Ernest is a 38-year-old married black male with two children who works as a cook for about 40 hours a week. He is a high school graduate living in a moderate-sized single family home with his wife and two mixed-race children. He has been employed in the restaurant business for his entire life and is currently employed full-time in a luxury hotel. Ernest's wife is also employed full-time, giving them an annual household income of approximately $75,000.

Ernest's home is located in a sub-division in Winslow Township, New Jersey. The sub-division includes approximately 250-300 homes built in the mid-late 1980's. The exteriors of the homes appear well maintained and the majority of the lawns are well groomed. Many children are playing in the neighborhood yards, including Ernest's children. The neighborhood appears middle class and racially integrated.

Internet: Ernest uses the Internet for pleasure only via verizon online at home with no use at work or other locations. He reports no email, chat room, or instant messaging usage at all, having about 10 friends that he talks to personally rather than by phone or mail. Ernest's web interests include music, sports, and cooking. He estimates eighteen hours per week of web usage also on these topics-approximately half of that time spent downloading jazz music from free access web sites.

Ernest seemed to have learned whatever he knows about computers and the Internet on a strictly trial-and-error basis. He did not seem particularly computer savvy yet he owns a top-of-the-line Gateway PC and has every conceivable optional piece of equipment, which he installed on his own. He seemed very animated when talking about music in particular. It seemed as though he used infinite patience to pursue anything related to the music and had managed to teach himself everything he needed to know to access the music but would be uninterested and therefor unable to learn other applications. Ernest was unfamiliar with the terms "search engine" or "portal". He simply knew what he does and what works for him, primarily typing in web site names.

Free Time: Ernest's major free time and TV interests include watching sports on ESPN, and watching reruns of All in The Family and Columbo. He also enjoys cooking at home, as an extension of what he does at work. He observes that the Web has changed his life because "you forget you're on it and time just goes away." Discovering all the websites that provide both classic and contemporary jazz for free has been a major source of pleasure and accomplishment for him. He mainly navigates by typing in web addresses and using bookmarks. Logging onto Playboy.com for curiosity, on the other hand, was a personal embarrassment given his Christian values.

Interviewer: Yvonne Shands