Ken is a 24 year-old single white male, who graduated from college one year ago and is living in a rented row home with two roommates (one in law school and the other now finishing college). Ken has been employed now about 55 hours a week as an administrative assistant mainly performing routine clerical tasks ("Doing Excel charts for reports is about the only creative thing I get.") since his graduation, with an annual income is $24,000. He is currently seeking employment in his field of advertising.

The row home is located in a South Philadelphia neighborhood and is the only rental property on the block. The majority of the neighbors have owned their homes within the family for one to two generations and are of Italian ancestry. The neighborhood is working class to lower middle income.

Free Time: Ken's major free time activities include TV (Sopranos and Roseanne ["reminds me of what I watched as a kid"]), pop music and daily gym workouts ("...makes me feel better about myself" and "gets my day going"). He estimates he has about 10 friends that he mainly contacts in person and by phone-and less than half of whom he contacts via e-mail. His work hours now have cut into time he used to spend emailing others online in college. His contacts now are mainly of the simple "How are you/What's up?" variety.

Internet: Ken uses the Internet for both work and pleasure. Slightly more than half of his email communication is work-related while three-quarters of his web site usage is for pleasure. Ken's interests in music and television are reflected by the web sites he visits most frequently: billboard.com to check the top 200 charts and hbo.com to check on The Sopranos and Oz. Outside of burning 2 hours of CD's per week, he doesn't use the home computer, but uses his father's/aunt's/ or girlfriend's computer about an hour a week.

Ken has also bee utilizing the web quite extensively for his impending career launch; he has accessed resume writing resources and job placement sites repeatedly in the past few weeks. He also frequently checks his banking account to be sure his checkbook is balanced and checks ebay.com for prices on goods like old Absolut and other ads.

Ken reports minimal use of the Internet as a social tool or resource, no chat room or instant messaging usage, nor ever having met someone through the Internet. Yet he considers finding old friends as one of his major accomplishments on the Internet. Although Ken had a difficult time answering some of the early questions he began elaborating more as the interview continued. He frequently added to thought of previous questions and seemed genuinely to enjoy the interview.

He left the impression that his Internet usage habits had matured significantly since graduating from college. "If I use the net, I know exactly what I'm looking for, I find it and I'm done." He follows a pattern of finding "a collection of new sites and moving onto new sites after a year or so."

Interviewer: Yvonne Shands