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sector: home working |
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location: North London |
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technology used: BT broadband for 18 months |
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website: N/A |
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Anthony works from home in New Barnet. His wife works as a medical secretary, and they have three children in their teens. He is a writer and journalist, but makes money by getting grants for businesses and charities and by negotiating reductions in company utility bills. The local synagogue links his personal and professional life, providing lots of contacts and friends. He seems to be something of a community impresario. |
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He has worked for himself for 15 years. Notionally a sole trader, he relies on a network of local women performing support services. They include a PA who visits the office weekly, a typist, an internet researcher working on a dial-up connection from her home, and two form-fillers who complete grant applications. |
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The family kitchen gives on to Anthony's office space, which is untidy in a regimented way with stacks of paper surrounding his desk. The trained eyes of Anthony and his PA know roughly where things are, most of the time. He has two phones – one incoming, one outgoing – and a mobile phone. Although a relatively heavy email user Anthony is certain that his phones are the one piece of technology he could not do without. He judges how busy his days are by the volume of calls. |
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He has had the same email address since 1989 and would not move to another. He receives 40–60 messages daily, of which half are 'junk', a quarter 'of interest' and another quarter 'worth looking at'.He collects his email throughout the day, often while on the phone to clients or contacts and periodically pushing the Send/Receive button. Overall, his internet use is highly task-specific and made up of ad hoc processes essential for work. The Internet Explorer window is not always open or even maximised, unlike Outlook Express which is an ever present feature of his working routine and style. |
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Anthony tries to minimise his reliance on technology. His trust in it has its limits and he doesn't want to develop a total dependency. He keeps print-outs of phone numbers and invoices, and is careful to back-up files and bookmarks once a month. Although his PC is a source of 'constant issues', it is rarely enough to stop him working. He is self-taught, which he thinks is part of the problem. Having been on the net for over a decade – he is quite proud that he was quick to see the potential of the web – he decided to move to broadband 18 months ago. Such was his lack of knowledge about broadband when signing up that he had assumed that BT had a monopoly. |
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His reasons for making the broadband move? Cost and convenience. On dial-up he was constantly having to connect to the internet to see if new mail had arrived. |
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Now, as he explained to another home worker who had come in to check over some grant application forms:'I'm on ADSL and I'm on 24-hours-a-day if I want to be.' In reality he switches off the machine at night to save electricity, though his children have usually booted it up to check their Hotmail by the time he has returned from the synagogue in the morning. |
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In terms of the impact of broadband, he uses the words 'significant' and 'intrusive' to describe what it has done for him and his business. Broadband means more viruses, more spam, greater likelihood of things 'intruding'. The significant benefit is not having to dial up for his email each time. Speed doesn't really figure in his evaluation: in fact he is not over-impressed with the speed of his BT broadband, commenting that it is 'not as fast it should be'. |
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Broadband has made him more reliant on email, meaning he gets more, primarily because he deals with what comes in more quickly, which in itself precipitates more email. This makes his business more responsive in his opinion, but can have a tendency to distract. Email arriving throughout the day is also 'intrusive', and he initially found it quite difficult to deal with a steady flow of new mail. Speed is a bigger benefit for Josh, Anthony's 16-year-old son. He often uses an internet radio station while he chats with friends on MSN Messenger: 'I collect people,' he notes, showing off his impressive buddy list. He recognises that net radio wouldn't work well on dial-up. Although instant messaging (IM) was possible– most of his friends are dialling up to chat – he likes the fact that its always there in the background. |
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Given Josh's more active use of the internet, pulling content down and maintaining real-time conversation, it is not surprising that Josh's perception of broadband differs from his father's. He feels more able to wander off and come back to the task. Similarly, broadband offers him, he suggests, a cure from the 'drug-like' dependency on time that dialup engendered where the addict had to constantly look to see how long they had been online: 'It removes the phobia of being online too much – you can relax a bit. 'Ultimately, for the nonchalant teenager broadband is good is because it is invisible, even if your friends remind you what you've got: |
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'For those who know about it, it seems something big, but if you're not too savvy - well who cares? You aren't really aware of it but your friends say you're lucky.' |
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Overall, Anthony is a good example of a functional broadband user. He is exploring possibilities and learning to cope with difficulties. But it is his son who gets the most out of it. |
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