In the second part of our journey with NDM (Non-Digital Man) it was time to track him down and speak to him face to face and see if we can get to the bottom of why he has not adopted a digital lifestyle and see if there is anyway to make sure that he doesn't have a shortened life span by needlessly worrying about stuff that really isn't that important. Lighten his heavy load and put him on the lighter path of enlightenment and enjoyment!
We find our NDM again rushing with his heavy load of two bags across the platform and heading towards his train which is due to depart in 2 mins. There must be something fundamentally wrong in the way that he works / manages his time if he is continually running and rushing that can not be good for him. (Mental note to check his working pattern...)
We catch up with him sweaty and exhausted on the train back home where we ask him a few pertinent questions to get this man on track so here laid bare is our NDM...
NDM is a married male in his early 30's lives in Surbiton with his wife and young son. He drives to the train station each morning and when the queue is low and he remembers he buys a weekly travel card, he has heard of Oyster - but never had time to look into it more. Home life they have a family PC that is a few years old and runs XP. Although he has broadband it is a low entry 1Mbps connection (unlike some of his work colleagues that have some "super Virgin 20Mbps lightening speed connection) Doesn't really spend that much time online when he gets home as he attends to his wife and son, before settling down to carry on some work. NDM works in London as a sales advisor and although he likes his job it's all about the figures that boost his salary. The continued work is completed on his work laptop - which is nothing special - bog standard Dell Latitude, that has been locked down so he can not run any other applications as he has no "administrator" rights - but even then not quite sure what that is. A lot of his work is spreadsheet based, which he then prints off on his own HP printer (which answers the question of why he has half a tropical rainforest in his bag) His company is not really technology focused and as such has no way to update any sales work or access the office servers from home. NDM did try wi-fi once (only once!!??) when his train was cancelled and there was a wi-fi campaign in Waterloo where he received a little booklet and free access key, but alas his PC was so locked down that he needed admin rights to switch it on and took him a good 20mins to find what to do - so gave up in embarrassment of not knowing what to do and frustrated that he was being treated as a "child" by not being allowed to work on his laptop as a responsible grown up. The IT department says that this is due to other employees who downloaded porn, virus applications, file sharing and more porn - so they made an executive decision to keep all company laptops locked down to the bare minimum.
His phone is actually quite good it is an older model of the XDA - but was given it from the last sales guy who left and was never shown what to do with it. It still has some of his contacts on there as well as a couple of pictures and some emails, but as a phone it works well and has a good battery life.
I mention that I have seen him with a Samsung MP3 device - to which he replies his brother in law gave it to him at Christmas time and chucked on a few albums that he likes - and after a failed attempt to get it working on his home PC enjoys the tracks that his brother-in-law gave put on there for him. The portable DVD player was a gift from his wife for his daily commute, and she signed up for a Love Film subscription that delivers movies for him on a rotational basis. He enjoys this and enjoys the escapism that this brings. The frustration lies in that he never knows exactly what will come and sometimes the discs are slightly scuffed and the journey is bumpy and can get some screen freeze. The reason for two sets of headphones is that because he is watching a movie, the little headphones "wouldn't be good enough?"
Time does seem to a be a big issue for him - he picks up the free Metro as he wants to catch up on the daily news - most of his news consumption comes in this form - free and easy to digest bite sized chunks. He reads The Daily Mail on a weekend - but never really has a chance to read it from cover to cover - as there is always things to do.
As we get near his stop - I notice that his bag is stuffed with catalogues - holiday brochures to be more precise! I tell him that I assume that he will be looking over the brochure with his wife so that they can do the booking online? "Oh no" he says "That would be throwing my money away doing that, don't you know there is lots of people lose their money by doing that - also do you honestly think that I would send thousands of pounds over the internet???"
...and with that our NDM leaves, smiles and waves - heading back to his wife and child - leaving me in no doubt that something has to change....