- What kind of computer do you have?
- Why did you choose that make? Are you happy with it?
- Are you good with computers? What kind of things do you know how to do?
- Is there anything you would still like to learn how to do?
- What kind of problems have you had with your computer recently?
- What do you usually do when you have computer problems?
- Do you know anyone who works in IT? Do they enjoy it?
- Do you think men tend to be better with technology than women? Why (not)?
- What are the hot new pieces of technology at the moment? Have you bought any of them?
- Is there any gadget or piece of technology that you could happily do without?
- What's your take on the Mac vs PC debate?
- Do you know any technophiles or technophobes? How do they typically behave?
P: Hi. I have too many friends to stay in touch by phone, so I use a lot of social networking sites instead. Today I’m finding out how people feel about modern communication. How do you like to stay in touch with your friends?
S: The main way that I keep in contact with my friends is via email, um, and I also use mobile phone.
Sa: I like face-to-face contact best, so that’s always my preference, but otherwise I speak on the phone, write letters, send emails.
R: I think it’s really important to stay in touch with friends, so, I’ve got a really close group of friends that we have dinner once a month. We do a kind of ‘round robin’, you know, we each take turns to cook for each other. So, we do that regularly.
F: I keep in contact with my friends via email. G: Well, I used to use an awful lot of postcards and letters, but of course that’s now email.
J: Email, I still write letters, send text messages, and phone calls. Ja: My phone. My phone is my lifeline. Use it for everything. I hate computers.
P: Has modern technology helped us to communicate better? Sa: No. I think we think we can communicate better but I think it just masks our fear of communicating in an honest and open way.
S: We’re able to make contact with someone via mobile phone instantaneously.
R: It’s given us more options. I’m a bit of a technophobe though, erm, I don’t use social networking sites, I haven’t got on the whole, kind of, Twitter bandwagon: so I know that that’s there for me to use if I wanted to, but I tend not to bother.
G: In theory, it should be better, but in practice, sometimes you just have to speak to somebody on the phone.
J: It has, if it comes to just communication like remote communication, it has helped greatly. But on the flipside, I think it hasn’t because it’s reduced a lot of physical contact, face-to-face contact and I think that a lot of people still feel isolated even though we communicate a lot more than ever before.
Ja: No. I think it’s probably made it a lot worse as people don’t talk face-to-face as much and they just rely on ‘text speak’ and things and points don’t get put across as well if you’re not speaking face-to-face.
P: What kinds of problems can modern communication cause? F: I think modern communication can cause a lot of different problems. A common one would be to email the wrong person, I think. I’ve done that a few times myself.
Ja: Emails. I tend to, between my teachers: I always write the wrong things and don’t send the right work and send all the wrong stuff to all the wrong people and get all my contact lists wrong.
R: It’s so much easier to be misunderstood, you know, if you’re just writing an email, for example.
Sa: When I was working, I remember sending a really important email to the Chair of Governors at the school where I worked and I was typing quickly at the end and I was signing it my name, which is Sarah, and I typed Satan by mistake and sent it.
