIE: A lot of people are turned off by the volume of information, especially the volume of communication that the Internet brings into their lives. They hate spam.

While there is a ton of information out there, it’s still not real easy to find the stuff you want.

And, while the Internet helps form great communities, it also helps Nazis and Aryan Nation types get together more quickly.

CONTEXT: How valid are concerns people have about privacy and security?

RAINIE: We have found that, if you ask people about privacy, their concern registers off the chart. However, if you look at what they do online, they do a lot of trusting things. People worry that companies may track them, yet when they’re online, particularly if they’re in a cubicle at work or in their computer room at home, which tend to be isolated places, they feel anonymous. There is obviously a contradiction here.

CONTEXT: How can the Internet help advance ethical behavior in business?

RAINIE: The Internet has provided a host of new ways for people to hold others accountable. You can register your happiness or unhappiness with a business’s or a person’s conduct, and other consumers can base their decisions on the information you provide. Producers know that they had better do things right.