Joy is a 29-year-old married white female, who lives with her husband in one-half of a duplex, which they own in a racially integrated, working class to lower middle class neighborhood in northwest Philadelphia known as Overbrook. Joy is a telemarketing supervisor employed 30 hours a week for the Pennsylvania Ballet. She is also a part-time student, taking two college courses as well as a phlebotomy certification program. Joy eventually wants to obtain a medical degree and conduct genetic research. She uses the internet in her job, her school, and at home.

Free Time: In her free time Joy enjoys shopping for photo equipment, reading and watching television. She feels particularly talented in the field of photography, especially "candid shots". Her favorite television shows include the NBC Thursday evening line-up of ER ("it's medical, often they get the medicine close but not quite to reality but they use all the real equipment"), Will and Grace, and Friends.

Joy reports a large social network including exactly 119 people ("the number of people in my PALM PILOT"). She reports staying in contact with almost all of them on a regular basis by talking on the phone, exchanging letters and email, or attending meetings. Email has increased the number of her contacts because it's "easier than mail and cheaper than travelling". However, she reports no change in the quality of her contacts ("kept up as well as before and the content is pretty much the same").

Internet: Joy has five computers at home, which are connected to the Internet via high speed DSL modems. She also uses computers at school. She first used the Internet in 1992 at school.

Joy estimates that she uses the computer for email about twenty hours per week. In an average day she sends ten personal one-to-one messages, and receives about twenty in return. She also reports receiving approximately thirty e-list or junk mail messages per day. Joy also spends about three hours per week instant messaging. She likes instant messaging because "it's free, saves on phone time, and it works internationally". However, Joy also reports that instant messaging makes it "difficult to cut and paste photos and to edit the text". She also doesn't like "AVITARS". In addition, Joy spends seven hours per week using chat rooms, discussion forums, and bulletin boards. She belongs to three social clubs. She discusses "personal things, the weather, carnival schedules, rallies, conferences, and hosting your own web site" in these chat rooms.

Joy spends approximately four hours per week on various web sites. Her four most frequently accessed web sites are yahoo.com ("about purchasing cars, Kelly book values, web sites for Honda CRX's), myfamily.com ("more or less keeping in touch with my friends"), tnthomeview.com ("listen to music, pictures from home, chats, news"), and palm.net (everything palm, freeware, shareware, palm products"). Joy also reports accessing ebsco for medical articles for school, most recently a phlebotomy article. She feels that these websites have "changed her life some" because

"I can share my pictures faster, I have greater access to journal articles (medical and scientific journals) and I can manage my banking."

Joy felt "particularly happy or excited" when she discovered cyberrebates.com. "I could get free photography and electronic equipment!" SPAM angers Joy because "it's unsolicited and hard to get rid of". Joy first felt "very clever or intelligent" about her Internet skills when she designed her "first web page with flash- streaming stuff and graphic!" However, that feeling of elation was soon replaced by feeling less clever when that page crashed.

Joy admits that her internet usage is much higher than most people she knows. She seemed intimately familiar with technical terminology and navigation methods. She got very excited when talking about her web page and list serves and frequently used terminology that the interviewer had never heard before (she often spoke so quickly that it was necessary to ask her to repeat key and/or to spell key terms and phrases).

Interviewer: Yvonne Shands