Access issues and flat fee
Posted on December 11, 2001 @ 10:34 in Research
Miller and Slater discuss in their book The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach various issues regarding access and use of the internet by Trinidadians and interestingly note (on page 32) that the Trinidadians seem to make little use of MUDs and Usenet newsgroups.
For a long while I figured that relatively little people in Holland were playing MUDs because of the prohibitively high cost of metered access. We still don't have flat-fee local calls in Holland (although there are some serious looking initiatives cooking), just like the situation Miller and Slater describe, but a fair amount of people in Holland now has access to either ADSL or cable-modem internet access and both are flatfee. Before I had a cable-modem, I racked up phonebills up to 450 guilders a month (that's something like $200 US per month) just for dialing in with my ISP. You can see how this kind of cost would keep people from logging on for extended periods of time, like you need to for mudding or chatting. Most people I know using the internet back then kept themselves to logging in, receiving and sending mail, maybe getting posts in the Usenet groups they're reading, maybe quickly (15-30 minutes or so) checking some websites, but then they'd log out because they knew the meter was ticking.
The Trinidadians (generalization, I know, but I was talking about the Dutch in the same manner and I didn't and don't mean to include everyone whether they like it or not, but you know that already *grin*) on the other hand, as Miller and Slater say, don't use newsgroups much, but they've quite taken to ICQ for chatting. Okay, they're talking about 1999 in Trinidad and I'm talking about 1995-1998 in Holland, but still... metered internet access.
So maybe there's more to the fact that in a relatively small population (Trinidad ~ 1.3 milion; Holland ~ 15 million) relatively few people do MUD. (Leaving newsgroups out of the equation here, because they're being put to good use in Holland.) Maybe it only looks like there is quite a substantial number of mudders, primarily from the US, but also from the other English speaking countries like the UK and Australia, but relative to their much larger population their number might be similarly small. I'd be interested to see some numbers on this. If you know where to find this kind of 'demographic' data, let me know :)
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