ASSESSING THE IMPACT OF COMPUTERS ON THE HOME AND FAMILY Susan i-l. Gray New York institute of Technology 1855 Broadway, New York, NY 10023 Six areas are discussed: 1. Home Work. All ™, Blue Cross/Blue Shield and Aetna, for example, have home work projects. By the year 2020, up to 30% of the U.S. workforce may be teiecommuting. Reactions from family members are mostly positive. Stresses include the ambiguity of defining whether a spouse is at work or not and the need for others to be quiet while a family member is working. For the worker, stresses include loneliness, burnout and lack of discipline. By the year 2000 in the U. S. the number of selfemployed women working at home should be greater than the number of men, impacting on child care. There is the question of the potential exploitation of the powerless, who may work poorly paid long hours at home terminals, without union representation doing routine clerical work. Those living in small houses or apartments also may not have adequate space. 2. Smart Homes and Smart Supermarkets Several telephone companies, including GTE and Southern Bell, are currently experimenting with the introduction of fiber-optic cables. There is the issue of commercial viability. Currently, the cost is $10,000 for an integrated cable for a 2000 square-foot home. Social benefits will include security, convenience and energy management. Nintendo and ATT have been discussing computerized food shopping - electronic ordering of groceries on an automated and repetitive cycle - as a joint venture. Some supermarkets already monitor purchasing patterns electronically. Andersen Consulting, in Chicago, has a prototype smart card-based system. Shoppers may have the convenience of rebates without coupons, if more supermarkets implement programs similar to œReward America,  i.e., to encourage shopper loyalty, those who volunteer to have their purchases monitored by computer will get credit rebates when they buy a certain amount of a targeted product brand. 3. Family Interaction. Family recreation is more lnteractive with computerized games, compared to TV. But, the games are becoming increasingly thematically violent and interest in any particular game reaches a saturation point. CC Ram commitment, should spur the development of educational, game and interactive pornographic applications. A greater emphasis on adult programming could increase the market, as could commercially available multihousehold interactive games, linking players through cable television or telephone lines or desktop video, for the home. Home video games result in a reduction of comparatively non-interactive television viewing time. Videotex-type services have 4. The Informed Family. not been popular in the United States. Systems that focus primarily on home shopping or home banking or news have been commercial failures - as high as a loss of $50 million by Knight-Ridder ™s Viewtron. There is a trend in the United States toward the purchase of more home computers with communications This may increase the attractiveness of capability. information services, particuiariy as the cost of 9600 bitper-second modems declines, permitting videotex services to offer services like high-resolution animated graphics and sound. Home computers can be used to provide a large amount of knowledge to an increasing number of people who have previously been the passive recipients of knowledge from governing elites and experts. But, these services themselves also could create an information technology elite. 5. Word P rtxzeasing. intended uses for home computers are generally business and education. But the most frequent actual uses are word processing and games. There is a gender gap in the way computers are viewed and used within a family setting. Women generally use the computer only for specific practical needs. Men are more likely than women to get absorbed by the computer and forget family obligations. 6. Electronic Romance. Love and romance are now available through the computer, giving people the ability to œmeet,  electronically, and correspond without ever having to meet face-to-face. if they do desire to meet, programs now exist that provide an anaiysis of the relationship, although the utility of these programs still needs to be empirically validated. - 36 -

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