Its also important to remember that the levelling of the diffusion curve is the best way to predict saturation. It is not 100% of the population (that's a limit, like that ol' calculus stuff I once did). And the fact that it started in 1991 regardless of us *nix geeks reminds me of a cheeky comment by Paul DiMaggio at Webshop (http://www.webuse.umd.edu ) this summer. "Nobody used the Internet until 1994, cuase that's when *we* started measuring it". Cracks me up every time. In any case, recent reports like PEW (http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=88 ) from May 2003 suggest that some 'laggards' are in fact rejected adopters, while others live in the house with adopters and do indeed have 'access if they want it' but don't see the need in adopting the Internet. In a sense, imposing the discourse of "Internet is great, get on board" on them might be a sort of technological imperialism. I think of my former employer, smart as a whip and owner of one of the finest collections of Newfoundland historical literature in the world, who really did not see herself as benefitting from internet adoption, and she might actually be right! If anyone wants to take this thread off the list feel free to email me. oh and: PLEASE DO NOT SEND HTML POSTS TO AIR-L!!!! I get a daily digest which does not parse the html, so I have to read through a lot of xml and html crap to get at the goods (your thoughtful posting). Be kind to you ascii feathered friends. BERNiE Bernie Hogan Ph.D. Student Department of Sociology NetLab, Knowledge Media Design Institute University of Toronto bernie.hogan@utoronto.ca