Sherry is a 57-year old divorced white woman, who currently shares her Castor Gardens/Northeast Philadelphia rowhome with her 21-year old son. This middle class neighborhood is comprised of a diverse mix of families, many of whom are first or second generation immigrants to this country. Sherry is Jewish, with family roots in Eastern Europe, as are many of this neighborhood's residents. Other near neighbors include Asians from Cambodia, Vietnam and India, as well as African Americans.

Sherry is a college graduate and currently earns approximately $40 thousand per year. She works about 45 hours per week as the development specialist for an umbrella organization that oversees a group of religiously based social service agencies in the Philadelphia area. She is responsible for fundraising and community outreach.

Free Time: In her free time, Sherry involves herself in activities that help her relax, reduce stress and avoid "engaging intellectually." Sherry has been knitting "for a long time" and says she is particularly skilled at it. She considers it:

"..a form of active meditation." "While I'm doing it I'm producing something and I shut out the world. It creates a sense of well-being in me."

Another recently adopted pastime is belly-dancing. Sherry spends some of her free time watching "selected TV programs." Her favorites are The Sopranos, Charlie Rose, and Sex and the City, the last of which she likes especially for the characters, their creativity, the way they interact, and their sense of style and adventure.

She keeps in contact with 35 to 40 friends or relatives, and most of them she sees socially and maintains email contact. Sherry uses the phone as her mode of communication with less than half of her friends/relatives, and occasionally the U.S. mail for personal correspondence.

Internet: While she has computers both at home and at work, Sherry almost exclusively uses the one at work. She says she would use her home computer more if her son and his friends weren't monopolizing it. Her son introduced her to the internet for the first time in 1998, when he "granted me ten minutes on his computer." She says that she really started to use the internet on her own in September of 1999, when internet access on an ISDN line became available at her job. She looks forward to going to work now sometimes just because of that internet access.

She estimates that she spends about 25 hours per week composing or reading email. She sends about 18 email messages per day, all of which are personal, one-to-one messages. She estimates receiving quite a large number (75) of email messages, but only about a third of these are personal. The others are mostly from other members of the twelve listserves to which she subscribes. "I love subscribing to them."

Email has increased the number of people with whom Sherry is in contact, "because it's easier and less expensive than the phone." Sherry also thinks the quality of her contacts has increased since using email. She says this is because

"There's more contact. The relationship is constantly building. There are no large gaps of time. Communication is continuous. You're not always playing catch-up."

The immediacy of email appeals to her because: "It's amazing how quickly you get back to a childlike sense of instant gratification. I want to get a response now." One would expect that Sherry might like instant messaging even better than email, but she has not tried it, nor has she used chat rooms.

Sherry uses the internet for functions other than email for work purposes for about 1 or 2 hours each of the five days she is in her office. She uses the Web for personal reasons at her office about 5 hours per week, after her normal work hours. She often navigates the Web by typing in the Web address or using search engines, such as Netscape, Google's and MSN's. Most frequently, though, she follows a hyperlink in another site she is visiting.

Sherry reported that she primarily uses the Web to visit sites related to her work, however she talked mostly about her non-work uses of the internet. For example, she says that she likes to cook and often goes to sites where she can print out recipes she has seen on cooking shows on TV. Some of these are seasonbyseason.com for recipes she has seen on the Food Network, and jewz.com for recipes she has seen on "New Jewish Cuisine." She also uses the Web for e-greeting cards, which she finds at sites such as justsocards.com and sealingwax.com. Sherry uses the Web to read headline news and related articles on current events at news sites such as those from the Philadelphia Inquirer and the New York Times, at a cost cheaper than that she would pay to read physical copies of those papers.

In her most recent visit to the web, Sherry did some research for her job, visiting the site of a social service organization equivalent to hers in Baltimore, here she looked for information on programs she might consider implementing in Philadelphia. She believes that her experience with these websites has changed her life a great deal because she can accomplish a lot more in less time now. "It would take six weeks in a library!"

Other ways Sherry uses the internet are: to purchase books and household items; to find knitting patterns; to download music and sometimes to purchase CD's; to listen to classical music on public radio programs, including some that are not broadcast in Philadelphia; to get information related to belly dancing, such as how to make costumes, where to purchase a drum in Israel and how to play it; and to get travel planning assistance.

Not everything she finds on the internet pleases Sherry. She was appalled to recently follow a link a friend emailed her and to find "inflammatory…misinformation about Israel and what's happening there lately."

Sherry initially said she has no idea how her internet usage compares to that of other people she knows, and then said "It's probably not that different if people are using [the internet] on a regular basis." She seems to be fairly comfortable on the internet, able to find what she needs with confidence, and can download and send files. She did not recognize the term "portal." When she needs advice on doing something new with software on her PC, Sherry works on solving the problem by using resources provided with the software, or by finding a solution on her own. She also has individuals at home and at work to help her.

If she were looking for information about a political candidate, Sherry said she would type in the candidate's name in a search engine. She might also look for information at the sites of the League of Women Voters or newspapers. If the individual had already held office, she would go to a government site and check on the candidate's voting record.

Recently Sherry used a search engine to find a friend she has not seen in three years, and was thrilled to find him. She says that every time she uses the internet she feels clever or intelligent. She told about the first email she sent her son, to which he sent back a response saying, "Get over yourself; it's no big deal." Sherry said her excitement about the internet reminds her of when she saw a television for the first time:

"I sat watching the signal pattern with a big smile on my face. I feel the same way now about the internet. It's amazing."

Interviewer: Carolyn Rahe