Cecily is a 40-year old African American woman, who has never been married and has no partner or children. She lives alone in the row home she owns in a predominantly African American neighborhood in Germantown, in the northwest section of Philadelphia.

Cecily has a BA in psychology. About a year ago she resigned the full-time sales management position she'd had for over ten years with a health care organization. She is now in the process of changing career directions, and is not certain what type of work she would like to pursue next. While looking for a new career and/or full-time work, she has started what she calls an "e-commerce consulting firm," through which she introduces small business, especially minority-owned small businesses, to information technology (IT), and advises them on how they can use IT to save time and money. She reported that she spends 50 hours per week working; that probably includes the time she spends educating herself in this field, which is relatively new to her.

Free Time: In her free time she writes and listens to music, engages in gourmet cooking, and does personal research on the Internet. She is quite proud of her creativity in song writing and arranging, especially her ability to change song styles and, by breaking down the time structure, to bend and mold the song, as if she's playing with numbers. She is also working to write 3 books even though she has never published.

Her favorite TV shows reveal the variety of her interests: Judge Judy (because Cecily is fascinated with the law and admires the way Judge Judy is so "postal," yet still respects the law); The X-Files; The Simpsons ("because there's so much going on in every frame of every episode-you have to work with both sides of your brain when you watch that"); and Charlie Rose.

Although she describes herself as anti-social and too "agoraphobic" to use chat rooms, Cecily's active social network includes about 30 people, all of whom she stays in contact by phone and by email. She sees about a third of these people socially, and a few others at meetings or group events via U.S. postal mail.

Internet: Cecily has a computer at home, which is connected to the Internet via a regular phone line and a modem. She also uses the computers at her clients' workplaces, and occasionally uses computers at schools or libraries. She recalls that she first saw the Internet in 1996, at the office of a friend, who worked for the Veterans Administration. She wrote it off as a boring way the government communicated internally. "There wasn't much there, and it took forever for me to see that.-it didn't seem exciting or worthwhile-I just didn't get it." She first used it herself in 1997 at work.

Cecily estimates that she now uses the computer for email about 6 hours per week. In an average day she sends about 5 personal, one-to-one messages, and receives about 8 in return. Most of these messages are from or to work associates, from/to family members, or friends.

Email has "dramatically increased" the number of people with whom Cecily is in contact, because email allows her to correspond with people in professional associations she has recently joined. Cecily also thinks that email has increased the quality of contact she has with her contacts, both because she writes more often, and because she expresses herself more clearly through writing than through speech, perhaps because she reads and edits what she writes before sending it.

Cecily has never "ventured into" a chat room, and is unfamiliar with the concept of instant messaging. In regards to other forms of on-line interaction, she mentioned that she views or reads news groups, bulleting boards and discussion forums, but she doesn't interact. In particular she follows the discussions on Yahoo's financial page and at "Raging Bull," because she likes to know what other people are trading. She uses el.com to access essential links that saves her time. She likes howstuffworks.com because it "shows me exactly what I need to know." She did become upset when she accidentally hit upon a hate group site.

She estimates that she uses the Web about 20 hours per week, primarily for news, to get financial information, and to stay abreast of current issues that relate to her IT consulting business. She is a fairly savvy web-user, and has composed and posted an elementary web page of her own, which she looks forward to improving in the future. Comparing her own web use with that of others, she says, "I'm not interested in shopping, entertainment, sex, or whatever they do. I'm interested in getting real information. My 'toy' phase with the computer is over. I'm more focused." If she were richer, she might like it more for shopping. She says that the Internet has changed her life a great deal. "You don't have to research in the old-fashioned way, or pay for a college degree anymore. You can get the information for free."

"The internet is a great tool for women. Women love talking, expressing themselves. With the net they don't have to ask permission. They are free to say whatever they like and feel safe about it."

Cecily also observed: "I'm looking forward to the future when the global marketplace is open for common people. I would like to see points of view beyond what rich, white guys offer me. I think the net offers hope-a forum for that to occur in."

Interviewer: Carolyn Rahe