Will sends along a special excerpt from The Broadband Difference: How Online Americans’ Behavior Changes with High-speed Internet Connections at Home (PDF):
“In sum, emailing and information searching are most popular among broadbanders. This is not too surprising, since most Americans view the Internet as an information resource like a library. When asked what the Internet is like, 51% of all Americans in the Pew Internet Project's March 2002 survey likened it to a library and no other alternative metaphor such as 'meeting place' or 'shopping mall' comes close to that symbol of what the Internet is.”