WHO IS HE?
He lives in a rich, industrialized and digitalized country, which is not the country where he was born.
He has an interesting job which takes up much of his time, but not all.
His job requires that he travel a lot world wide.
It is important for him to have fast communication with colleagues, collaborators and (girl and boy)friends.

HE COMMUNICATES A LOT.
He likes listening to the radio while working.
He uses his home and office telephones to contact companies, and those colleagues and friends who have no email, and also those who never read their email.
He has an answering machine at home, in order not to miss any incoming telephone calls, especially from (boy and girl)friends.
The answering machine also enables call screening, a possibility which he employs especially in the evening.
He is thinking of purchasing a cellular phone, in order to be better reachable while on the move, and he has been thinking whether a pager might be a cheaper but good enough solution.
He does not want a car phone, because he considers it dangerous to drive and make a phone call at the same time.
Where ever he is, he uses his fax modem builtin in his portable computer to send messages and documents to anybody with a fax machine but no email.
He uses his home and office fax machines to send preprinted or handwritten documents, and to receive faxes.
He uses the post delivery service to send printed documents which are too large or too important to be faxed, and also to send videotapes and computer diskettes.
He uses parcel delivery services to send large and heavy parcels.
He uses courier services to send urgent documents, videotapes and diskettes.
He has never received or sent a telex or a telegraph in his life.
One day he received a telegram from a friend who was on the road in Russia.
He never sent a telegram himself.
He never used or saw a radar except on television.
He often used a shortwave radio receiver as well as a gps, while sailing at sea and learning marine navigation.

HE IS ONLINE A LOT.
Where ever he is where there is a local area network or an appletalk network, he connects his notebook to it via either ethernet or appletalk, and once he is connected to the internet, he can work best.
When he is in his office, he reads and writes several email messages spread out over the day and the evening.
He is regularly creating and consuming home pages on the WWW.
He would like to take a holiday, so he would have time to visit the large list of WWW sites he collected during the past months but never had the time to read.
He used to read certain technical news groups, but not any longer, because it takes up too much of his time.
When he is at home or in a hotel, he uses ppp or slip to login on a workstation in his home domain.
Momentarily he is comparing internet access providers, such as compuserve and nisnet, which he wants to use in order to have more access points available, especially in overseas continents.
He is considering buying a palmtop such as the newton, because he finds his powerbook quite a load to carry.

HE TRAVELS A LOT.
He bought a second rechargable battery for his powerbook, in order to be able to work longer while on the train between cities or on a plane on his way to another continent.
He is flying very often, usually with major air lines.
If he has to travel between different jobs and apartments in different cities, he goes by car.
It always takes him quite some time to find his way in new cities, and he wouldn't mind having a car navigation system.
If he does not have a lot of luggage or equipment to carry, he prefers taking the train.
Often, when he is in a lazy hurry, or if the weather is too hot, he takes a taxi.
He once lived in a city where one could take a water taxi.
In his current home city, there is one riksja, but he never took it.
If the weather is good, he likes to ride his bycicle.
He is sorry that he never learned to ride a horse.
He also likes walking, but often has no time for it.
Unfortunately there is also no time for hiking, which he would like to learn.
When he was young, he used to go out for boating and swimming a lot.
He does not like running.
Whenever possible, he tries to avoid taking a bus, because bus rides always make him nauseous.

HE RELAXES A BIT.
At night, he often watches television.
He decided not to buy a satellite television
dish.
He decided to stick with the limited amount of channels available on cable television.
However, this morning he received a mail from the cable television company, in which they announced their upcoming video on demand program.
He also received a letter from a friend who was currently visiting Africa. He was quite amazed, because his friend wrote him that in every new village where he arrived all people knew within an hour about him, the new visitor.
The African people called it "la communication Africaine."