Cemeteries, oak trees, and black and white cows: learning to participate on the internet

Designers of Internet applications and those helping others learn about the net need to understand the problems Internet newcomers face as they encounter the idiosyncratic structures that organize the networked world. As part of an ethnographic study of SeniorNet, an organization that helps seniors learn to use computers, we explore early encounters with the networked world by analyzing questions asked in introductory computer classes. These questions, grounded in newcomers’ prior experience, show how the taken-for-granted assumptions and strategies underlying successful Internet use differ from those in other domains. The questions and analysis are grouped in the following categories: identity on the Internet; boundaries and scope of the Internet; boundaries and scope of the personal computer; and organizations and providers in the networked world.